He flew to Utah a couple weeks after that. We were just hitting it off so well. One night as we were talking he opened up. I knew that he had had cancer and had been through so much a few years earlier. We had talked about that, but this night he went into much more depth--especially the side effects of all the treatments that he had undergone. He told me how he would probably never be able to have biological children and he asked how I felt about adoption. This kind of shocked me, but I cared about Ryan and wanted to pursue this relationship. I wasn't going to end things because of this news. And adoption had always appealed to me.
We continued our long distance relationship. In June, after about 6 weeks of going back and forth, I made the decision to move to Washington to be closer to him. Timing of the blind date was perfect so that I could make this decision. I had recently graduated from BYU and was working at two part time jobs that I could easily leave. In July I moved to Washington. I found a job and in August Ryan proposed.
We were married in October. From the first date to our wedding was not quite 6 months. I swore I would never do that, oh well, he was the right one, at the right time, in the right place.
We went on a cruise for our honeymoon. It was awesome! 
After being married for about 6 months, we both individually decided that it was time to add to our family of two. We knew that we would need to see the fertility specialist and do in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in order to have a baby. As we went through the IVF treatments, we had all the faith in the world that it was going to happen. The doctor told us that there was not a very good chance, but we had faith. Unfortunately it didn’t work. We were completely heartbroken.
Ryan and I filled out all the paperwork and did all the necessary things to get approved for adoption. After we were approved we told everyone that we knew that we were trying to adopt and asked them to help spread the news. A little over a year after we had been approved we got an email from my aunt who lives in another state. She told me that she knew someone that was pregnant and not married and was considering placing her son for adoption. My aunt had shared with her our blog and information. Our sweet Julie read it and felt like we were to be the parents of her little boy. She emailed a couple of days and we read the sweetest words: “I've read your blog and it really touched me. Ever since I found out I was pregnant I never felt much like it was supposed to be mine. Please let me know if you can consider adopting my son. I know you will be a great choice.” We immediately felt so peaceful. We started emailing back and forth and building a relationship with her. We visited her a few weeks later and she immediately felt like family. About 3 months after she contacted us for the first time, she called us to let us know that the baby was going to be born that day. We jumped on the next flight and made it to the hospital a few hours after our sweet baby Lucas was born.
There has been a question running through my mind the last couple of weeks:
Why does it have to be so hard for us to build our family?
Nothing has come easy for us. I take that back: the only thing that was easy for us was that we knew the exact reason for our infertility. But since that point, I feel like nothing has come easy or quickly. We went through IVF 8 months after we were married and it didn't work. We had to wait until we were married for 2 years to start our adoption journey. Our caseworker at the time was slow and it took us more than 6 months to get approved. Over the course of a year we had one hopeful situation that didn't work out. And then we ended up waiting for 18 months from the time we started until Lucas' birth mother contacted us. He was born a week before our 4th anniversary. A few months after Lucas turned 1 we decided to start the adoption process again. We wanted our kids to be close in age. It has now been the length of 3 pregnancies since that happened. We were scammed, we were hopeful in one situation, and other than that no contact has come.
We feel dejected. We feel like we aren't cute enough, or smart enough, or cool enough, or that we make enough money, or even that we don't live in the right place. We want Lucas to be a big brother and we want to be parents to more than one child. And so it is hard.
We have decided to continue on this roller coaster of adoption and are hopeful that something will happen. We have also decided to open more doors and are almost licensed through the state for the foster-adopt program. We don't know what will happen, but we continue to be hopeful that the right child or children will come into our family. As we have been taking classes and doing tons of paperwork and having another home study, we have felt like we are on the right track and we feel happy to be doing something and that we are moving closer to where we need to be. We are and have been done with everything for almost a month and have just been waiting for our background checks to clear (since we have committed so many felonies since our last backgrounds last year).
So back to my question: Why does it have to be so hard for us to build our family? I am still not quite sure that answer to that. And I still struggle with it. We see couples get pregnant, we see couples get approved and contacted by birth parents quickly, but it hasn't come quick or easy for us.
A couple of weeks ago our Sacrament meeting talks were about prayer. I went home and thought about what I can do to improve my prayers. I remembered a talk that I read when I was a missionary and I pulled it out and read it. It is called Improving our Prayers by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin.
He goes over the pattern for prayer outlined in Psalms 37.
The first step is to "fret not" (v. 1). "When we worry about the future, we create unhappiness in the present...Instead of worrying, focus on doing all that you can, and then leave the worrying to your Heavenly Father."
The second step is to "trust in the Lord" (v. 3).
The third step is "do good" (v. 3).
The fourth step is to "delight thyself also in the Lord" (v. 4). "Instead of worrying or grumbling that our prayers have gone unanswered, we should delight ourselves in the Lord. Be grateful. Be happy. Know that the Lord, in His time, will bring about all your righteous desires--sometimes in ways we predict, sometimes in ways we could not have possibly forseen. What a wonderful recipe for happiness and peace."
The fifth step is to "commit thy way unto the Lord" (v. 5).
The sixth step is to "rest in the Lord" (v. 7). "Sometimes the hardest thing we can do is wait. The Lord has His own timetable, and although it may frustrate us, His timing is always perfect. When we rest in the Lord, we allow Him to work His will for us in His own time and in His own way."
I don't know what will happen to our family, but I believe in this pattern of prayer and I have been working on it. Worrying won't help, I need to trust in the Lord, do good, and delight in the Lord. He has a plan for us and although I don't know what that is, it will be more wonderful than we could ever forsee. The sixth step is hard, it is so hard to wait, but I take comfort that the Lord's timing is always perfect. We will understand why it had to be the way that it has been. Lucas prays everyday that we can get a baby and I know that God hears his prayers and our's.
"We will never be alone so long as we know how to pray."
I totally understand you're frustration and I have asked myself this very same question over and over!
ReplyDeleteFoster-Adopt is how we became parents to our oldest two :)
It's a long and sometimes heartbreaking journey but in the end it's all worth it!
Please feel free to ask me anything :)
Rsp80@yahoo.co