How We Got Here

I wanted to write a post providing a little background as to why Trey and I chose to foster. This is not something that has always been on my radar. When we got married, Trey and I discussed the possibility of adopting one day. He was more "for it" than I was, but I was also wanting to have biological children first. I would definitely be open to adoption after we had our own children.

A little over a year into our marriage, Trey and I got pregnant with our first little one. We named the child Benton, although we did not make it far enough along into the pregnancy to find out the gender. I had an early miscarriage. We were devastated by this loss, which also came on the heals of losing our brother-in-law to a terrible car accident. We named the baby Benton because that name means "little blessed one," and we cannot imagine anything more blessed than going straight into the arms of the Lord and not ever having to face the sinfulness and brokenness of this world.

That was a time of intense grief but also intense closeness to the Lord. We leaned on Him in ways we could not have understood had we not experienced these losses. Several months later we moved to our current home, hopeful and waiting for our next positive pregnancy test.

This positive did not come until 9 months later. That September of 2010, we found out we were expecting again. Words cannot describe the joy of this life and also the fear of losing another baby! But we made it through the first trimester with no problems, and in June of 2011, we welcomed our precious girl, Kate, into this world. The loss of one baby and the wait for the next allowed us to fully experience gratitude for this life God has granted us.

After Kate, we were ready to get pregnant again. I nursed exclusively for the first 12 months of Kate's life, but as I began to wean her, we were hopeful for another baby. This wait became longer and longer, and soon we were celebrating Kate's 2nd birthday. I had some health problems that year, my mom spent time in the hospital, and I had to travel frequently for preparation and celebration of my sister's wedding. The delayed "positive" on a pregnancy test made us wonder if something was wrong or if it had to do with the stress and hectic schedule of that year.

I guess we will never fully know the answer as to "why," but near the end of 2013, we did learn that we had a fertility problem. It is not one that is hopeless, and it is not one for which we plan to pursue much intensive fertility treatment. In the midst of all this waiting and wondering, God was also stirring in our hearts a longing to adopt. While the possibility and hope of more biological children is real for us, we realized there is no right order to natural and adopted children. We realized we could mix things up a bit.

In the fall of 2013, Trey and I watched the movie October Baby. After the movie, we found ourselves fighting tears and looking at the state of Texas' website at the children who are available for adoption. We didn't know "what" specifically at the time, but we knew the Lord was drawing us in to the world of orphan care.

There are many details in between, but for the sake of this blog post, I will tell you that we learned you can adopt from the foster care system, which is an essentially "free of charge" process. There are pros and cons for going this route, but as we began to explore our options, we realized we didn't want to just adopt, but to foster first. Because of Kate's age, we didn't want to adopt an older child. Kate is our first priority as we make all these considerations and decisions.

We decided we wanted to adopt a baby, and it is easier to adopt a baby by fostering first. There is also the higher chance of having to give the baby back, but that was a situation we were willing to face (see my previous post for our thoughts on this, as we just walked through this situation).

So that is our journey in a nutshell to becoming foster parents. I will be writing more in the coming days and weeks on how the process has been and common questions we have been asked. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to email me at karaj83@gmail.com. I can answer them personally and also address any general questions on the blog.