11.09.2011

Adoption Guest Post - The Rienig's

November is National Adoption Awareness Month.  This may shock you, but I'm a bit of a fan of adoption.  I want to shout from the rooftops how awesome adoption is!  And to help me fan the flame, some awesome friends of mine who have also been touched through adoption are going to share their stories with you.  I hope you enjoy!


First up, my friend Kelly.  I've known her husband since the first Summer I lived here.  They are a great family and their kids give mine a run for their money in The Cutest Kid Competition. 


Here's a little of Kelly's story:


My husband and I knew we wanted to be parents.  

We felt like God called us to be parents.  


There was just one glitch in that plan.  


After several years of trying I was not able to get pregnant.

But we didn't let that stop us.  


We knew some other couples that had adopted and decided that maybe that was the route we needed to go.  


After a lot of prayer and some research, the Department of Family and Children Services seemed like the right place for us to try to adopt.  


It was a pretty lengthy process where we answered about a million and fifty-three questions, went to several weeks of classes, and learned a ton.  


After it was all said and done and we were approved.  We knew the process could be long so we settled in for a long wait.  


We were approached a couple of times over the course of about a year by our case worker and told that they "might" have a child for us, but none of them felt right.


When I got that call in December of 2008 I knew something was different.  


This time I knew a name and an age.  


This time I got pictures!  


This was our first glimpse of our precious boy.




It was several weeks before our case worker set up a meeting, but once we met Christian we knew he was ours!  


His adorable little cheeks were so squishy.  His laugh was contagious (and still is)!  Seeing that little person and knowing that I was his mom was fantastic and overwhelming all at the same time.




There was no more of the debilitating fear that I had struggled with about how it would be to deal with visitations and paperwork.  I knew that no matter what came our way, how difficult it seemed, this sweet boy was in our lives because God created him to be with us and us to be with him.  
Christian had been home with us for two weeks and I found out I was pregnant.  


Nothing just happens!  

We went from wanting to be parents to actually being parents of two in a very short time.   

We met Christian in January of 2009, Audrey came into the world in October.  By November of that same year the adoption was final, and our little family had doubled.  


Christian and Audrey are such an amazing blessings in our lives.  

My heart is full.  


To say that we are thankful doesn't even cover it.

You can follow along with Kelly and her amazingly adorable kiddos at All In A Day's Work.

2 comments:

Beth said...

Love this!

Sarah said...

Awesome!! love, love reading these wonderful stories- they are so encouraging :)