After our last foster placement left in July, we took about a two month break.
It's marvelous how God works! On Thursday night August 21st, James and I stood in our kitchen and talked about our future in foster care. Truthfully, I was having a hard time, I was still recovering from some surgery I had over the summer and I was coming to grips with our baby going to kindergarten and being alone all day. I was an emotional mess!
We talked for a while and decided that God had a plan and we just needed to wait and let him show it to us.
The following morning around 11am our case worker called, there was a 10 day old baby boy in the NICU that needed a foster family. Before she even finished telling us about his case James and I were both saying yes! We have a wonderful agency and they had already said yes on our behalf, because they know and love us! So 10 minutes later they called back to confirm we had gotten the placement.
We already had a busy afternoon planned with haircuts, meet the teacher and a few other things. So we hurried and got everything done and dropped the big kids off at James' mom's and headed to Wal-Mart. Yes, we were the people putting the infant seat & stroller together in the parking lot!! After getting all the supplies we thought would get us through the night we headed to the hospital. Although, we didn't yet have a discharge time we were allowed to go see & hold him.
Walking into the NICU is intimidating but when we looked into that bed, it was love at first sight. The NICU nurses were amazing, they allowed us to feed him and hold him and gave us a lot of information. Two hours and some paperwork later we left the hospital with a beautiful blessing!
Life has been different for sure, we are lacking a lot of sleep but we are enjoying every minute. I forgot how good a baby smells after a bath and how cute all the little squeaks are. He is adored by our older kids and he is fitting right in. God certainly had perfect timing and this baby boy is filling my empty nest void. He has lifted my spirits and filled this house with unmeasurable joy!
I don't have a crystal ball and only God knows the future but we are honored and blessed by the privilege to have him in our home and our lives. We loved him the moment we peaked into that cradle. Don't get me wrong, it's not easy not knowing how long we will have him or how his case will turn out but right now he needs a loving family, and we will fill that role as long as God allows us too. We have to live in the day to day, worrying about the future would rob us of so much joy. We love our life and find the biggest blessings in the smallest moments of the day.
We are thankful for the huge community of foster and adoptive families in our lives and those that support our choice. We are blessed by all the prayers and friendship we have.
