Just some thoughts

No news for our adoption, just wanted to write down some things I've been thinking about in the last few weeks.

I don't remember when I realized this but there was a moment when I realized that when a baby comes into a home, biologically or by adoption, another birth takes place - parents are born. And like babies, parents grow, change, fail, learn and mature. (This was my main reason for wanting to adopt an infant, I am also an infant parent). This thought has scared and thrilled me all at the same time. So, I have begun to pray that God would prepare Landon and I for parenting with just the right amount of help, tips, books, sermons, friends and whatever else God feels is neccessary.

A similar process happened for me just before we got married. I felt through random timings of certain books, Bible studies, mentors, coffee dates, conversations and prayers - I accumulated a foundation and framework for biblical marriage. I felt I knew what to fight for, what to work towards, what to reject and what to embrace. These things helped us navigate engagement and the first few years of marriage. Having a framework felt more helpful than rules because we all know - a rule is one thing until you have to actually live it out! I really believe God gave me the correct tools that I could enter into marriage knowing I have the right tools and now it will just take time and grace to figure out how to use them.

So, I am praying for the same thing in parenting. What foundation and framework do I work towards. What thoughts, attitudes and cultural expectations should I reject and what ones are worth while? I don't feel as though I've accumulated enough but I will share the things that I think are coming together:

1. Fight the good fight to love and enjoy your children daily. The scripture clearly calls them a blessing (not that they are not difficult at times). The attitude that children are endured, life-ending, life-sucking and a pain is not from God and should be opposed.

2. Approach them as individuals. They are not spitting images of me or Landon - they are their own person. They are not exactly like anyone - they are a mixed jumble of many things that will make them - them. So in discipline, love, education, entertainment and others - each child will have different needs so approach them this way.

3. Never stop learning about them. This kind of goes with the previous one but I wanted to separate it. It's important I not assume I know my kids through and through - I want to remember to ask them questions about themselves, what their interests have been lately, what God is doing right now. I find this will be important as we approach pre teen and teen years.

4. Apologize freely. Parents must be the model of conflict resolution in humility, apology and forgiveness. (Somebody has to be the adult in the house, right?)

5. Laugh abundantly. Joke, laugh, roar and be a little nuts!! I can't wait for this!

6. Make the scripcture, prayer and a relationship with Jesus approachable and talkable.

This is what I have so far. I'm excited to learn the rest and see what God gives us to prep us.

~L&L

Update - But basically more of the same :)

I feel scared sometimes to use the word "Update" because although it's technically an update, there isn't really anything new happening but I have wonderful family and friends who love to pray for us so, here's what's up.

All our paperwork is in (like I said on the last post) but lots of things have to be done to that paperwork. All of our income/ tax information has to be double checked by the State Comptroller. Our residence, employment, and other history has to be verified. From our paperwork they have to create a electronic file and enter us into their database. So, as you can see they are very busy up there at Gladney with us. I am just glad the ball is out of our hands right now.

Currently we are waiting to hear from our assigned Caseworker. We do not know who he or she is yet but we're excited to hear from them. They will call us and schedule a time for us to first come and do an interview at their offices in Fort Worth and then secondly schedule a time for the caseworker to come to our house and check it out. After all that is done they have to compile an official "Homestudy" and submit it to the state for approval. That usually takes a few weeks to go from compiling to approval. (Also, after official approval we pay another 25% - $3,725) But the exciting thing is after approval - the next step is to create our profile for birth moms to look at and start getting in the adoptive parent pool!

So, we are waiting. That is the name of the adoption game, waiting. My good friend Casi teaches her youth group girls that if you can get really good at patiently waiting on God in your life then you will save yourself from many spiritual ills and gain lots of spiritual maturity - oh how she is right.

Here's how you can pray for us:

1. That the God of Hope would fill us with joy and peace as we trust in Him (Romans 15:13). Pray for our joyful, grateful and patient waiting as God pulls together this crazy ride we're on.

2. Pray that our caseworker would be a great match who will have lots of wisdom on this process that hopefully he or she can pass on to us!

3. Pray that God would continue to prepare our hearts for parenthood and for the unique way that God is creating our family.

4. Pray that this story would continue to encourage the faith of others and this would glorify God and show people Jesus.

5. Pray, as always that Christ would be supreme and paramount and that Landon and I would keep our eyes on Jesus and continue to selflessly love and serve one another.

Thank you everyone for your prayers! We are grateful that you are sharing this journey with us and we hope that you find yourself encouraged.

And ok, this story is going to make this post long but maybe you who are reading this have time today to think about something that God encouraged me with this week :)

First, gardening has so many parallels to the spiritual world - you should at least try having one plant - anyway...

We had this knock out rose bush in our front yard. It did great last season but it grew a little weird. I had about 5 or 6 really long branches growing up and it seemed thin and wirey. And so I trimmed the heck out of it during winter. My hope was that it would come back stronger than ever...well, it looked terrible for a long time.

It got to a point where Landon and I thought I killed that poor thing. It didn't bud or bloom, it didn't grow, and it started to turn yellow. I was so bummed. Spring came and we added soil, added fertilizer and did not prune anything and look what happened!!



It came back bigger than ever. I have counted upwards of 40 buds on this bush. I was reminded of Jesus: "And every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it may bear more fruit." John 15:2. Pruning can be a very terrible, painful and scary reduction of ourselves. It can seem at times we will never make it back to a fruitful and joyful place in our lives again. However, unlike me, God is master gardener, perfectly pruning our hearts into fruitfulness, always knowing how much is too much.

Today may you trust that Master Gardener of your heart and trust what He cuts off knowing He does it with passionate, firey love for you.

~L&L

Weekly Update and Prayer Requests

I heard a song on the radio the other day that I normally don't enjoy all that much. Nothing personal, just not my thing - sounds like a teenaged love song with premature and untested promises (ironically though I started dating my husband at 17, I'm full of double standards). As I blocked the song out a line from it hit me straight in the heart "One step closer." Without even paying attention all of a sudden this silly song had me choked up over adoption and children rather than a man and I resented it slightly.

It's true, every day we are closer to having a child (or children, who knows?!). So, every piece of paperwork we complete, every form that is turned in and every phone call I have to make to check up on this makes us just that much closer (dang song).

Here's where we are in our steps right now. The only bits of paperwork left are a form that says we've been fingerprinted by the FBI (whoa, big guns here) and a proof of insurance from our insurance carrier. Once those are received this initial application paperwork is complete! And our file is reviewed and handed to a case worker. The caseworker will call us and start talking dates for a homestudy. Those dates are dependent on how busy the caseworker's schedule is. Small steps, closer every day.

In other fun news we started working on the baby room. This room was a guest/office/put all the weird junk in our house room but we've cleared it out and received a cute crib and dresser from friends and family.



And we've been looking at paint colors - a wonderful activity that sometimes I just like to do even if I don't have to paint!



If you don't know me that well, one tidbit of information about me is I like color, lots of color, bright color, bold color and all of it together! Now, I will try to avoid a color scheme that would make our poor child have seizures but trust me this room will be fun!!

This has been a fun week, paint colors, putting together a crib, talking about baby names. It feels more real than a few months ago but still very theorhetical.

Prayer for this week:
1. Pray again that Christ would be our central hope, focus and joy above all else.

2. Pray that we would still be able to live in today, entrust to God what we have today and not take on worries of tomorrow.

3. Pray for the continued transformation of our hearts into parents that reflect the image of God the Father.

4. To enjoy and be grateful for each step and moment we have right now.

Thank you to everyone who keeps up with us, prays for us and loves us. We could not do this without the support of our friends and family. We are one step closer!

~L&L

Prayer Requests for this Week

Hey Friends and Family!

Just wanted to share some of our prayer requests for this week. Thank you to everyone who keeps telling us "Keep us updated!" and "How can we pray for you?". I'm hoping to keep this updated pretty regularly so some of you can know specifically how to pray and know how we're doing so keep checking back.

1. First many thanks because the application is done. All of the paperwork on our end is finished! So, let's all just thank Jesus for the energy we had to finish that sucker!

2. That God would continue to teach us about the needs this child will have and how we can effectively meet those needs. This includes issues like attaching to us, the nature of his or her relationship to birth parents, raising a child who will probably be a different ethnicity, etc.

3. That we would find a great home for Lily! We haven't officially posted her anywhere yet but will begin to check that out soon so please continue to pray for a great family for her.

4. That Jesus would remain our first and greatest desire and that He would be glorified in us, this situation and all the circumstances we'll be encountering.

5. Pray for the birthmom and dad. We don't know who they are or if they're even considering adoption right now but someday we will meet them so pray for them because this is very hard for them too.

That's it for now. Thank you again for the prayers and support! Can't wait to see more and more what God is doing!

~Lindsay and Landon

Humbled to Receive

I have had it in my mind for the last 14 days that I want to write this blog post and have just now sat down to make it happen! There were some wonderful things shared at our Gladney Orientation, as I shared in the last post, but there was one thing that really stuck out to me and that's what I want to share today.

One segment of our workshop was hearing from birth moms who were making an adoption plan. They were beautiful, bright and funny girls in their 20's. They seemed very kind and extremely level-headed. They came from strong families who supported them. These young women opened my eyes to a different kind of birth mother - one of the best kinds of birth mother. These sweet girls were making a very, very painful decision to give life to a child who they have every natural right to keep and instead surrender their rights and give a precious gift to someone longing for children.

It hit me that weekend that God would be answering our prayers for a child with a woman who is selflessly (and many times painfully) giving her baby to our care. I realized that for us to be given the rights of parents, another parent would have to voluntarily surrender her and/or his rights to be a parent. Sound familiar?

"...but to all who did receive Him, He gave the right to become children of God." John 1:12.

Jesus surrendered the rights He had as God's Son- to be treated with dignity, to receive glory, to destroy His enemies, to rescue Himself off the cross and from betrayers, continuous and unbroken fellowship with His Father, to have a painless and easy life all so that instead I could receive the rights of a child of God. So that now I have the dignity of being called God's child, I have the eternal inheritance of the Son which will never spoil or fade, I have unbroken relationship with the Father and I have life that can never be taken away. Jesus gave up His sonship rights so I could be given those rights instead.

I am deeply humbled to be given the rights of a parent and look forward to meeting the woman and/or man who are selflessly surrendering their rights.

Adoption is bursting with the good news of the gospel, it's there if you look for it!

~L&L

Update!! Orientation and Moving Forward

Whew! So sorry everyone for the lack of information since our wonderful orientation in Fort Worth a little over a week ago but to my credit I was furiously working on this application binder:



(Yes, the whole binder)

So, as you may have guessed the orientation went great! I feel like we could go on for awhile about all the information we received, how well Gladney presented it and how excited we are now to be working with Gladney but for the sake of all of our time, I will summarize everyting :)

- Gladney has been facilitating adoption in Texas for about 125 years (wow!) and in that time has become a national leader in both domestic and international adoption. They are one of the most well respected adoption agencies in the U.S. and a top leader in adoption advocacy.

- Gladney's domestic adoption program focuses on support for both adoptive and birth parents by giving them each caseworkers and counselors to help them through the process.

- Adoption matches are birth mother driven meaning that the birth mom chooses a family from the pool of adoptive families available. This provides her an enormous amount of peace as she considers a home for her baby.

- Gladney provides life long support for birth and adoptive families by giving them access to other families in the same situation and offering counselors at every stage of the process. So theorhetically, if our child at age 13 was struggling with being adopted or someone made fun of them for being adopted, we can still call Gladney and talk with one of their counselors and even meet with them if we wanted.

- Gladney focuses on great matches. They encouraged us to be "us" and to be honest about what we're comfortable with in regards to the health of the child and birth mother and to what degree we want to be open in this adoption. They said this because a successful adoption match happens when all parties are all in and there's no lingering tension because someone wasn't really comfortable with annual visits or special medical needs.

- Lastly they said "If you stick with us you will become parents." That is an enormous statement to a room full of people who have struggled with infertility to varying degrees. The process of trying to have a family is fraught with loss, disappointment, lost hope, fear and anxiety. After the presenter said this you could feel the room loosen up. And then they officially gave us permission to be excited to be parents. I didn't know I needed that permission until they gave it and I have gotten very excited this past week.

If you have an interest in knowing more about Gladney please leave me a message! I can tell you way more information if you want it or you can check them out yourself at www.adoptionsbygladney.com.

Now I want to describe the process of adoption and where we are in it so people can have a general idea of what's happening and what's to come.

1. Application -
This is what I was working on all week! I don't know how long it takes people to finish this on average but my goal was 1 week. I haven't quite made that but I think that we will be able to mail out our application tomorrow (11 days is still a good time but I was really hoping for a record time here). The application includes our medical history, financial status, questions on our views of adoption, etc. as well as recommendation letters and a criminal background check. In addition to the paperwork we are sending our first PAYMENT! Yikes!! We need to send them about $5725.00. By the grace of God we've made that goal!!! Yes!! Between the movement of God in the hearts of some very generous friends, selling some pictures from Colorado and some very excited Grandparents we've made our first financial goal! Thank you to everyone and thank you Jesus :)Once we've turned in all our paperwork for our application we move to step two: Homestudy.

2. Homestudy -
A homestudy is required for all adoptions (domestic and international, private or agency assisted). This involves two main meetings with a social worker. One is an interview we'll do in Dallas. The second is when the social worker visits our home to make sure it is a safe and healthy place. At first this sounded scary but I've been assured they don't go through the house with a white glove they are looking for major issues like hoarding problems, recurring filth, and anything that might be a red, majorly red, flag. Once these interviews and visits are finished then our social worker compiles information from our application and the info she got from us during our interviews and creates a "Homestudy" on us that is sent in for approval by the state.

3. Approval -
Once we are approved by the state we need to turn in another $3,725 (second 25% installment). And then we get to create our profile book! This is a photo book that describes what life with Landon and I looks like. It's the first thing that a birth mom will see about us. After our offical approval and our photo book approval our case worker begins to show our profile to appropriate birth mothers.

4. The Waiting -
I've been told this is the worst part. All the paperwork is done, the last bit of control we have is done and then we wait. On average they say this time is 8-10 months but its possible that it happens sooner. If a birth mom likes us she talks to her caseworker who talks to our caseworker and we have a phone call first. If she still likes us we coordinate a time to meet each other at Gladney. If she still likes us then we call it a "match" and wait for her due date (usually less than 3 months away in a majority of cases). Now, there are many variables to this part of the process - it ranges from taking the baby from the hospial and coming home, waiting a week after the baby's birth to take them home, meeting a birth mom for the first time at the hospital or even adopting an infant who is 2 months old and been in transitional care. We just don't know what this will look like but in general, that's how it works. The final payment is due 30 days before placement or if we have less than 30 days notice before placement then the funds are due when we accept the placement (this is 50% of our fee which is over $7,000).

5. Placement and Finalization -
Once we take the baby home, that is called "Placement". At this point the adoption is irrevocable and the birth mother and or father have signed away their parental rights. Finalization happens 6 months after placement. Finalization is different in every state but the state of Texas has this 6 month period where the agency is considered the managing conservitor of the child while we have all the responsibility of the child as parents. After that 6 months we "sue" Gladney for full rights, which they gladly surrender and our child is legally 100% ours and gets a new birth certificate with our names as parents.

I hope that is a bit clear for you who want to be updated :) Again, you can message me with questions if you want. We believe our application will be fully compiled by the second week of March (we have to wait on the background check papers, doctors statements and recommendation letters to all come back). AFter that we schedule a time to do our homestudy (at least another 2 -3 weeks) and then our homestudy is finished (another 3 weeks). Approval could happen as early as late April or as late as May or June just depending on schedule and timing of paperwork. Then our big wait could run from June to February or March of next year. I hope that's a helpful timeline.

So here's what we need from everyone!

1. Prayer - prayer for paperwork to go through quickly, prayer for our caseworker to be someone we really click with, prayer for our hearts to be prepared, pray that we find a home for our sweet doggy Lily who can't be around children, prayer for a baby that is possibly in the womb as we speak and prayer for the birthmom who is making a very difficult decision. And anything else the Lord leads you to pray about of course :)

2. Stay tuned - if you're not subscribed to this blog please do so now. A majority of our contact will be here. As things pick up I will most likely post things on the blog and link Facebook or emails to this page so stay tuned.

3. Encourage us and get informed - feel free to send us encouraging messages to not give up! And get informed! There's lots of fear and anxiety around adoption because of headline horror stories but don't contribute to that instead, talk to more adoptive families, read some books. We recommend In On It, a very helpful book for friends and family members of those adopting. And there's a dozen more that you can find too :)

4. Give -
We will still need to finance the rest of the adoption including attorney fees to finalize our adoption 6 months after the baby is placed in our home. You can do that by donating via Pay Pal on this blog, you can order pictures from my website or you can just send us a check. We believe that this process of adoption will be a blessing not just to us but everyone who is committing financially, emotionally and prayerfully in this journey. And thank you, with all of our hearts, for being willing to do this with us - your support is making this dream of a family a reality for us.

Again, feel free to ask questions and get informed! We're so excited! I will be posting more regularly as we finish more paperwork and as God teaches us more and more.

Much love,

L&L

Last of the Colorado Provenance

Today I'll finish up the stories behind the rest of the Colorado pictures.





Almost all of the rest of the scenic pictures were taken on our descent. We were only on the mountain three days but in those three days the aspens turned from lime green to golden yellow. The window for seeing the aspen trees in their fall transition is a short probably 2 to 3 week gap and we were so lucky to get right in the middle of it. The forests we hiked through to get back to our car were all gold, the leaves were beginning to shed and our path was littered with yellow leaves (our very own yellow-brick-road). The sound through the leaves so a perfect shuffling and the light through the leaves were just as beautiful as you can imagine.

The picture called "Landon" was Landon's handiwork. He took that shot on our way down and I actually love the sun flare he got there at the bottom.



"Water Source" was literally our water source when we made camp. The stream was just a few yards and a small hill away from our tent. The oxogen was so thin that we were breathless just getting our nalgene bottles filled and coming back. The water was cold and tasted so good. The water really is better there :)



The descent off the Bells took us a little over 2 hours I think. It wasn't as hard as the climb up but it was still demanding. My feet felt heavy, my pack felt even heavier and I smelled terrible. It was totally worth it. I have never seen stars to bright and clear. It was actually scary to see so many billions of stars so clearly and see the fog of the milky way winding through our sky.

I felt like the trip to Colorado was an anniversary gift from God. Originally Landon and I were going to attend the Kings of Leon concert, then stay at a hotel and celebrate our anniversary in July. The concert was canceled (thanks Caleb) and I was really disappointed. And then we got to go all the way to Colorado. I loved it, every part, even the painful and gross ones were awesome. If you have a chance to do a trip like this do it!

Thanks for looking at the pictures and reading their provenance. Mexico pictures will start tomorrow! Remember everything is on sale on my website! And I just added a donate button to the blog! Thanks for the love, prayers and funds!

Much love,
L&L