Consider It All Joy | by Breanna

It’s been one year since I sat nervously waiting – they were late. I cleaned, re-cleaned, and organized some more to keep myself busy. I finally saw a car pull into the drive and my heart raced. She’s here. Our social worker got out first and then lifted the most precious little girl out of the back seat and came to the front door. This beautiful girl came bounding in the door, put her backpack down, looked and me and said, “Hi mom,” and at that moment I thought my heart would burst. She was amazing – so resilient and brave for all she’d been through. After the social worker left, we sat in the living room talking and getting to know one another & she spent a lot of time checking out her new bedroom & toys.

One year before that amazing day was another amazing day – our wedding day. We had a beautiful wedding & we couldn’t wait to start our life together and have a family. However, it didn’t happen the way I would have planned – great things never do really. Each month as time ticked by and I still wasn’t pregnant was tough, but I trusted God and knew he would give me the desires of my heart and allow us to have a family, even though sometimes trusting God is hard – we pressed on and prayed a lot. Then one day my husband and I were talking about a tough situation a family member was facing. She had lost her children and they were in foster care. I was still new to the family, and didn’t know the dynamics and history so I kept quiet – all the while my heart was screaming “why don’t those kids live here?!” Months had gone by and one night it just came out, I said to my husband “I don’t understand why those girls don’t live here.” That was all it took to change the course of our cozy life. He agreed and had been struggling with the same thing but too afraid to say it out loud. We made some phone calls that next week, and things begain to move at lightning speed. Within weeks we had our first precious girl moving into our home and a couple weeks after that – we got her little sister as well! We had always agreed that once we had children I would stay home and be a full time mama – so I resigned from a position I loved at a non-profit to be a full time mama to our beautiful two foster daughters.

Not everyone understood our decision and lots of people probably thought we were crazy. However, lots of people rallied around us. I was truly amazed by the generousity of people – within a week we had a twin bed, a crib, a changing table, toys, books, tons of clothes, car seats – pretty much everything we could have ever needed to make these two girls who had been through so much, feel right at home.

God knows what He’s doing

So here we were raising two beautiful daughters and loving every minute of it. Certainly there were challenges – lots of struggles and days of tears and wondering if we made the right choice. None of those compare though to seeing two children thrive, grow, learn, and be comfortable & feel safe. When we started this journey – we didn’t know how long we would have the girls, but the social worker thought that it would be a long term placement with possible adoption. We were a family – the girls knew and loved our parents as grandma & grandpa, hungout and played with all their cousins and aunts & uncles, and fit right in with our church family & friends. Then one day we found out that they would be going to live with their dad. At first honestly I was mad & then so incredibly sad. I felt like I had been punched right in the stomach. I cried a lot. I prayed – I probably should have prayed more. Because slowly God began to change my heart & I could have never imagined this – but I was glad. I was so happy for the girls. They deserve to have their dad in their life. Girls need good dads. I remember sitting in a Bible study of James and Beth Moore said anguish and joy can coexist. I never knew that to be true until now. I felt anguish over losing our girls and joy that they were getting their dad back.

God knows what He’s doing. He knew what He was doing all along. A couple weeks after the girls came to our home, we found out we were expecting! And now we have a beautiful daughter of our very own. But God used this to open our hearts to the foster system & the needs and we plan to go on this roller coaster again and have dreams of international adoption. The coolest thing is that we’ve been able to build a relationship with the girls dad and we still get to be a part of their lives. They call us aunt and uncle now – we have sleepovers – we take them to church & family events and it is awesome. Only God could have weaved these lives together in such a beautiful way & changed our lives so dramatically and amazingly in just one year. God will give you the desires of your heart – it just might not look like you expect. I wanted to be a mama so badly, yet I could have never dreamed that in one year I would get to be the mom for three beautiful girls.

“Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” -James 1:2

If you’re struggling with infertility or some other unfulfilled desire, don’t lose hope & don’t give up. Continually seek God – I know it’s not easy & it’s okay to get mad & be frustrated – God can take it. Just always know that He loves you and He has a plan for you and for your family that you could never even imagine.