This is my first attempt at blogging, so hopefully this will turn out ok. Let me warn you now, this is going to be long. You may want to go ahead and take a potty break & get a snack before you get started. Ha!
I would like to start off by telling you a little bit about what Eric and I have been through over the last several years while dealing with infertility. We found out about 7 years ago that we aren’t able to have children on our own. This was a detrimental thing to me. Hearing this is like hearing about someone dying. Your hope of having your own child just died. I know there were times Eric wanted to just ship me off to the looney bin. I would have days that I couldn’t go to work, or would have to leave work, because I just couldn’t quit crying. Eric and I were not involved in church, and I didn’t try to find comfort in God, I was finding myself blaming God. I became very angry with God. I just couldn’t understand why God would do this to us. Why would he give children to people who don’t even want or need them??? Years went on and I was talking to my boss one day. She had problems getting pregnant. She said at one point her mom and told her to pray that if it wasn’t God’s plan for her to have a child, then change the desire of her heart. I prayed that prayer and sure enough, my desire changed. I didn’t want kids for a while. I was scared of the way the world is going now, what will it be like in several years when my kids would be growing up. Eric and I finally did start going to church and we found a wonderful church. We couldn’t ask for a better church family. I eventually started believing that God was going to give us a child. I just knew we were going to have a baby, it was going to be a girl, and I wanted to name her Faith. Because without “faith” we wouldn’t have had her. It was really hard to have these old desires back and nothing was happening. Last December, December 2007, Eric and I were talking on the phone while he was driving home from hunting. I told him I was tired of feeling this way and I am ready to look into adoption. I think he was just waiting on me to get ready. We waited until after the holidays to get started. I was talking to people who I knew had adopted, trying to figure our what direction we would want to take. I talked to someone who had just adopted from Guatemala. I contacted the agency they used and we went to a seminar. Guatemala had just put a hold on taking new applications, but the lady with the agency said they thought Guatemala would get started again in June or July. She even said we would probably be making our first trip to see our baby by the end of the year. I called to check in with them in March and was told it was looking like it would be October or November. Then in June I called and was just told it would be some time next year. In mid July a guy from work came to me and told me that his wife knows someone who is giving a child up for adoption. He gave me his wife’s number and I called her. She said this girl has already given up 3 children for adoption. She was so encouraging and said she would talk to the birth mother. I waited two weeks and finally called her back. She said that she hadn’t spoken to the birth mother, but she had talked to her parents. She said they were happy to find potential adoptive parents for the baby. She told me she feels really good about this. Anyone in this situation, just a little bit of encouraging and you are totally excited. I was thinking this would be it. I waited a few more weeks and called her back. She still hadn’t spoken with the birth mother. This time she seemed to be pushing me in another direction. She didn’t come out and say this wasn’t going to work out, but she was asking if we have any other options or have we looked in to in-vetro. I just knew then that this wasn’t it. I know we had not gotten a lot of information about this situation, but I had gotten my hopes up. Here I was crushed again. I was getting mad at God all over again. Why would he allow us to go through this? At this point I had started making jewelry to help pay for the adoption. I had wanted a name for my business that would go with a bible verse. I named it Blessed Creations. The verse is, God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God. Matthew 5:8 I thought that this name had double meaning because when we get our baby, it will be our "blessed creation". Well, here I was mad at God and I did not want to keep that name for my jewelry business, and for that matter, I didn’t even want to make the jewelry anymore. I went home that Tuesday all depressed. I made it to work on Wednesday, but I was there physically, not mentally. I would be sitting at my desk and just start crying. Barbie Bassett has a blog where she posts her forecasts and faith. For any of you not from around here, she is a meteorologist. I had not read the blog on Tuesday. When I read it on Wednesday, it was like it was meant for me. This is the blog I read:
http://barbiebassett.blogspot.com/2008/08/its-all-in-eyes.html She was talking about Daniel in the lions den. She made the comment, “If we take our eyes off the Father when troubles arise, we will be mince meat for Satan”. That is exactly what I was doing. Satan was having a field day with my emotions. I read on down and she was talking about someone telling her she needed to quit preaching on her blog. Because someone had told her that, I wanted to be sure and let her know she is truly helping people. I emailed her and told her briefly what we had been through and how her blog saved me, literally. She saved me from going back into depression and she saved me from turning my back on God, again. When she replied to me she told me she is on the board for The Christmas Village, which is a home for unwed mothers. She gave me the name and email address of a contact person. Well, come to find out they are in the process of starting an adoption agency. They should be getting their license in the next few weeks. Eric and I met with Buddy and Connie last Thursday. We had a wonderful meeting with them and we learned a lot. We had to turn in a written testimony, and a profile, which is like a scrapbook about us. They will show our profile to birth mothers and they will decide whether or not they want to meet us. Right now we are just waiting. Once we have a birth mother, we will then do the home study and background check. Oh, and I have left out one of the best parts, the cost. Most adoptions start at around $20,000.00. If we had gone to Guatemala it would have been between $30,000.00 and $40,000.00. I had wondered how we would pay for it, but I never worried about it. I just felt that God would take care of it for us. Well, to adopt with The Village of Hope, it will be around $5,000.00. I just know with out a doubt that God has led us to where we are now. It is amazing for me to be able to see God working in our lives. It has been a long time since I have been in a place spiritually that I can step back and see the things he is doing for me. I warned you this was going to be long. I hope I didn’t bore you to death. It is hard to portray in words what is was like emotionally to live these last several years, but I just wanted to try to tell what we have been through to get us to where we are now.
Our Christmas decorations
