A few months later Cristyn continued to question why she was the only child. We started to think about adoption as we wanted our children to be somewhat close in age. We started asking questions...
"Where should we adopt from?" International. We determined that we didn't think that we could handle knowing the birth families and we didn't think we could handle giving the children back if it came to that. So we decided that it was going to be international for sure. Besides, we both had family members that had been adopted from overseas. We knew if we went that route, we had family members that had walked similar paths and our children would have cousins that could relate to them too.
"Should we adopt a boy or a girl?" If we adopted from a county that allowed us to adopt 2 children at the same time, we were thinking about adopting a girl and a boy. If not, we thought a sister for Cristyn would be great.
"How are we going to do this financially?" We thought about fundraising, asking for help and trusting that God would provide if we were in His will for our family.
We wondered about lots of things, but these were just the basics.
We started looking into countries to adopt from. We got some information about Kazakhstan and then determined that wasn't going to work. I kept researching and we decided to look into Guatemala. They were making some changes to how they were doing their adoptions, but my heart was really with Guatemala. With the changes becoming more apparent over time it became obvious that God was shutting that door to that possibility as well. Our hearts hurt.
With the job market still not being the greatest in Michigan, Hubby wanted to get back to a job that he had actually gone to college for. He sat me down and said that he was looking at jobs in Texas. My parents had moved there a couple of years before our wedding, but I was fearful about tornadoes, tarantulas, and snakes. However, we decided to go for it. I put in a transfer with work. I was told that it could take awhile. 6 days later my transfer went through. A couple of weeks later, Cristyn and I drove down to Texas to find us a place to live and Hubby gave notice at his job.
God provided us with a rental house in a cute little town in Waxahachie. I worked 15 minutes down the road. 1 month after moving here, God gave Hubby his new job. He really blessed us with that opportunity and Andy was very happy with it.
Cristyn started kindergarten that fall and we had began looking into adopting from China. We went through orientation with the agency that we were going to use and started a financial plan together about how much we needed to complete each step. We were all pretty excited when news came out that changes were coming to how their adoption program was going to work. SOme rules would prevent us from adopting, however we could be grandfathered in if we got all of our paperwork in within a certain time frame. Financially it wasn't going to work and they said that the wait to be matched with a child was getting longer and longer. With that to worry about, we decided to close that door. My heart hurt even more. Cristyn really wanted a sibling at that point and we really wanted another child too.
We talked about doing IVF again, but we really didn't have peace with it. We prayed and talked to God about what was on our hearts.
One night, I couldn't sleep and went on the internet. I felt God talking to me about adoption and fostering. I just wasn't sure if I could handle the emotions of caring for hurt children and then having to give them back. I wasn't sure if Hubby would even go for it. I felt God asking me to just trust Him.
The next morning, I talked to Hubby about it and he told me to check it out. Imagine my surprise, when I searched for agencies and listerally found one 5 minutes down the road from our house. I called and they had an information session a week later. We went and found out more and got even more excited. We got the paperwork started and did the 6 weeks of training classes. We were fingerprinted and background checked and theedy sent out our reference letters. Our house was inspected by the fire and health departments and we had our home study completed. Every step was a little nerve-wracking, but led us one step closer to getting our license.
We determined that we would foster any child as long as Cristyn remained the oldest. Race and gender didn't matter to us. If they came up for adoption while we were fostering them, we would be their forever family.
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