An Update!

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Brian and I have been overwhelmed (in all of the best ways) by the outpouring of love and support we have received in the past month or so since we shared where we feel the Lord is leading us. So many of you have asked really great questions that have spurred this update! We never intended for this blog to be a place to share updates, but with all of the love and support we have been given it seems foolish to not share what God continues to do in and through us along this journey.

This isn’t the most glamorous of updates, as this is a pretty long a drawn out process…

So, here are the updates:

    • We chose a Ministry to take our foster certification classes at. One Heart Family Ministries has a lot of really fun ties for us, and we are excited to learn from them!
    • Our classes begin on October 2nd.
    • Our home study process should begin soon. For me, Clara, that makes things seem even more real! As many of you know this is a pretty invasive and tedious process…so here we go! 🙂
    • So many of you have encouraged us in really tangible ways with different resources, blogs, and people you know who have walked this journey. It has been really cool to see the good and less good/fun parts of this journey that some of you have already walked through.
    • We have also learned of so many of our friends that are walking through a similar season to us. We are so grateful for the dinner/lunch invitations and the openness so many of you have come to us with. We are grateful for this support system that is growing!

Thank you for the prayers! Hopefully we will have interesting updates for you soon. 🙂

Adoption — Beginning of Our Journey

bmaloyLeave a comment

Knowing that it isn’t always easy to convey our heart on some topics (such as this), we decided it would be wise to put our thoughts down in writing.

Adoption — we have been praying about this for a long time, Clara for about the last year, Brian for a little longer. It’s hard to explain, but even when we have decided to ‘put it on hold’, the stirring within us has continued to come back into our thoughts and prayers.

Rather than rushing or making hasty decisions we decided to pray often and regularly about Adoption, specifically Adoption from Foster Care. There are so many kids who don’t have forever families or homes, and these are the kids who we believe we are most called to reach out to. After all, God adopted us as His children — us, broken, imperfect us. This is the root of the desire to adopt.

We know it will NOT be easy, but we are choosing to trust that God is bigger than the anxiety and He certainly can handle the potential issues that will come (as they would with any children, natural or adopted). We could (and have) come up with dozens of reasons why we shouldn’t do this — but through our conversations and prayers, it just doesn’t matter. We know we are called to at the very least pursue Adoption. And after a good amount of discussion, we decided to share the process with others (you). Perhaps it can be an encouragement to step out in faith in some area of your life – who knows how God could use this process in our lives and those around us.

So, we’d humbly ask you to pray for us. Pray that we are patient, pray that the process is good and affirming, and helps prepare us for the future. Pray for wisdom for us; obviously, we have not done this before and have a lot to learn, that’s okay! Pray for the child or children who may find their forever family with us. Pray for the children who still need homes and families.

We know we cannot do this without the prayer and support of our family and friends. Thanks for being a part of our journey.

p.s. Another way you can help, if you have connections, experience or advice – don’t be afraid to share.

Questions you may have:

  1. Can we not have kids naturally? We don’t know, haven’t decided to try yet.
  2. Aren’t we afraid of the issues the kids may have? Um, yes… this is why we need the prayers of our family and friends.
  3. Are you really sure about this? Well it depends on the day! But we are going to keep walking this path unless God tells us otherwise. We want to keep seeking His will because yeah, it’s scary. But faith calls us to trust God, not always to play it safe.
  4. Do you know what you’re getting into? Yes and no – hard to really know the process until you take a step of faith, so again, pray for us please!
  5. Is it okay to talk about it? Of course, please ask us! That’s why we’re sharing this note now.