Not a Detailed Person

So if you think you are unorganized start going through an adoption process! It will whip you into shape fast.  Here is a small glimpse of what the paperwork process looks like.  What the ironic thing is, my hubby refused the census but now we have provided every detail of our life to multiple agencies including the government.

All files must be scanned and email.  Plus a hard copy has to be available.

• All licenses - State, marriage, passports, visas, social security cards, birth certificates
• Degrees and Diplomas- Education History
• All Insurance auto, home, life - Policies are to be listed and policy paperwork provided.
• All financials - Including a break down of debt to income, all card statements, all assets, savings, stocks, bonds, and 401k, W2's, past tax returns.
• Work history and career goals
• Medical release of the whole family. Past medications and medical conditions
• Pet vaccination records
• Floor plans of the house including smoke alarms and safety plans.
• 100+ question autobiography of each adult in house
• Criminal records
• Resident history over the last 10 years
• Pictures of your family, house, security
• Weapons inventory
• Background checks of any care takers
• References
• Emergency escape plan
• Details on who will be caregivers when you die

All of this follows a preliminary application with a number of questions about why you want to adopt. If you go through a Christian agency you have to write in detail about your walk, theology, and heart for the Lord. All has to be completed before you can even get started. Do I sound a little bitter??

It has taking me months to even gather half this stuff. But I am actually thankful I have it all in order now. 

Just thought you might like a glimpse into the beginning stages.  It will all be worth it and I am thankful these agencies look out for the best interest of the kid and not the parents!

We have all of our paperwork in.  There are about 12 certification classes we are trying to complete.  Then the home study process starts. I just keep saying to myself "It is all in His timing"

Until next time......

4 year old child wondering alone in the Syrian dessert

Yesterday was much like many other days. Just another Tuesday routine for me (at least lately) where I hit the road to travel for another meeting. The grind at times seems to wear on me. Up early. Fight traffic. Deal with airport security, parking, packed seating, stagnant air, and more often than not, a really chatty person sitting next to me at 7 am (which most of the time annoys me). I found myself getting frustrated about the “Grind” that so many of us face every day. After a two hour flight I arrived in Las Vegas where I was going to give a presentation later this afternoon. I arrived much earlier than needed just in case there were any delays which gave me time to spend in my room prepping.

After a short time of reading the whopping 8 slides I was going to speak to, I decided to kill some time by catching up on some of the latest news. Ironically, the first headline that came up was a story about a 4 year old child wondering alone in the Syrian dessert. Obviously the headline caught my attention so I began reading about this child and how he was fleeing the war torn Syria with his family when they got separated. Immediately I thought of Tyler and how I would feel if he was roaming the desert all alone in a country that’s fighting a civil war. No water, no food, no 911 to call for help. Just frantic parent’s (I imagine) and a 4 year old on his own to face the harsh world. As I sat back in my comfortable chair, in my comfortable hotel room it hit me like a ton of bricks. My “Grind” each week is NOTHING compared to what most of the world is facing each and every day. God has so chosen to put me in a comfortable life and yet this 4 year old child roams a war torn desert alone. Why? Why would God so choose to give me the comforts of the world? To give me a country to live in that’s not at war. Food and water readily available. All the “Niceties” the world has to offer right at my fingertips and yet I grumble.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/02/boy-4-found-wandering-desert-alone/

I’m challenged by this. Jesus said to follow me you will give up your life. Die to this world. Am I really “dying” to anything? What does “dying” to my world even look like? I didn’t choose to be here in the 21^st Century America with a comfortable life style. Yet in that back and forth conversation with myself I felt the Holy Spirit asking me, “What are you doing with all the Lord has provided you?” Do you sit around and stress all the time and work hard to protect your level of comfort? Do you actively seek to keep yourself busy with the things of this world? Are you actually giving what God has given you as a steward to serve Him knowing that it’s not yours but rather His? I’m ashamed at my answers.

Yet, how many children are here in America roaming around the deserted halls of their home lost as the civil war with parent’s and family members rage on all around them? All alone, nowhere to turn with their little hearts broken and needing to be cared for. Cared for not only with their daily needs but cared for with love and affection. In need of parent’s, not who are or will ever be perfect but parents who can pour out God’s blessing’s on them through what He has given Melissa and I responsibility to steward over. Oh boy, I’m guilty as charged! Guilty of taking the good things that God has given me and claimed them as my own. Guilty of stressing over the thought of losing them as if I had control over gaining them. What a fool I am! Yet, I also hear the Holy Spirit saying I forgive you and chose to give these things to you knowing what you would do with them. In God’s perfect timing He would choose to reveal my own heart and do it with love. Not judgment. My response is to pray asking that God do great things for other’s through what He has so blessed me and my family with. Pray for us as we struggle to let go of our comforts. Pray for us as we look to open our hearts up and have them potentially crushed throughout a hard process of fostering a child. But most importantly, pray that our Lord gets ALL the glory for EVERYTHING is His!

Matthew 25:14-25 (Reference)

Aaron

The Decision

Drum role please.......

We have finally made the decision of what direction God is leading us down on our adoption journey.

We have decided to go through a local christian agency that focuses on adoption through the state and foster care.

We took a family vacation to Whistler Canada and got to visit all of our old friends in Washington. I started off the week still confused and frustrated but was so looking forward to a week of Aaron and I talking without too many interruptions and a chance to really look at our hearts.  What we discovered was not pretty!

We realized the main thing holding us back in this process was not how hard it was to make a decision but how hard it was to submit to what God was calling us to and let go control.

I remember looking at my little family on this vacation and thinking this would probably be the last family vacation that it is just the 3 of us.  I will honestly say it made me sad, then scared, then pleasantly happy.  I was kind of a mess the first few days.

Out of all the direction and advise we have been given the one that stuck with us is pursuing Foster to Adopt.  It is probably the messiness, scariest, and unpredictable of all the options (in my opinion) but we both feel God keeps leading us there.

The #1 advice we have gotten from so many wonderful families that have lived this journey is  "Listen to God and you will know what He has for your family"  we can confidently say this is the first time we truly feel like this is the direction we are suppose to pursue.

So it looks like we will submit our paperwork next week and start the certification process!

I will be completely honest.  I personally have some heart issues I am working through.  I am having a hard time realizing that I will get a call at 2am in the morning and will be asked if we are ready to take a kid in that has just suffered through something traumatic.  I won't know much about this kid.  I won't even know what it looks like!  Why is my heart so horrible????  But how beautiful that God is working on that in me and teaching me it is about a bigger picture and that He knows the right kid for our home.  There is no kid out there that isn't worth pouring unconditional love and blessings onto.

Until next time.....

Aaron's Perspective

As a young boy, I used to love life and all of its “seemingly” innocent ways. I had friends, played little league sports, and enjoyed spending time with my parent’s. We didn’t have a lot growing up now that I look back on it. My dad worked really hard which allowed my mom to stay at home with the (at the time) three young kids. They made a decision that no matter what, my dad would take on the burden of providing alone so that my mother wouldn’t have to work. This was not always easy on them as times got tough financially. In fact, one year it was so tough that my dad had to take a job at a mall as Santa Claus after his normal long work week was over just to be able to buy us Christmas presents. Years later my dad made a bold move to pack up and move my family to a small town in east Texas (Mt. Vernon) to start a new career in insurance sales. I remember being upset at him at the time for moving me away from my friends and the only life I knew. Friends and even family members gave my dad a hard time and seriously questioned him on why he would do such a thing. It must have seemed pretty crazy to all to move from the Dallas metroplex where jobs seemed to abound to a little town where everyone farmed and ranched. It was at this time when I first started to see and understand the strength of my dad. I was 15 and beginning to become a young man myself. The world wasn’t as innocent anymore as I once thought it was. A year later, turning 16 my dad helped me start my own lawn service. He helped me buy some equipment to get started but made me pay him back throughout the summer. As frustrated as I was about this concept, he taught me what I was going to be facing the “Real world”. To this day I attribute my work ethic to him and understand now the importance of it. I also learned to take pride in myself and my work which built confidence. As I moved through my high school years my dad began having more and more financial success to where he was able to put me through college at Texas A&M. He helped inspire me and never withheld good things from me. He did this joyfully for myself and all of my now five other siblings.

My dad didn’t just lead, provide and teach me to be a man. My dad faithfully served the Lord. He took our family to church every Sunday and would spend time teaching me the gospel. He did this through love and discipline. I began to see that my dad loved me as Jesus loves us. He sacrificed for his family as Jesus sacrifices for his people. He led his family from his knees praying for strength and wisdom. My dad was not perfect but it was through even his sins where he showed me what it was like to be humble and repentant. No earthly father is perfect and my dad is no exception but Jesus is and He promises us grace. He does not promise “easy times” but He does promise to be there with us faithfully and shows us that He loves us through those hard times.

Today, I am now a dad myself to an amazing 5 ½ year old little boy. God has so richly blessed me beyond what I ever deserved and could have ever even asked for yet I feel frustrated and stressed more often than not. I fear that my little world my get “disrupted” or even worse, get taken away. I question at times why we haven’t been able to have another child of our own and question this thought of God providing us a child through adoption. Where will we adopt from? A foreign country? How will that work? If we go fostering to adopt? How will this impact my life? I mean, what if this child comes from a really troubled home? Will I be able to love this child like I love Tyler? What if I foster and then the child is taken away? Will that not make me sad and or angry? Will the comforts of my little world be at risk with the financial and or emotional toll another child will bring on? What if we adopt and then get pregnant? How will that work with the “Dynamics” of a family? You can see the sinful, unfaithful cycle that I’ve battled in my head?

But then I’m reminded by Paul who I once was. He reminds me that I was the “Fatherless” child who was troubled. That I had nothing to offer but a sinful heart that was selfish. I had no way of saving myself from my situation either but as Paul points out in Romans 8:15-17, God first loved us and adopted us into His family. (15) “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba! Father! (16) The Spirit himself bears a witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (17) and if children, then heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Oh there is SO much in these versus! So much about how God LOVES us SO much that He describes himself as Abba! Father! He tells us here that we are adopted heirs to His family meaning we have birthrights just as Jesus does because He chose to give us that birthright. He chose to forgive us of our sins when we could not forgive ourselves. He chose to give us good things in this world even when we did not deserve them. He chose to make us heirs to His kingdom and not second hand “Step-children” so to speak. Why would God do this? I do not have any right to this! How does God do this? Through grace and suffering on the cross! Jesus paid our debts, adopted us as heirs, and treats us as if we were sinless. 

I’m almost in tears typing this because I’m challenged by this great love thinking about how I could ever even doubt His goodness and mercy. But I’m also encouraged and reminded that God is good, that He loves me, and that He calls us to be faithful as He has been to me. With that my heart melts. As a father, I’m convinced that God has put adoption on our hearts for our joy and His glory! I’m excited to take steps towards adoption knowing that God is in full control and I pray that He be glorified through this no matter if it’s easy or hard. I pray that as a father, I look to Christ for strength, wisdom, patience, and love. I pray that Christ be glorified to a child who needs a father just as I needed one. Amen.

Aaron