Kansas

I was looking back on all of the entries that I have written, and my first one that I posted was in March of 2011 on this site. What a journey! I am amazed as I read back through the entries at what God had us walk through to get to this point. They were the hardest times of my life as I struggled to follow God on a road that I did not understand and did not want to be on, but that He had planned for me and Tim way before we were even born. This last weekend brought so much joy to my heart. And now I get to share it with you! So heres the journey of the last weekend!



When arrived in Kansas around 12, and we were going to see the kids until 4. Tim and I were both exhausted after taking a red eye flight that landed at 3 a.m. our time but it was 6 a.m. minnesota time. There we had a three hour layover before we got on our plane to Kansas. I slept about 4 hours altogether and Tim had slept about 1 hour, but when we got to Kansas we were so excited we couldn't sleep. So finally the moment arrived when we got to meet the kids! Their foster mom told me that Shannon was a little scared and in my heart I was so worried the kids wouldn't want to go with us for the weekend, and I was trying to trust God to make their hearts ready for us. Their social worker took us into their play room area, and we waited for them to get there with our hearts racing. Then, I could hear their little voices walking towards our room. I was sooo excited and nervous and I wanted to jump out of my seat and hug them but thought that probably wasnt the best idea. TJ and Shannon ran right up to us and they had made a special book of pictures of them from the past year and were so excited to show it to us. Before we knew it we were all on the ground playing and throwing them up in the air, and even little Jessie started warming up to us and wanting us to throw her around too. There was lots of giggles and laughter and it was amazing! The kids loved the gifts I made for them, and all weekend took their blankets with them everywhere we went. TJ was ready to go with us right away, wanting us to take him to Burger King and making it clear he was ready to leave now haha. So we loaded them up and off we went! We found our way to Burger King and went out to the play area, and to be honest, it was crazy! We had not gotten any napkins, and the kids apparently hate to be dirty. They were spilling things and getting things on them and freaking out and Tim was running back and forth to get more and more napkins. Its funny now though. We went back to the motel room and played and the kids went to bed. On Saturday we woke up, ate some breakfast at the motel (grabbed plenty of napkins this time), and we got to facetime with my parents. The kids loved them! We headed to the zoo and it was so amazing! Shannon started calling us mommy and daddy right away which felt so nice to hear. Her and Jessyca loved us, but they especially loved Tim! When we were in the car Shannon would say, "daddy will you hold my hand?" which he did everytime while he was driving. Jessyca loved Tim to hold her and cuddle her and it was so sweet to watch. TJ on the other hand loved me! He was always wanting me to hug him and play with him and hold his hand. It was so special! He would watch me get ready in the morning and we would hug in between my morning tasks lol. At one point at the zoo, TJ had to sit down for a little bit and was SCREAMING and Jessie was exhausted and was SCREAMING and it was CRAZY! We held strong though and worked through it. On Sunday, we were planning on going to the space center, but everything was closed and it was freezing in Kansas. So we went back to the motel and hung out pretty much all day. It was hard having 3 kid locked up inside with no naps and nowhere to go. We came up with some fun ideas to entertain them, a dance party, throwing bouncy balls around the hallway, things like that. But the time we had together was so special throughout the craziness. We had a lot of laughter, hugging, smiles, and giggling and also screaming, crying, time outs, and kids arguing. Talk about being thrown into parenting right away haha. Monday was our last day, and Jessie had to leave early because she had a drs appointment. We were getting her ready when the fire alarm at the motel started going off, and all of the sudden we had a bunch of motel staff in our room helping grab the kids and their jackets and blankets and shoes and getting us all out of the motel. Their was a fire in the laundry room. So we sat in the car waiting to go back into the motel, and the foster mom came and got Jess. Jess was crying because she didn't want to leave us and she was in the foster mom's car with her hands out to me screaming. It was so hard :(. We took the older two kids to a different zoo and walked around some and played at the park, then had lunch before we had to take them back. TJ kept asking me if he could go on the plane with me, because he wanted to live with me and see me everyday. It was so hard to leave them. Shannon also asked if she could come with us. I sure hope things move quickly because I want them here now. As Tim and I were driving back to the airport, we all of the sudden were missing all of the constant fighting between the kids in the backseat. We miss them so much, we cannot wait til they are here and they get to meet everyone! Their foster mom said we can talk to them on the phone until the happens, which is great! Thank you all for your many prayers and support! I am so thankful for the many text messages and all of the love that we received while out there and even now! It been such a journey and it has been so amazing having so many people share it with us!!

 

A Dream Come True

First of all, I seriously can't believe I FINALLY get to post about adopting children!! All of my posts have been about trying to get pregnant and wanting kids, and I have always dreamed of the day when I could post about ACTUAL children that are going to be welcomed into our home! God works in mysterious ways for sure. "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine." Isaiah 55:8. I believe Tim and I are living proof of the truth in this verse. All of this time that we have been trying to get pregnant, along with all of the shots, the treatments, the decisions, the emotions that I never thought I could get through, the pain and all of the heartache has led us to this moment. We have been trying to get pregnant for almost 4 years, and God is blessing us with a child that is 4 years old. This means that God has been working and knew all along that over the past 4 years of our struggle, there was a little boy out there that was already created who would need a Godly home, and that it was Tim and I who were to adopt him. I can just picture God holding me through all of these years and all of my tears, thinking of this little boy who would soon be my child and telling me that He has plans for me far beyond I could even imagine. So lets back up a little here. Its going to seem like a HUGE backup, but lets go back to the time in my life when I was 8 years old. When I was 8 years old, God brought me two more sisters through the miracle of adoption. I had grown up with them as well as their brothers, we all went to church together, and when God brought the two girls into our lives we were thrilled! I didn't realize at the time that God would use this situation to meet the need in my life of wanting a child. A few months ago, my sister's biological brother called me and asked me if we would be willing to adopt his children. To be this showed a HUGE sacrifice on his part as he was willing to look past his own desire to be their dad, and to give them more than he could do on his own. He had seen a recent family picture of my whole family, and he had seen how his sister's lives had changed by being apart of the "Lackey Clan" and he knew he wanted the same for his children. Tim and I prayed about the decision, and we were thrilled! I got into contact with the kid's social worker and started working everything out with her along with all of the paperwork that comes with an out of state adoption. Things have gone so smoothly, its almost scary to me because i'm used to more bumps in the road. It doesnt seem real! The paperwork is almost done, and we get to go visit the kids on the 9th and meet them for the first time! Right now they have a book of Tim and I and our family that they are looking at to prepare for our visit. We get to spend two straight days with them, even keep them overnight! My heart feels like its flying! If everything keeps going so smoothly, we could have the kids by Christmas! Please continue to pray for us as we meet them. God has arranged this, and it is far beyond what I could have ever imagined. It is so amazing to me how my parents were able to help my sisters, and now Tim and I get to help the next generation of their biological family. I would have never have thought this up in a million years, and it is something that only the God of this universe could have brought all together. My love for Him through this whole process of infertility and adoption now has grown tremendously, but even better is that I can feel His love for me like never before.

 

Prayer

So I am posting this journal to ask for prayer, and a TON of it! Tim and I are being given the chance to adopt not one, but three children! They are siblings, a boy and two girls, ages 1, 3 and 4. We are so excited! We know that we can provide these children with a loving home, and we are thrilled at the chance to adopt them with open hearts that have been praying for this moment for almost 4 years!

The process works like this, the children are out of state, so the papers and our homestudy transfer to the department in California that handles out of state adoptions. They look at our paperwork, and look at the children's folder and determine if we are accepted to adopt them or not. Right now we are working on adopting the 1 year old, and if we can get approved to adopt her then we will have a huge chance of getting the other two since they are related.

So right now, the paperwork is about to travel to California, so that this person, whoever it is, can determine if it is a good match. They dont meet us, its all off of the paperwork. Needless to say, it is stressful! Over the next few weeks they will determine if we can adopt these children.

So we need PRAYER and lots of it! The situation seems perfect for us, and we pray that whoever this person is that needs to approve us sees it the same way. God is in control and if He wants us to have these children we will, but it is hard to remember that when its all going on! Just pray for all the people involved and that there arent too many hang ups along the way!

Blessings

Im sure you have all heard the song blessings, heres the chorus:
what if your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise

I love this song and have spent time listening to each word of it and memorizing them, and claiming them for my own life. A while ago when I heard it, I could relate to it but I didn't fully understand each line. what if your blessings come through raindrops, Tim and I have been rained on hard the past year, and i wouldn't even call them rain drops I would say it was the whole storm! But I didn't feel blessed during this time, I was just waiting for it to be over so we could experience the blessing. Or the last line, What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise, how the heck is a trial God's mercy? We are facing hopefully one of the biggest trials of our life, and I wouldn't have called it mercy. We have finally passed our homestudy, which was in itself a hard journey and it has helped things to mostly calm down, and over past two months of our lives, I have learned and felt some incredible things!  I now understand the lyrics, because I am feeling a joy in my heart that I have never felt before, AND we still DO NOT have a child! Its crazy! I remember someone who had also gone through inferility telling me I would get to the point where I could give it all to God and feel peace, and I thought she was seriously insane. There was no way. God has shown me that He is a BIG God, and He has me covered and has a plan for me. It has been so amazing to just be able to relax with my husband the past months and enjoy what we have together, and to make it even greater! To trust that God has this covered and to be able to focus on other things and to continue to discover who I am and to continue to grow confident in that person. I know I have said this before, but my perspective of people and the world, and of God a few years ago, and my perspective now is completely different. It amazes me still. I honestly never thought I could have relationships with people that were so honest and open and caring. It still amazes me as I go through my days and spend time investing into all of these people God has placed in my life, that I had missed all of this before. I am learning what it means to follow God, to be loved completely by Him no matter what. I am learning how to have a relationship with Him and He is showing me how to love others. I have spent time with amazing people, learn to make the greatest cookies (thanks Heather), cut my hair off haha, gone to the beach a lot, enjoyed and laughed with my husband, and have just had fun! I keep reminding myself that I will only live one time, and I don't want to waste it. God has taken me way out of what I was comfortable with and it has been an amazing journey, and He has used infertility to make me completly rely upon Him because I have absolutely NO control over it, even if I wanted to. It isn't a situation where I can change my mind and say, O wait, thanks for trying God but I think ill just take that one back and handle it on my own. I can do nothing. I have to TRUST Him. I know I post all of these things when I am doing well and have processed things, but this has been a hard journey. I have had to make decisions that I honestly could have ever have imagined I would have to make, I have had to experience feelings that I never want to feel again. Even yesterday when I was talking to my friend, she said, man it seems like all anyone has to do to get pregnant is hang around you. It does feel true, everyone around me gets pregnant quickly and I think this whole journey someone close to me has been pregnant the whole time. Its a balancing act learning how to be happy for them, yet to also know its ok to be sad for me, but to not let it drag me down too low. To learn what I can and cannot handle, and to learn how God has created me to be in the process. I know people go through hard things, things that they honestly do not think they can handle, but know this, there is an amazing God who truly loves you. So many times when things are hard we are so busy wondering why God would allow this to happen to us, that we can miss the journey that may just explain the reasoning. You could miss the growth that comes when God does allow something to happen in your life that feels unbearable. I truly want to be a person that loves and prays for others when they are facing the hard times, because that is what gets them through it. If you have anything that I can keep you in prayer for, please comment it on this post or email it to me. I will write it down and keep it personal, and pray for you.

 

No Subject

I got to hang out with one of my great friends, Diana today. She asked me when I was going to post in my blog next because it really speaks to her when I do. I have had one written for a few weeks, but wasnt sure if I was going to post it because I didn't know if I was just dragging people down with all of this stuff going on in our lives. But since she asked me to, I am going to post it.

Sometimes life just feels like a huge roller coaster ride. That pretty much describes the past few months of mine and Tim's lives, past years actually. But the past few months have been full of so much emotion, as God seemed to bring together our past, present and future in a way that was terrifying and made us COMPLETELY rely upon Him as we didn't know what was going to happen next. Thankfully everything is finally starting to turn around. I did not realize how terrifying it is to have to rely completely on God in a situation. I have never felt so much frustration at God, and yet had to rely upon Him anyways. With so many of the different avenues for us to have a child closing, I hold on tight to the very few that we have left. But its when we hold onto someting so tightly that God steps in and can make sure our priorities are correct, and that our love for Him outweighs the thing we are holding onto. He tested our faith strongly. It is so hard to be able to say to God that it is completely up to Him to give us our child. I feel like if I can take shots, or medications, or complete paperwork or do SOMETHING, anything really, that maybe I am still in control. It is so hard to give all of that up to Him, especially when I feel He hasn't done very well with it so far. That is so selfish to say, who am I to tell God how something should be done? Yet, I do it, a lot haha. One thing I am very thankful for is to have a God who can handle me and my feelings, and not give up on me even when I feel ready to give up on Him. When I feel like He has given me this great desire and is not fulfilling it, yet makes me watch so many people around me have it fulfilled. Then I hear a song, or get a text or word of encouragement from someone, or just sense His presence more than usual at a given moment, and it keeps me going a little longer. It is so hard to pray and read my Bible, and even go to church at times when I feel so frustrated and angry at the God of this Universe. When I know in one second He could take care of this situation and take away this pain, but He chooses not to. I know in my head that there has to be a reason for all of this, and it could be a form of protection, but in my heart I just feel that it is so mean. When I have been struggling to have a child for 3 years, and then people around me get pregnant in a month. Or when I go to birthday parties for these amazing kids in my life, celebrating that they are one, and it just kills me inside because I knew I would have a baby by the time they were born, yet alone their first birthdays. I try incredibly hard not to focus on it all of the time, but that is pretty much impossible to do. It is too close to us, all around us, all the time. As our adoption is finally on the move again, it is nice to feel some sense of hope, that maybe soon we will get selected by a birth mother and have the child that God has CREATED for US. I remember when we first started going through infertility, I would hear this question in my head from God, "Angie will you still love me if I do not give you a child? Will you still love me if you can never be pregnant?" Man it stings just typing it out. It is the question I have been ignoring since the beginning of this, because I knew God would just give me a child and I wouldn't have to answer it. Yet here we are, and I know I may never get to have my husbands child except for a miracle, and although it is sooo hard and frustrating, and I struggle incredibly with my feelings, I know that God loves me and I choose to believe His plan for me is great. That this part of our life wont last forever. And I know that I love Him. How many people can truly say that? That if their biggest dream was taken away, and they knew that God could fulfill it but wouldnt, that they still truly loved Him. I never thought I would be able to, but through a broken heart, I can. I am amazed to look back on the journey He has taken us on, I am amazed at how much my husband and I have grown, at how much I personally have grown, and I know without all of this I wouldn't have. So many times we pray for God to take the pain away, to make is stop. But the truth is we should pray that God uses the pain and circumstances to teach us, and mold us and shape us to be like Him and to grow in ways that are impossible to grow when things are perfect and happy. The truth is we will all go through times in our life where things are so hard we truly don't see how we can get through it, but as one of my favorite songs says, " You never said it would be easy, You only said I'll never go alone." We serve an incredible God who has more in store for us than just making us happy and granting our wishes. I know God has a plan for Tim and I, and I cannot wait to meet our little bundle of joy as we continue to pray to be matched with the child that God has created just for us!

God's Plan

Sometimes in the midst of craziness, there is something that pulls us back to reality. For me and Tim, it has been an amazing book called Plan B by Pete Wilson. It has been an awesome tool that God has used to keep us going on the hard road of infertility and adoption. I don't know why I thought that since we are adopting everything would now be smooth sailing, because adoption in itself is an emotional journey. We have had some huge bumps in the road already, and although God has gotten us through it so far, its been very emotional and scary. Last night Tim and I read a chapter in Plan B called Whiplash. It was about those times in our lives where things are just going wrong, and things feel terrible. As Tim and I were reading, we were reminded that having faith in God does not mean that everything will just be ok. It doesn;t mean that storms wont come, and it doesn't mean that He will just fix every problem we face. So many people think that if things are going wrong, it can't be God's plan. Yet the truth is, it can be. Before Tim and I were even born God knew that we would be facing this crazy journey in our lives. He even created people and put them on the same path as us to help us through it. SOOO many times I lay in bed thinking, God WHAT are you doing?? Will we ever have a child? Will I ever get to experience pregnancy?? This seriously can't be your will or plan for my life because it hurts too bad... But the truth is, we serve a God who we cannot understand, and this is an amazing thing. Having faith in Him does not mean that I know He will allow me to get pregnant, it means that trusting that even if He never allows me to get pregnant, He has a plan for me that must be far greater and leaning on that to keep me moving forward. I learned in reading this chapter last night, that so many times people make all of these plans for their life, when they will get married, how many kids they will have, they even decide how many of each gender they will have and choose all of their names. They choose which job they will have, the decide that they will not be single, they would never lose their house...soooo many different circumstances, and then if God doesn;t go along with that plan, they get angry and tell Him how upset they are that things are not going how they should be going. That totally applies to my life. At times I get so angry at God that he has not allowed us to have children, and I lose focus of the fact that that is my plan, and yet it is not His. That we serve a God whose thoughts are above our thoughts and ways are above our ways. It can be a constant battle as Satan tries to take our plans and continually show them to us and show us how God is not coming through, yet on the other side keeping your mind on the truth that if God is not allowing this to happen, there must be a reason and something far greater will come, even if it feels like it never will. At times I think, God seriously, this has to be enough, I don't think I can handle one more thing, and then one more thing happens and I learn something else through it. God is not in the business of doing everything I want, or focusing on the end goal, He cares more about the journey and shaping me into who he wants me to be. I don't really know who all reads this online journal of our journey, and it really serves as a way for me to write down what I have learned and go back and read it when I start to doubt it, which happens often. My prayer is that God can use what He is teaching me to help others as well. God does not give us struggles to go through them alone, He uses those struggles to reach other people who are struggling as well, and I pray that He does this with our journey.