It’s been eight years since I said I do to the love of my life. We’ve experienced highs and lows, been each other’s support systems and encountered so many changes in our lives.

Sometimes it amazes me how naive I was when we got married. I had all these carefully laid plans on how everything would go for us: enjoy being just us for a couple of years, have Brian become a minister, grow in love with each other and with God and then start a family. Well, life had other plans.

I’m pretty sure that those who know us can attest that we both love children. We’ve worked with kids of all ages for years. Whether it was our profession (Brian is an elementary teacher) or as part of our ministry. I’ve worked with preschoolers in church for over 20 years. Brian has worked with at risk children for the same time in schools, churches, camps, etc. It’s engrained in our DNA, sort of speak.

When we first got married I knew there was a possibility that it would be a challenge to conceive. I had experienced some issues during my youth and had an idea that we would need to see a doctor at least. Well it was more than that. After almost a year of trying and seeing a doctor and taking medications, we decided to see a specialist. The news we got were heartbreaking: we had less than 5% chance of conceiving. Unexpectedly we both had issues. When we first shared this with family and friends we got everything from: “God can make a miracle happen, all you need is faith,” to “Oh well, maybe this is God’s way.”

We knew in our hearts that we are filled with love to give to a child. We were given the option to explore in vitro fertilization (IVF) but even that wasn’t guaranteed. We decided to move in faith and start saving, even creating a funding website to help raise funds. We had some very generous family and friends that donated, and to which we are grateful to this day. After a year, we were still a long ways of to reaching our goal of $15,000.

We looked into private adoptions of newborns as well, but those are even more expensive than the IVF procedure would be.

During a church service a little over a year ago, there was an announcement for Place of Hope, a local non-profit that houses an orphanage and assists in fostering and adoptions from the foster care system.

We decided to pray and attend the informational meeting for the adoption class. I knew that I couldn’t make the commitment of becoming a foster parent, loving and caring for a child that might return to the unhealthy environment they had been removed from.

We faced adversity even from the start of the class: our teacher was adamant that we would never be able to adopt a young child, paperwork took longer than expected since we were moving, my grandma passed away and that pushed everything back as well. When we returned to the task of completing our paperwork we were told that the agency could no longer facilitate adoptions, we had to start the process all over again with a new agency. It has taken us a year, but we can finally say that it is official:

WE ARE ADOPTING!!!!!!!

We’re adopting!

It might take us a while to find our child, but the search has started. We hope you will pray for God to guide us to our forever child.

Thanks,

Karla & Brian