Amazed ...

I just feel so in awe of how much God has already been doing in just a week! It's amazing how much he can really do when you get out of his way and actually allow him to move in your life. I feel so blessed to have so many amazing friends and family that want to partner with us in bringing our little miracle baby home. We have 106 friends and family that have become fans of our group on facebook ... that means over 100 people that are praying for an amazing blessing to come into our lives. That alone makes me feel blessed to know that we have that many people who love and support us in this new adventure. In just a week we have already raised $380.75!!! I am still just so excited about this adventure God has us on ... I used to kind of dread it, because it just wasn't working out the way that I wanted ... but right now I just feel so happy and excited about what God is going to do!

The Beginning ... Our Story

Alya and I were married June 16, 2007, and like any newly married couple we were so excited about the idea of starting our own little family. We started trying for a baby right away and after a year of frustration and disappointment in being unable to conceive we decided to seek the help of fertility doctors. We found out in the summer of 2008 that we were unable to have our own children. It devastated me ... All that I had ever dreamed of when I was growing up was having a HUGE family one day, and my honest fear was never being able to have my own kids. It felt like I was living out my worst nightmare.

Pretty much anyone that knows me will say that I am a pretty stubborn woman ... so I decided that if I couldn't have my own kids naturally I was going to be a mom one way or another. We talked about in vitro or private adoption. And the cost of those things can be between $15,000-$20,000 which we just simply didn't have. So Alya and I started looking into becoming foster parents because we knew that it wouldn't cost us anything to bring a needy child into our home to love. We were officially licensed foster parents in February of 2009 and got our first little miracle six month old baby Hope that same month. For the first time since we had been trying to have a baby I really felt like baby Hope brought hope back into my life. She was perfect ... and she changed my life forever. We were able to share our lives with our little girl for 2 1/2 months and on the Friday before Mother's Day she was reunited back with her mother. I have never felt such pain in all my life. It felt like someone literally took my heart away. It's been a little over 6 months since they took my little girl away from us, and every day I still pray for her to come back home. We have been through a lot with working with the foster care system ... more than sometimes I think my heart can bear. We have been promised adoptable babies many times over the year, and I just don't know that my heart will survive if we keep going this route. After Hope was reunited with her mom I became very very bitter towards God. I hated him ... hated him for not allowing us to have our own kids, hated him for giving me the best thing that ever happened in my life and then taking it away again, hated him for choosing to create beautiful lives in people who could care less. I honestly just didn't really want anything to do with him anymore .. and I think a part of me slowly started dieing. I became extremely depressed and angry ... and have lived like that for way too long .... I think that I started letting go of my bitterness a little bit at a time. Allowing God to come into areas of my life that he really have never been. Realizing that I am a control freak ... and I have to let that go. Understanding that I can't control God, and no matter how much I hate that sometimes it's just not going to change.

So that has been a huge change over this past month or so and last week a good fried of ours sent me a link to a non-profit adoption agency here in Jacksonville. I have looked for the past two years at all kinds of adoption agency's ... and every time I have been so overcome with anxiety over how to pay for these agency's I just would stop looking. I discovered something though over this past year working with the foster care system. See with using an agency it might cost a lot of money but one thing I didn't realize that when working with a broken system like the foster care system ... it might not cost any money, but it will cost your heart. I just really started praying over working with this agency. I liked many things about it, one was that it was non-profit so they wouldn't be looking at taking all my money from me. Second, we knew people that had met the director several times and had friends that had adopted through the agency. We also were looking into adopting an African American or Bi-racial baby and because these children are so hard to place the agency actually eats some of the cost so that more families will want to adopt these precious children. I also realized one HUGE thing with working with this agency ... Alya and I don't have the money to adopt from an agency. The cost that we are looking at right now is $11,500 for the agency and an additional $2-5,000 for the birth mothers expenses. And we know very well that WE can't do it ... but I also know that I serve a bigger God that can. Over these last couple of years of trying to become parents I forgot all the times that God has come through in crazy, unimaginable ways in my life in the past. Ways that aren't even explainable ... but just plain God. I hadn't allowed God to enter into any part of this area in my life. I hadn't because being a mom was so near and dear to my heart that I was honestly kind of afraid of what God was going to do or say. Well .. I can now say for the first time, that I have surrendered all of this over to him. We have decided that we are going to send in our application to this agency ... but other than that we are just allowing God to move some mountains so that He can bring the perfect baby into our lives. And since I let go, and let God .. He has already been doing amazing things to get us there. We have already had friends that have told us that they want to partner in with us to bring our baby home. I feel so blessed to serve a God that never gives up on me even when I give up on him.

So ... this is a blog to keep you all updated on all the amazing things I KNOW God is going to do through this next adventure in our lives. I can't wait to see what he is going to do next! :0)