Welcome back! What shall we talk about today? Let’s talk about thinking our plans are best. I saw a friend share on her Instagram recently about how she realized what she thought was best for her life wasn’t, but how God’s plans have turned out so much better. It got me thinking about my own story where that is concerned.
Picture it, a family of four: dad, mom, son, and daughter. All four hearts open to adoption. There is more to how God worked in each person’s heart, but I can share that later.
Brett and I, through several other family’s recommendations, found Boys and Girls Homes of NC and set up a meeting with a licensing social worker. She came to our home and we sat down at our dining room table and started the discussion of foster care and adoption. We shared our hearts with her, our concerns, asked our questions, all the things. In the conversation we said to her, we feel we can handle one more child. That was true. Within our own strength, we felt we could manage three kids, but we were hesitant to take on more than that.
The social worker shared with us the need for people to understand the importance of sibling relationships and keeping them together or close. Brett and I prayed about it. We decided to move forward with taking the foster parenting classes and became a licensed foster home. As we moved forward, our hearts softened to being open to what God would want us to do, not what we thought it should be. The worship song that kept coming to me during this time was the song “Oceans”. “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders.”
If you know our family now, you know we have more than 3 children, we have 5! When we started the journey, we were a dual income family. Both Brett and I worked outside the home. After our first placement moved on we agreed if we were going to do this thing I needed to stay home. This isn’t the case for every family, but for ours we knew this was best. I always wanted to homeschool, too. I won’t get into that discussion much now, but we decided to give it a go and see what would happen. December 13, 2018 was my last day of work, Connor’s last day of school, and Maddie’s last day of preschool. December 27, 2018, we welcomed 6 day old twins into our home and at the beginning of January 2019 we started homeschooling. This is not how I would have suggested we do things, but God saw fit to start us off running, so run we did. Somehow it all worked. There were bumps in the road…and hurdles, definitely hurdles). Unschooling Connor and myself was a struggle, but on this side of it I can say I am so thankful we took the leap, several leaps, and persevered through. We took the leap to be a one income family, took the leap to homeschool, took the leap to open our home to more than one additional child. “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders.”
I felt like the borders were gone. They were gone and it was up to God to carry us, because we were not sure what we were doing. We had to lean into Him while we felt overwhelmed, lean into Him when the unknowns were scary, lean into Him when levels of frustration were high, and repent for all the moments we tried to do it on our own after being reminded we needed to lean into Him, again.
We aren’t an open foster home anymore, but this leaning into him “thing”, we still do it. We still have to repent when we start trying to do it on our own. Just in case you were wondering it’s an ongoing thing for us. How does anyone do this life without the Lord? I will never understand.
So, let’s see, at this point we have 4 kids, the fifth kid hasn’t come home yet. It’s April 2020, the world is in full lock down. We have a 9 year old, almost 10 year old, a 6 year old and two 1 year old’s. I started to feel this stirring in my spirit; much like I did just before we contacted the licensing social worker. I heard the Holy Spirit saying, “you aren’t done, there is one more.” Again, enter my humanness. I thought with kids all home on lock down the next one will be an older child. Brett and I discussed it and he had the same stirring happening in him. He said to me, “I get the sense we aren’t done, there is one more.” I told him I was sensing the same. We both thought it would be an older child, we already had 2 babies after all! We didn’t tell anyone what we sensed the Holy Spirit telling us. We just sat on it, and prayed.
July of 2020 rolled around and I was preparing for the next school year. I had agreed to tutor a small group of kids at our co-op and we were navigating life through Covid restrictions. The twins were not yet adopted, so we were still doing foster care life with them. A phone call came from a good friend, she said something along the lines of “Hey, my girls have a baby sister. No one knew mom was pregnant. I just don’t think I can do a newborn right now. They said they are calling someone in your church for placement.”
I thought of the licensed families in our church who didn’t have placements and thought to myself, “That will be great!” Then…my phone rang. It was our social worker. “Hey, did you hear about the baby?” I said, “Yes, and I hear someone in our church is getting a call for placement.” She said, “About that…would you all consider taking the baby?” There was more to the conversation, of course. She told me we could say no, etc. I asked her if we could take time to pray about it? Brett and I took some time and prayed. When we were done I asked him what he was thinking. He said, “Call her back, that’s our baby.” One week later we brought home Jordyn. A baby. Not an older child, a teeny, tiny 4lb, 17 inch long premature, detoxing, baby.
Friends, our ways are not his ways. Our plans are not always His plans. We can’t embrace His plans and His ways if we don’t surrender our hearts to what he would have us do. Look at what we would have missed if we had not wavered from the way we thought it should be, how we thought it should look, and what we thought we were only capable of doing. Look what we would have missed.
Life isn’t easy and we are not perfect. One kid, 3 kids, 5 kids, 87 kids. Life isn’t easy. No family is perfect. Each kid is different with different needs, personalities, interests, and the list goes on. Navigating all the differences can be…well…it’s challenging. The journey we have been on has brought so much joy. It has also brought grief. Adoption always brings both joy and grief. I don’t want to paint a picture that looks perfect. There is so much more to our story than what is in this blog post. The point of this post is His plans aren’t our plans. If Brett and I had stuck with our plans, we would have missed so much. Our relationship with the Lord would not be what it is today. Our faith wouldn’t have grown in the ways it has grown. AND we would have missed out on knowing three of the most amazing people we could have ever met.
I can’t imagine my family any other way than the way God created it. He couldn’t have done what he has done in our family without surrendered hearts. We did it nervous. We did it afraid. We did it with little sleep many nights. We did it feeling uncertain. We did it with tears. We did it with laughter. And yet, somehow, in all those feelings, we did it with surrendered hearts. (Another truth, us doing this thing with surrendered hearts didn’t stop when our foster license closed. We continue to surrender daily, and when we forget Holy Spirit gently reminds us to lean into Him.)
People often want to talk about how the three youngest in our family have been impacted by being adopted from foster care, and the generational cycles of addiction and trafficking that are being broken. Those are amazing things we believe God is doing in their lives, and we get a front row seat watching His healing take place. I also want to tell you what front row seat we have gotten to sit in and see, that others don’t mention and may not think about. Connor and Maddie’s lives have been changed because of walking through foster care with us.
For Connor, this is his family. He never saw anything odd about it. He asked good questions, too. Social workers being in and out of our house became normal. He would talk to them just like they lived with us. One of our social workers loved to talk movies with him and, to this day, he is still a good one to ask about movies. He amazed me at how he embraced the entire journey. After our first placement and how hard that was for him, I wasn’t sure how his heart could handle more. That first night the twins were with us, everyone had left and he asked to hold one of them. He smiled at the baby and looked at me and said “she isn’t so scary.” I believe in that moment his heart was softening for the next leg of our foster care journey. He opened his heart to be an amazing big brother to more little sisters, and an amazing big brother he is! These little girls think he can protect them from anything!
Maddie. Let me tell you about Maddie. I knew her life was forever changed when I walked in on her playing with her babydolls at 6 years old. She proceeded to tell me “these are my biological babies and these are my foster babies. We are getting ready for the social worker to come visit.” Y’all, I cried. Her heart was being opened to whatever God has for her. If that is to love babies she grows in her own belly or not, through her play she was navigating loving kids. She still talks about all the children she wants to have and how she loves being in a big family. She still plays similarly with her Barbies. Her Barbies have big families where the people “don’t match”. There are some biological and some adopted children. She is navigating our family life through her play and I believe the Holy Spirit is right there with her, teaching her like only the Lord can. They are sisters. They fight like only sisters can fight, and they love each other in a way only sisters can love. They are little people growing and learning in this family only God could have knit together.
We could have missed this.
What is God asking you to surrender your heart for? What plans are you holding fast to that he wants you to release to Him and let Him take the lead on? Where is he leading you to have trust that is without borders? Is it scary? It sure is. Is it worth it? Absolutely!
Until next time…