A Burden On My Heart That I Just Couldn't Shake....

For a few months now I have had a heavy burden on my heart that I could not get rid of no matter what I did. I have felt this tugging on my soul to explore in detail the idea of adopting a child from the foster care system. I kept thinking about all the students that passed through my doors while I was a teacher that had been failed by society and how their lives could have been so very different if only for different circumstances. The main reason that Dustin and I want to adopt is not due to infertility issues, we simply want to give a loving, stable home to a child that needs one. A family is built through love and I do not feel that I need to give birth to a child to love them from the deepest parts of me. This is what lead us to adoption in the first place.

As most of you know we had been pursuing an Ethiopian adoption for an infant girl. Today however, we went to an Orientation meeting with our local county to learn more about adopting through foster care. All I can really say is that I felt as if a huge brick had been lifted from me. I began to cry talking with the social worker about our future daughter and the path to building our family. She was wonderful and understanding about my fears and hopes with following this particular path. After a lot of questions, discussion, and research me and Dustin feel this is the path we need to follow. I do feel a bit saddened about the little girl we would have had from Ethiopia but for our family this feels right.

We are still going to request a girl 0-14months. We are open to any race and most likely will receive a presentation for a child of African American decent, meaning AA or biracial. The reason for this is that the majority of children in foster care are of AA descent in our state, one website said 51%, and since we are open we will most likely be matched with a non Caucasian child (the Caucasian children are often adopted much faster and matched more easily with other families).

I hope that as we follow this path that we retain the friendships we have acquired through our Ethiopian support group. I hope that all our children will become friends, although our daughter may not come from a foreign country she will still be in a multi racial family and experience many of the same situations as our Ethiopian counterparts.



Thank you to all of you that have and are supporting our family through this journey.

Please continue to use One Cause! It not only helps with our adoption it helps others through the National Adopt Foundation complete their own families!