This is one of the best stories I will ever write. Not because of me or anything I have done but because of God. 

Adoption has been on my heart for as long as I can remember. Tracing back to my childhood days living across the street from a foster home. I always thought I would have my “own kids” and then would adopt later in life. 

This is why I say God writes the best stories. What he has done in my life since becoming a foster and and adoptive parent has far outweighed anything else I have ever experienced. 

When our youngest biological daughter Marissa was about 10 months old, Greg and I felt led to move to a new city. It didn’t really make sense other than financially as all of our family and friends lived in the town where we were living. Greg has grown up there. We owned a home. We were comfortable. Greg not liking change probably would have preferred to stay but there were two reasons why we felt compelled to move. My maternity leave was almost up and I knew I was meant to be home with my kids. I didn’t want to work full time and miss out on so many moments. The girls are only 17 months apart so daycare costs would have been ridiculous anyways. I also felt like we needed to make some adult decisions on our own and break free from our families a bit. Although it was nice having them close, we got married young and bought a house from my parents. It was only a street over from their house and a 2 minute drive to his parents. We were going to my father in laws church, and although this is where I came to know Jesus, I knew we needed to leave there. Being the Pastor’s kid and wife in a super small church really hampered our growth. There wasn’t many kids and I wanted a different church environment for our kids to grow up in. I really struggled without having Christian friends and I wanted my kids to have a different experience.  I just felt like we had to break free and make our own decisions at that stage of our lives. 

So for these reasons we put our house up for sale and moved about half an hour west of our little town to a bigger city. House prices were much cheaper so I would be able to stay home and raise the girls. 

My husband and I had talked off and on about adopting internationally and it was always something I thought I would do. Again after I was done having babies. 

I approached him with the subject of baby number 3 when Mariss was about a year and a half old and he told me he thought now was the time we should pursue adoption. We knew how long it could take, so we decided to start the process right away. 

After researching international adoption, I just didn’t feel comfortable with all the ethical considerations. 

Our new house happened to be right around the corner from our local family and children’s services agency. Every time I would drive by I would see the sign flashing “help your community, become a foster parent”. God started whispering that this was our next move.

I started to research adopting from the foster care system. I knew there were kids in our own backyard in need of homes and my heart started changing from international adoption to foster care adoption.