For those of you who prefer short stories (especially
those which re-hash some parts of our story you may already know), here is the
awesomeness contained within this story:
We are expecting Baby Girl Kemper to join our family
shortly after
Thanksgiving!
Yes, we're aware how soon that is. But we can’t just skip to that part of the story and not tell you how we got there, so if
you’ll bear with us, you’ll see how we’ve gotten to this point.
A Recap of What’s Been Public So Far:
It’s been a few years now that we’ve felt ready to expand
our family. The “easy” or “traditional” path to
parenting doesn’t appear to have been God’s plan for us. Infertility was followed and confirmed by testing, which was followed by medical pursuits of pregnancy. And so again we discovered God had a different plan.We know that confidently now, but it
took some discovery along the way.
This is a better story. A beautiful story.
We’ve seen that beauty unfold as as we’ve turned it over to
God, who has had greater plans all along of growing our family. We decided on adoption and began sharing this publicly and enthusiastically.
You can read the past
blogs to see again that excitement and read the awesome journey we’ve been
on. If you looked at the dates of
those entries however, you’ll notice a large gap where the posting seemed to
have vanished as if there wasn’t anything to say. That was far from the truth, we just didn’t know what to
make public.
All the Balls Back in The Air:
For a while the thoughts and conversations were simple. Our hearts had been (and still are)
filled with desire and love to adopt an infant from Columbia. And so we progressed. Fundraising, praying, sharing
conversations and updating our friends and family. It was a waiting game filled with paperwork, education, and
patience. But we knew what to do,
move forward in that process with eyes set firmly on a little child from Columbia.
Our focus and resolve made small talk easy. As people would tell of us possible
adoption avenues, we were resolved to the plan we had…Columbia it is. Our
hearts are with Columbia and the child that waits for us there. The Columbian flags we have purchased
and that sit in our office (soon to be nursery) show this part of the story
well.
But then God stirred our hearts and emotions again,
in an unexpected way that would forever change us.
Earlier this summer, Nate
was approached between church services on a Sunday morning. Someone knew (not indirectly, but
directly) of a possible domestic adoption opportunity and felt specifically
that we needed to be part of it.
The details were explained in brief and Nate promised that we’d pray
over them. And so he told Jenny,
still between services, where he found her getting ready to serve in the
nursery at church.
This wasn’t the first time that someone had mentioned they
knew of an expectant mother looking into adoption. But it was the first time
that it stirred something in us. Something that begged us to at least asked the
question, "Should we consider this?"
Emotions came.
Talk of a baby started.
Talk of a waiting game pushed forward.
Talk of an addition to our family seemed more real.
Emotions came, but that is all that we
knew.
We still needed to decipher
those emotions and plan to move forward, longing to be led by God and not
emotions.It felt like all the balls were in the air again. And it was both scary and exciting at
the same time.
From Then to Now:
We’ve had many of conversations. We’ve prayed. We've found our hearts changed as we are now tied and committed to the process of this domestic adoption. God has shown Himself
faithful to us the entire time.
We moved forward not just in thought but in action. We decided to put the Columbian process on hold
temporarily and moved forward with the meeting of this potential birth
mother. We saw positive signs, we
saw uncertain signs, we saw signs we didn’t know how to interpret, and we took
steps forward.
We decided things
were too unsettled to be sharing a lot at that point. And so many of you got silence.
But silence isn’t fun.
And not knowing isn’t fun.
And so we waited and prayed for confidence, for assurance, and for
resolution to this opportunity—longing to know if we should take the leap to
the domestic path or return solely to the Columbian one.
And the answers have come. We are as confident as we can be that we are adopting
domestically. That as we become
the best parents the world has ever seen, that it will start with a baby
girl. That she is due shortly after
Thanksgiving. And that she will
change our lives forever.
We are
also confident that when time permits, we will again re-enter the Columbian
process to see our family grow again.
This is what we know now.
What We are Up To:
We haven’t been confident of this change for very long. And so we find ourselves with a two and a half month 'pregnancy.' Ready for the whirlwind
of legal process, home changes, and general giddiness that we’ve dreamed of for
so long. We’ve been working with
birth mom, working with agencies, starting to share our news with friends and family and
excitedly preparing ourselves for this next chapter of life.
We are excited as we look back and see the incredible journey God has brought us on. We also recognize that there is still risk and we may find ourselves yet again back at the
square one with all the balls in the air.
Trust us, we have enough anxiety for everyone.
Please pray with us, for ourselves,
for birth mom, and for baby. We
know God has a plan for us as parents.
As best as we can tell right now, this is the plan. I’ll consider this the worry disclaimer
paragraph. There is and will be
risk through this story for quite a while. We are aware and willing to take this risk. We’ve been thankful to those sharing
this burden with us.
But there is also pure enjoyment with this part of the
process. Nate always knew that
newborn shoes would be the first thing he would buy when we found out we would
be having a child. So that has
been done. (They can be seen in
the picture above.) We’ve had
people excitedly talking about throwing baby showers, people who have already
purchased outfits, and people who have graciously donated money for this
process.
Our heads are filled with dreams of our nursery, our
conversations full of baby-names and what to register for, and our house has an
awkward amount of baby girl’s clothes (not pink one’s though) for a family with
no baby.
We have a lot we want to accomplish and even more that we
need to accomplish in this short two month period, but we are energized (even
in the midst of the stress and chaos) to cross things off the list.
We know so far that the story is bigger than the two of us,
is written already better than we could have penned ourselves, and will end up
displaying “family” in a beautiful way for the whole world to see.
