What a difference a year makes!  I keep saying that over and over as we see the end product of a long journey with infertility.  This time last year, we were receiving news of my diagnosis with Lupus, this time last year we were celebrating Christmas with my grandmother and this time last year we had been trying to conceive for over two years and were beginning to question if it would ever happen.  We were content with the two of us.  We bought lots of goodies for each other, we slept in late, we went out to eat and had a few drinks, we dreamed of taking another vacation to scuba dive.  We celebrated the birth of our Savior with church family and friends.  We enjoyed seeing Christmas with my brand new niece and our older nieces.  Christmas was good and we were blessed…but after eight years of the same, we were ready for something different. 

This time last year, adoption was not even a choice.  We kept trying in vain to get pregnant thinking we would increase the number of days, change the ovulation kit, try a different hour or change doctors or change medications.  We were still focused on conceiving and just kept praying and kept trying.  March had not come yet.

Three months later we received the news that my hormones and my physical body would make carrying a child difficult.  My doctor was willing to try IUI or IVF, but his words were “I can take your money, but I am not sure it will work.”  Three years ago, Nathan would not consider adoption.  I had been praying for his heart to change or for my body to work right or for childlessness to be okay.  I stopped praying to get pregnant and began praying “God, create a bigger family for us.” 

God moved swiftly when we opened our hearts to His plan and abandoned our own.  It took Him closing a lot of doors before our hearts finally changed.  I guess it needed to be this way for us to know that our efforts were fruitless.  I had the heart to get back out a website that was given to us a few months earlier and put it in a more prominent spot.  I then began to pray for God’s will. 

By April, we were meeting with AIM adoption agency and by May we were considered a client.  In June all of our paperwork was completed, in July our book was finished and August meant our home study was done and we were officially a waiting family. What felt like forever later, we received a phone call in November that our book had been chosen (it had been chosen in August but she backed out in October-thank you God).  The next three weeks was a whirlwind of meetings and preparing for a baby in 21 days.

I say all this to say if you are still yearning for a child…my heart goes out to you.  Holidays are never enjoyable when you are waiting.  This time of year is hard when Facebook is full of family pictures of children and you yearn for one.  I am fortunate that I never experienced a miscarriage, but I also never experienced a pregnancy.  Adoption is not for everyone, but it is where God led us.  At the time, it was so confusing and we tossed back and forth if we were “giving up”.  God spoke “You are trusting me.”

The good news is: He was right (He always is).  He put in our hearts the desire to adopt and we have never looked back.  The amount of people we have touched or been touched by in this journey is endless.  We have experienced memories that a small club has experienced and God chose us for a reason that we may never know.  In the midst of all this, we get a text from our birthparents thanking us for loving this boy on their behalf.  It brought tears to my eyes because I could never thank them enough for giving us this opportunity to be called “parents”.