We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome another kiddo into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily consume an entire year’s salary , per child! We have been able to fund more than half of the amount required to adopt our second child and your contribution will bring us one step closer to completing our family!
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community our children will grow up with.
We've always known we would adopt our children. Even when we started dating it was a part of our conversations. We both decided that if we ever decided to start a family we would find out how to adopt an infant. In April 2013 we finally heard God's call that the time was right so we started the process immediately.
We both knew that adoption would be an expensive and time-consuming effort so we prepared for these challenges the best we could. However, we were shocked to find out that the meaning of "adoption is expensive" is "it's probably going to cost you a year's net salary" and that "it's going to take a while" really means "there is no way to tell how long it will take but it will probably be at least a year and a half". We came to terms with these new realities in time, but what really surprised us was the emotional costs of adoption.
In the journey toward adopting our first child we experienced a wasted year with an inferior adoption agency. This meant that all of our home study paperwork had to be updated because by the time we switched to another agency everything was outdated and had to be re-done.
We switched to another agency and were so excited to be matched with a birthmother in Florida within just a few weeks. We got in touch with her and made arrangements to be there when the child was born. While in Florida we got a call that baby had been born but that her mother had chosen to parent her. It was heartbreaking. We could hardly function for a long time. We returned home and kept to ourselves for a few weeks. We went out to dinner at a place we both love just to forget about things for a while.
Then the most amazing thing happened. Our waitress overheard us talking about our failed adoption and shared with us that she had placed a child for adoption the previous year. She shared with us how difficult it was to go through with her adoption plan but when she saw how happy the adoptive family was she knew she could not possibly change her mind. It really became clear that in the adoption opportunity we had missed out on someone would have gone home desperately sad and that time it was just our turn.
A few weeks after that we were matched with Sullivan's birth mother and a month later we had our son in our arms. His mother is a wonderful, strong woman who was willing to make the most enormous sacrifice so that her son could have a life she was unable to provide.
We have come to understand what it means to be a family. We love our little guy so much and it's hard to imagine what our life was like before him. Our families and friends have welcomed our son with open arms and we feel like a part of our community. We're thankful to all of you that provide good homes for your adopted or biological children and we ask that you would help us to complete our family.
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