Recalculating

Thirteen years ago, my husband & I began traveling down this road some like to call “family planning.”  The term at this point in my life is actually quite laughable, really.  In my experience, family has less to do with “planning” and more to do with “adjusting” than anything else.  For us, our “family planning” route has been more like a GPS that’s gone off course.  “RECALCULATING!” the voice in the box says.  Time and time again, I hear, “RECALCULATING!” in my head.  As a side note, I like to hear it in a feminine British voice.  But that’s just my preference.  Before you begin thinking that I believe that our family is “off track” from where we should be or “off course” as I stated before, I should clarify that the GPS we’ve been using has only a limited earthly knowledge of the big picture of life that God has had all along.  The “RECALCULATING” that we’ve had to do over the years has been a reevaluation of what our meager human minds have put together regarding our assumptions about what “family” means and what it should look like.

Once David & I decided it was “time” to start trying to “start a family” there were certain expectations I had.  I expected that since we were “ready” and since we were doing everything “right” that God would “bless” us with our family.  That, however, is NOT the way things went for us.  Right away, it became evident that conception was not as easy as it looked to be in all the books and on TV!  Several months turned into a year and nothing seemed to happen.  We had our ideas about timelines and when we were hoping for what and…nothing.  “RECALCULATING!”

Finally, it became evident that something different was going on with me so I began wondering if MAYBE I was finally pregnant.  Just as soon as I discovered this, however, I had what I thought was a very unusual period and realized that it wasn’t.  A few months later, however, similar things began happening so I took a pregnancy test and found out that YES!  I was pregnant this time!  Within days of taking the test, however, I had a very painful miscarriage.  In hindsight, it became evident that what happened a few months earlier was another miscarriage.  This set me into a tailspin of emotions and trying desperately to figure out why “family” wasn’t happening for us.  David & I were so obviously meant to be parents, why weren’t we?  “RECALCULATING!”

Finally, after MUCH grieving, questioning, and healing, it became evident that I was pregnant again.  This time, for some reason, I felt like it was different.  Even so, it didn’t feel “real” to me until we had safely passed the point where we lost the other two.  Once we had that little guy in our hands, we just KNEW He was from the Lord and that God would use all the pain we had experienced for His good as well as the good of our new, perfect little Alexander David.  Our family was finally “on track.”  Or so I thought…

When Alexander was approaching a year old, we had the “family planning” talk again.  We decided that, as teachers, it would be important for us to get our Masters degrees and if we were going to do that, we should get it before we had any more children, as it would only become more difficult.  At that point, I was still nursing and was on a birth control pill which was safe for nursing mothers.  We signed up for an 18 month intensive graduate program so that we could get in, get it done, get out, and get on with life.  Day ONE of class, I woke up in the middle of the night with a panic that I was pregnant.  I didn’t tell David because I didn’t want to freak him out.  We went to class that morning and at a break, I shared my fear.  I took a test and it was positive.  Oy!  NOW what?  We have just started this 18 month program where 9 months into it, we would have a newborn!  “RECALCULATING!”

Skip ahead a few years…Alexander David & Emma Hope are 2 & 3, respectively.   They’re beautiful.  Life is good.  Our youth pastor and his wife at the time are going through foster care training and telling us all about how they’re wanting to become foster parents.  David & I admired their courage, but really don’t spend any time discussing it ourselves.  Several weeks later, however, I find that I can’t get fostering out of my mind.  David seems so content and joyful with our little “family” so I don’t want to upset the apple cart, so-to-speak, and end up saying nothing.  Finally, one night I’m up all night.  (The Lord does this every now and then to get me to finally see things His way.)  After much “debate” with the Lord, I say, “Ok, Lord!  But if you want me to tell David about this, you’re going to have to give me a SIGN!  A REAL SIGN!”

The next morning, I went to church for our MOMS Bible study.  I walked in the door, rounded the corner, and right there in front of my face was a SIGN.  A REAL SIGN on a bulletin board that said, “Make a difference in a child’s life.  Become a foster parent.”  I stopped DEAD in my tracks, dropped my things, looked up towards God and said right out loud, “VERY FUNNY!”  The sign had pull tabs with phone numbers for an agency, so I pulled one off, crammed it into my pocket and went on to Bible study.  I said nothing to anyone about my sign until I got home.  I pulled David aside in the hallway and said that I’d been thinking about something and the Lord wouldn’t let me sleep until I told him.  His mouth dropped and said, “I’ve been talking to Pastor John about this very thing with him!”  WHAT?!  I was SHOCKED!  The Lord had gotten us to exactly the same conclusion at the same time.  Now, what does this mean for our “family?”  RECALCULATING!

A couple of years into fostering (and 1 more surprise baby later! “RECALCULATING!”), we came to the realization that we were not going to simply “foster” children for a great length of time.  The Lord began showing us that He had kids that were to become part of our family permanently.  We would become their “forever family” as the foster care agency referred to it.  The thought of adopting  someone from a difficult background really wasn’t all that frightening because the thought of letting them go back to where they’re coming from was even worse.   After discussing with some friends who had been through foster care advised, we decided that our only limitation we would place on a pre-adoptive placement would be that the child or sibling group would have to be younger than our oldest child, who was five at the time.  The weekend we were saying a very heart wrenching good bye to our longest foster placement of 9 months, we got a call that there was a sibling group which fit our limitation and would most likely be adoptable.  We figured there were two.  There were FOUR!  Our baby was less than a year old and our oldest wasn’t yet 7.  There were FOUR who were six & under?!  No way!  It was true!  We had a huge house, huge hearts, and HUGE faith that this was exactly what God wanted us to do.  So, with fear & trembling, we moved forward to figure out how in the world we make 3 & 4 into ONE family!  RECALCULATING!!