Our Family's Story

Our adoption story: The Longer Version (as written in summer 2010)

My wife has taught elementary students for 3 years now. Each year she has grown to love her students and brought home stories of the amusing, frustrating, hysterical, and adorable things they have said and done in class. This past school year something was different. She actually brought home two kids. Two amazing kids.

In August 2009, Lacy was preparing her classroom for the 21 kindergartners who would soon invade it. As she was making name cards for each student she wanted to know if they had nick names that they preferred. One student had attended the preschool class down the hall, so Lacy walked down to simply ask his previous teacher if he preferred “Edward” or “Eddie.” She learned that one aide (Amy) has been praying for Eddie and his sister, Brianna, to find a good family to adopt them. They had been in the foster system for over a year and they would soon be up for adoption. She told Lacy that she believed we would make good parents for them and that she was praying about that.

Lacy told me this and we both had a good laugh.

A few weeks into the school year, Lacy asked if I would come in and read to a couple kids who did not seem to be reading much at home. For several weeks, I came to read with a boy named Eddie. And after some more comments and nudges from Amy, I began reading with Brianna, as well. I loved reading with them. They were incredibly cute. They ate up the attention. They seemed to look forward to the special privilege of being taken out of the classroom and reading in the library with Mr. Newland. But I’m pretty sure I looked forward to it even more.

As Lacy spent more time with Eddie, and as I spent a little time with each of the kids, we began to really love them and had the same hope that they end up with a great family. In fact, we even started thinking, “What if Amy isn’t crazy after all?” And we began to pray and talk about this adoption as a real possibility.

In October, I went to the Department of Child Services (DCS) to find out a little about the adoption process and to figure out how you begin to even think through the decision of becoming the parents of two children. My questions were met with a confident, seemingly sharp reply that essentially stated, “You are too late to adopt these children. They are already on the agenda for this month’s placement meeting and you don’t even have your foster care license.”

We could have taken this as a clear answer that this was not meant to be. But if you know me or Lacy, you realize that we are more stubborn than that. We were not satisfied with that answer. We later pushed for more information about the process and pushed for it to be known that we would like to be considered as a placement family even if it would be a shot in the dark. We still get upset when we think about how we were treated as potential adoptive parents---that our family could easily had never happened just because of one DCS worker’s impudent remarks. Fortunately, God (and probably Amy) motivated us to persevere in the system.

In November and December we attended the classes for foster parent training, completed paperwork, background checks, and by January our Home Study was complete. We had completed jumping through all the preliminary hoops. Our family was praying for our decision. Our small group from church was praying about it. We could tell. God was working.

During this time we began to have visits with Eddie and Brianna outside of school. For our first visit, we took them to Breakfast with Santa one Saturday in December. We were also able to take them to Christmas at the Zoo and they stayed the night in our home. In January, they started to stay with us on weekends and then for 4 days at a time. They finally moved in with us February 5th. That was when our lives really changed and parenthood began.

A couple weeks prior to Eddie and Brianna moving in, we were given permission to share the news with them. We were excited, yet nervous, about telling the kids that we were going to adopt them. They knew they were going to be adopted by someone eventually, and we wanted to bring something concrete to look forward to so they would not worry about who their new family would be. We were slightly concerned that when we gave them the news, there could be some initial disappointment that they weren’t being adopted by Spiderman or Hannah Montana. Fortunately, telling the kids was a wonderful experience. They were excited to be in our family “forever and ever.” They immediately started calling us mommy and daddy. In fact, Eddie worked the word “Daddy” into just about every sentence that night...sometimes twice. At bath time he told Lacy, “Mommy, you can say, ‘Son, is that enough water?’ ” It was priceless. He had longed for someone to call him, "Son."

For the past four months we have stumbled our way through our transition to parenthood. We grow to know each member of our family better and deepen our relationships. Through ups and downs we learn and grow and we are enjoying experiencing a lot of “firsts.” It has been a tremendous time. It has been beautiful. Not perfect...but beautiful.

We hate that it was necessary for our kids to be removed from their biological family and placed with a new family. We hate the things that they may have witnessed or experienced, and the emotional stress that even as young children they had to endure and the sense of security that eluded them during some crucial developmental years. They deserved attention and yet they were depraved of it. We hate the feelings of loss they will deal with throughout life because of bad decisions made by those who should have protected and cared for them.

But we are grateful for the one foster family who took care of them from the time they entered foster care until the day they moved in with us. We owe them much respect and gratitude that they did not let our kids move from placement to placement, but cared for them for the nearly two years they spent in the system.

And now we are incredibly grateful that God has entrusted Eddie and Brianna to our care. They are in a stable, loving home. They are as safe and secure as any kid could be. They have a welcoming and accepting extended family who adores them. They have a huge church family that rallies behind them in support. The support system is further strengthened by Lacy’s co-workers at school who have witnessed the whole process and cheered us on along the way. Even through Facebook we feel the love and prayers of many more from around the world.

We can’t say that this is how we imagined our family. But we can look back at our nearly 11 years of marriage and see the stage being set for this adoption to take place. It wasn’t by random chance that we found each other. It wasn’t by accident that we became a family. We believe God has been orchestrating this and truly believe that “in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.” (Romans 8:28)

We are excited to see the path God has set for our family and the calling He has for us. May God grant us energy, patience and wisdom.

But as wonderful as this experience is proving to be, I did tell Lacy that she is not allowed to bring any more kids home from school this year.