Adoption Guest Post - The Crow's

One last adoption story to share for Adoption Awareness Month.

I meet Hannah through our local MOPS group and instantly liked her.  She is funny and loving and just fun to be around.  When I meet her she had just begun the process of bringing Shelby home.  Of course, we bonded over what a miracle adoption was for each of our families.

It's been so amazing to watch this story unfold.

God's hand was at work here and this gorgeous 12 year old girl is going to move mountains!

Here's Hannah's story:

We started out as an extraordinary family to begin with.  Nothing was out of the norm for us.

I met my husband when my son was 2 1/2 years old. 18 months later we married and David was an instant awesome stepdad (most people don't even know he's not his real dad).  We had a our daughter less than 18 months later and then our second son almost 3 years later.

So six years into our marriage we had a family of five and I was already trying to convince my husband it was time for number 4.  He wasn't buying into that.  He was loving the older stage as we were approaching the non-diaper stage (at this point we had Heath (10), Mallory (5),  and Brady (almost 3).

And that's when it all began...

My sister is a school teacher who told us a story of 2 sisters who had been brought into foster care and had been placed several times in 2 years seperately but for all inconsistant reasons of people not ready to truly adopt they kept getting moved.

At this point one of the sisters was coming back into care and at that moment my heart sank and I was just compelled to say to my husband, "I could take her in a heartbeat!"

Amazingly, my husband was on board!

This was a miracle!  My husband, who was finished with having any more kids, was totally saying, "what do we need to do to get this little girl?" and that was all he had to say.

We decided to start praying from that moment on (May 2011) and believe that whatever happened was God's will.

We had a picture of her from the very beginning that my sister who had taught at her school gave me and we posted it on our refrigerator.  We prayed, along with our children, for her every night that no matter what God would find a good home for Shelby whether it be us or not.

I called DFACS first thing Monday morning.  All I had was a name.  I said, "I am calling to see what I need to do to see about adopting a little girl named Shelby.  I don't know anything about her or where she's at at the moment but I believe she is coming back into your care and I believe this is what the Lord has called our family to."

After leaving several messages with every agent and DFACS case worker I could leave a message with I finally got the right person to call me back...her exact case worker!

As God always has a perfect plan, our case worker was a Christian also!  How awesome at that!?!?

After telling her why we wanted to do this and that we felt this was totally the Lord's will she told us to get signed up for IMPACT classes  and call her back when we were done.  That usually takes several weeks (3 months) but I was so eager that I called every surrounding county to see who had the next class available asap.  Unbelievably, I found one that was offering a 1 week only class (not normal).  All 20 hours in that week!

So my husband just needed to take off work that week so we could attend.  That was the end of June.  Time couldn't go any slower for us, although after talking to everyone else, our process was pretty speedy.

We finished, we got qualified, had our home study in August, and had our first visitation with Shelby in September.

She moved in October 6, 2011.

Our story is a little different than most.  Most adopting families have little ones that hardly ever know the difference and don't have to work at growing the relationships  but we got an instant preteen!

And a beautiful one at that!

I know in months to come the unity will continue to grow and the blending of our already diversified family will become even greater.  She is a wonderful girl with wonderful potential and I can't wait to one day look back and see where time has taken us from this point in time.

She is very talented, invovled in chorus, drama and so excited to try Upward basketball for the first time this winter.

My prayer is that God will just use our family to His glory through all this and to  show Shelby as much love as possible and that her heavenly Father's love is the ultimate love that will carry her through life!

I want to encourage others who have thought of adopting a child and thought about the possibility of an older child to jump on board!  The number of children over the age of 5 is overwhelming and they need love just as much as the little ones and are so ready to give it back to you!

Thank you so much Hannah for sharing your amazing story!  

It's incredible to think that adoption wasn't even on your radar 12 months ago!  And look at your beautiful family now!

If you're interested in learning more about adoption, please feel free to contact me anytime!  I had a blast sharing these stories with you all.  I'm hoping next November we will have enough adoption stories to fill the whole month!