Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6
The heart of man plans his way,
but the Lord establishes his steps.
-Proverbs 16:9
Just so everyone knows, my definition of "regular updates" is at least one every year and a half. Now that we've established my blogging goals, I'll get right down to it.
Last time I checked in, Caitlin and I had just learned that we were officially on the waiting list to adopt two children from Bulgaria. Since I'm that nerdy guy that likes to have all of the intel, I had done some small amount of research into the Bulgarian adoption time frame. Although the available data points were few and far between, I felt pretty good about our chances of being matched within 12-15 months. So once we started closing in on a year on the waiting list, I was starting to get a little anxious that we hadn't heard anything and that my expectations weren't being met. Little did I know that we were about to get thrown a curve ball.
At the end of April, Caitlin and I had a long weekend trip planned to San Francisco. Caitlin had a conference at Mile High (lucky!) that Thursday and had happy hour plans afterward, so I was expecting to have the Xbox, I mean, the house to myself for a couple hours when I got home. I was pleasantly surprised to see my wife bounding up the stairs when I walked in. I joked later that she's never quite that excited to see me, so I should have known something was up. After exchanging some normal TGIF small talk, she told me she had some news for me. Then she broke the news that I was going to be a father! But I didn't register the exclamation mark. As I recall, my initial response was "You're kidding, right?". I knew that I hadn't heard anything from the adoption agency during the day, and I was pretty certain I would have at least gotten a phone call. After 5 years of trying to get pregnant and a considerable amount of fertility testing, I had accepted the premise that we would bring our first children home from somewhere other than the hospital. So it took me a few seconds to process what she was saying. Even once I confirmed that she was not actually pulling the meanest prank ever, I still felt conflicted. While I was excited that we were indeed going to have a biological child, I couldn't help but think about the 2 years we had already invested in the adoption process. We had been told that we would have to put the adoption on hold if Caitlin became pregnant and that our international application could potentially be suspended indefinitely if we had another child. This was an incredible turn of events, but it wasn't part of the plan, specifically my plan!
Fortunately, we had a 3 day weekend to process our feelings before we had to call the adoption agency. Caitlin called them the following Tuesday with the update. At this point, I had semi-prepared myself for them to say our application would be put on hold. But again, our gracious, eternal Father showed he had other plans for our growing family. Our agency congratulated us and then told us that the queue in Bulgaria was moving slowly, so we were still probably a year or two away from being matched. As a result, they said we could continue on with the adoption and just update our annual paperwork in January! Talk about a whiplash of emotions! We were so relieved by another unexpected development, although it was (and is) a little intimidating to imagine being gifted three kids within the next year or so.
After such a long period of waiting, it was almost surreal how the timing worked out. Looking back now, it's easy for me to see God's hand in everything that led up to the point where we found out we were officially going to be parents. About a year ago, Caitlin and I had struggled with questions about how we could grow our relationships within the local community so that our adopted children would have a stable environment when we brought them home. After several months of much prayer and deliberation, this led us to start visiting local churches in Aurora, even though that meant we would have less time to spend with our dear church community in Parker that we have come to know and love since 2011. This was easily one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make as a couple, and it led to several draining months at the beginning of this year, as we visited many different churches and questioned the wisdom of what we were doing.
Eventually we decided to visit The Crossing again. This was the first church we had visited on our grand tour since it meets five minutes from our house at Smoky Hill High School. The first time we had visited, there was a swim meet at the high school, and the head pastor was sick, so we watched a John Piper sermon instead, which was a positive theology sign. Apparently it was a bit of an abnormal Sunday even for them. However, we had been welcomed graciously, and the worship was incredible and gospel-centered, so we decided to give them another shot. Our second visit was a little more in line with expectations, and we were encouraged to hear a convicting, gospel-based message, although we still hadn't heard a sermon from the head pastor, Isaac. However, we met him after the service, and he talked us into coming back the following week for Easter, where he guaranteed that he would be speaking. We were also really excited about how involved the church is within the local community. So we came back the next week, and we heard a wonderful, albeit atypical Easter message about how the resurrection shows us that we can believe the Bible is true. During the sermon, Caitlin leaned over and told me "This is where I want to go" and I readily agreed. In the weeks that followed, I was amazed at how quickly we were able to build relationships with our new church family, and each Sunday was an echoing confirmation that we had found our church home. What we didn't know that Easter was that we already had another big change coming. Less than two weeks later, we learned that we were officially going to be parents! The timing could not have been better.
Caitlin told me afterward that she had been praying for months that we would know who our future children would be by Christmas of this year. While she didn't get quite the answer that she was expecting, I don't think it's a coincidence that our baby's due date is December 25th. Praise the Lord!
Fast forward a few months to today. We have found out that we are having a boy, and he's right on schedule. We are so excited to meet our son! We have been overwhelmed by the joy and love he has already been shown, and we can't wait to introduce him to y'all. That's right, I almost got through this whole post without one "y'all", but that would have been an egregious Southern faux pas. We have not heard anything else about our adoption yet, but at this point we'd have to wait until next year to fly to Bulgaria, so it's probably better if we don't get matched until next year. It's going to be really exciting when we get that call though! With that, I am going to sign off. Grace and peace to you, brothers and sisters!
After such a long period of waiting, it was almost surreal how the timing worked out. Looking back now, it's easy for me to see God's hand in everything that led up to the point where we found out we were officially going to be parents. About a year ago, Caitlin and I had struggled with questions about how we could grow our relationships within the local community so that our adopted children would have a stable environment when we brought them home. After several months of much prayer and deliberation, this led us to start visiting local churches in Aurora, even though that meant we would have less time to spend with our dear church community in Parker that we have come to know and love since 2011. This was easily one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make as a couple, and it led to several draining months at the beginning of this year, as we visited many different churches and questioned the wisdom of what we were doing.
Eventually we decided to visit The Crossing again. This was the first church we had visited on our grand tour since it meets five minutes from our house at Smoky Hill High School. The first time we had visited, there was a swim meet at the high school, and the head pastor was sick, so we watched a John Piper sermon instead, which was a positive theology sign. Apparently it was a bit of an abnormal Sunday even for them. However, we had been welcomed graciously, and the worship was incredible and gospel-centered, so we decided to give them another shot. Our second visit was a little more in line with expectations, and we were encouraged to hear a convicting, gospel-based message, although we still hadn't heard a sermon from the head pastor, Isaac. However, we met him after the service, and he talked us into coming back the following week for Easter, where he guaranteed that he would be speaking. We were also really excited about how involved the church is within the local community. So we came back the next week, and we heard a wonderful, albeit atypical Easter message about how the resurrection shows us that we can believe the Bible is true. During the sermon, Caitlin leaned over and told me "This is where I want to go" and I readily agreed. In the weeks that followed, I was amazed at how quickly we were able to build relationships with our new church family, and each Sunday was an echoing confirmation that we had found our church home. What we didn't know that Easter was that we already had another big change coming. Less than two weeks later, we learned that we were officially going to be parents! The timing could not have been better.
Caitlin told me afterward that she had been praying for months that we would know who our future children would be by Christmas of this year. While she didn't get quite the answer that she was expecting, I don't think it's a coincidence that our baby's due date is December 25th. Praise the Lord!
Fast forward a few months to today. We have found out that we are having a boy, and he's right on schedule. We are so excited to meet our son! We have been overwhelmed by the joy and love he has already been shown, and we can't wait to introduce him to y'all. That's right, I almost got through this whole post without one "y'all", but that would have been an egregious Southern faux pas. We have not heard anything else about our adoption yet, but at this point we'd have to wait until next year to fly to Bulgaria, so it's probably better if we don't get matched until next year. It's going to be really exciting when we get that call though! With that, I am going to sign off. Grace and peace to you, brothers and sisters!
