Choosing Laughter and Love

We are a fun-loving, energetic, Christian family built through the blessing of adoption.  We live by the belief that when troubles come (and they always do!) you can laugh or you can cry, and we choose to laugh!  Our mission is to show the world that families can be built in many different ways and still work beautifully.

This is John and me (Kristy).  We met in 1996 and fell in love almost immediately, even though we were only 19 and 15 (I’m younger.)  We married in 1998 and life was perfect.  I was in college, John had just graduated college, and everything was going according to plan.

In June 2000, we felt that it was time to begin our family, so we started trying for a baby expecting it to go as smoothly as everything else had so far.  After 6 months had passed, I knew there was a problem, even though the doctor disagreed.  Unfortunately, I was right.

The next few years, 2001 and 2002, were extremely difficult.  I never imagined how emotionally devastating infertility could be.  I also never expected that it would happen to me.  We began testing and couldn’t find anything wrong.  We couldn’t afford treatment, couldn’t afford traditional adoption, and had never considered anything else.  We believed we were facing the possibility that we would never be parents.

Then, God opened a door.  John applied for a job with an agency advertising simply as a “Christian non-profit” and he got the job.  The agency was a foster care agency.  John took the job and God began working on our hearts, but we still had not given any thought to the idea of adopting any of those children.

And then came Joshua and Luke.  They were 7 and 2 and were in need of a family.  They were not going to be going back to their biological parents, and they had not been able to find an adoptive family.  Due to Luke’s age and behavior issues, there was little chance that he would be adopted and they would be able to stay together.  However, God opened our hearts and they joined our family in December 2002.

The first 6 months were really, really hard with Luke’s behavior issues, but then it got better.  Much better.  By the spring of 2004, we were ready to add to our family again.

In March, we got a precious baby boy who we named Noah.  He was 3 months old and absolutely beautiful.  He had a multitude of health problems including prenatal drug exposure, respiratory problems, and partial blindness, but he was perfect in our eyes.  Everything was great until one day in May when we got a call from his new caseworker.  She told us that the previous caseworker had been less than honest with us and had not fully investigated his extended family.  Long story short, he left us in June and we were devastated.

But even in all that, God was in control.  The day the caseworker picked him up, our case manager called us about a boy and girl that needed a family.  In just a matter of weeks, Kathryn and Daniel joined our family.

Again, the adjustment period was hard, but we made it through.   We still really missed Noah, but we were able to accept the fact that we would not have gotten Kathryn and Daniel if we had kept him, and I can’t imagine how different our life would be without them.

For the next 2 years, our family remained pretty stable.  We considered fertility treatments again, but it just never felt right. Kathryn and Daniel had some pretty demanding special needs and we didn’t consider adopting anymore children.  We did, however, keep our license to foster/adopt because we did not have peace about closing our home.

In June 2006, I began the process to go back to college and finish my degree.  I was set to start in August, going online, and was very excited to complete my bachelor’s degree.

Then, I got a call from a friend.  She was a foster parent and had a pair of twins placed with her for emergency care.  They had been in the system for a long time, their most recent foster parents had sent them on, and they had nowhere to go.  She told me that the moment they walked through the door, she knew they were supposed to be our children, and she asked us to come meet them.  The only catch was that they had 2 more siblings placed in a different home and they wanted them to be adopted together if possible.

As we drove to her house, we laughed at the absurdity of the situation.  We had 4 children, 4 more would be 8, and that was downright nuts.  We would humor her and then go on about our business.  Then, we met Juliana and Josiah.  We knew right away that she was right, these were our children!  We called our case manager the next day and got to meet Paul and Caleb later that week.  We fell in love!

Just 2 weeks after we first met the twins (yes, 2 weeks!) all 4 children joined our family!  It was crazy, stressful, and incredibly exciting.  We went from a family of 6 to a family of 10 in no time at all.  Our children were 11, 9, 8, 6, 6, 5, 4, and 4.  It was nuts.  Looking back, I don’t how we did it, but we did.  And we loved it!

When August came around, I decided to follow through with my commitment to go back to school.  I was a full-time, homeschooling mom to 8 highly demanding children and a full-time college student.  This continued for the next 2 years, until I graduated.  And in those 2 years, I maintained a 4.0 GPA, save for 1 A-.

Those years really taught me the meaning of Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  There is no way we could have done that without God.  NO way!  They say that God does not call the equipped, He equips the called.  That is so true in our case.  This was not our plan and we could not have done this without God equipping us every step of the way.

Here we are 5 years later.  Our kids now range from 9 to 15, and life is much easier than it was.  John has a great job with a local non-profit, and I teach high school at a Christian private school that we started out of our homeschooling group 3 years ago.  And I have an acute awareness of how quickly the time is passing.  Our children are growing up much too fast.

So now, we are embarking upon an entirely new journey, embryo adoption.  We have just completed a frozen embryo transfer and are waiting to find out if it was a success.  We are fervently praying that God will bless us with another child, and we are trusting in Him to do what is best for our family!  No matter what happens, I am grateful for the 8 incredible blessings God has already given me.