Adoption

Have you every thought about Foster/Adoption?

I did.. before I was even married I was introduced to Foster/Adoption.. and it broke my heart. I just could not imagine having that happen to you as a child.. to be removed from your home and having to wait until you could be adopted to have a stable environment.

Those thoughts were in the back of my mind for a long time, I never really acted on them or even talked about it to my husband or anyone.. but they were there.

My husband and I married young, I was barely 20 on our wedding day. I had all these ideas about what my life was going to be like.. I would graduated college, teach for a couple years (I have a music education degree), then start having kids at around 25. So I did graduate college, but by the time I graduated I had no intention of teaching, it just was not for me anymore. Soon after that I was introduced to photography (and that started my photography career for 15 years). A few year passed and I hit 25.. time for kids.. well, maybe not.. we were not ready. And it continued that way and I came to realize that I did not want to have babies, but my husband realized he did. So we spend a few more years discussing it and we were not coming to a conclusion. I know marriage is about compromise, but wow.. this was a big issue, and I felt very strongly by this time that I was not meant to have children.

This is when the thoughts of Foster/Adoption came back to me, keep in mind that I had never mentioned this to my husband. One day we were having another conversation about children and I just blurted out, “I have always thought about adopting an older child from foster care!!” He looked at me like I had 2 heads and said, “you have?” And this began our journey, at first he was not sure it was right for him but he continued to consider it and find out more information. A couple years passed, as we were in the middle of a home remodel (that subsequently made us go broke after the losses of our two photography businesses) but eventually we got there and took the Adoption classes required by San Diego County. It ended up taking us a year to get through the classes and paperwork (it does not take everyone this long). We were finally ready.. and we waited.. a year.

Then the call came. “We have an emergency placement we would like for you to consider. There are two girls, 3 and 4, that will be coming on an airplane (they were located out of town due to their situation) next week. You will not get to see them prior to picking them up and taking them home, and no we don’t have any photos.. you have 24 hours to decide..”

Me: Uh, um, ok…

So I called my husband, his response was pretty much like mine. So we spent the next 24 hours praying and thinking and decided to go for it. The rest is mostly history, it has been two years (we just celebrated our anniversary recently) and we are mostly a normal family (but is any family normal?). I will not tell you it was a piece of cake.. it was not. I will not tell you that we fell in love immediately.. we did not. But through it all we were 100% committed to our girls (and they are our girls!!). The love came and it is beautiful. In the end I truly believe that God took away any interest I might have in having babies.. because my girls were not suppose to come out of my tummy.

It does not take a special person to adopt.. it just takes 100% commitment and the willingness to love.

Do you have a heart for adoptions? There are so many ways to support children in foster care even if you are not in a position to adopt. Frugal, Freebies and Deals has made a commitment to donate a portion of our proceeds to the Dave Thomas Foundation, according to their site:

115,000 U.S. children are in foster care, waiting to be adopted. They have been removed from their homes as victims of child abuse, neglect or abandonment and are left without a family. The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption works on behalf of these children, because we believe every child deserves a permanent home and loving family.

At FFD we believe that, too and that is why we want to support them.

Here are some ways you can get involved with Foster/Adoption:

::Adopt a child from your local (county) foster care organization
::Become a Foster Parent
::Volunteer to work with foster children in your area
::Donate to the Dave Thomas Foundation
::Have your Church support a National Adoption Day Event

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about Foster/Adoption. It’s definitely close to my heart.

photo by Beki Dawn Photography

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Maybe you know and maybe you don’t but my husband and I adopted 2 little girls from foster care. When they came they were just 3 and 4 years old- and it was pretty scary (for us and them!!). I can’t say it has always been easy- it has been a hard road. But I think any kind of parenting is hard- not matter if your children are bio or adopted, we all have our road to travel.

I’m sure that some of you have considered adoption before and many of you may have been scared that it was either too difficult or too expensive- and I suppose that it could be both. Many types of adoption are very expensive (up to $40,000).

After around 13-14 years of marriage my husband and I began to feel called to adopt. I am one of those weirdo women who has no desire to have a baby, but my husband wanted to have a family- so we started to think about adoption. We have friends who did international adoption and the road was very long and hard. It was definitely worth if for them but we found it was not where we were begin called. We really felt we wanted to help someone in our own community- and this meant foster adoption.

We were very pleased to know that foster adoption (at least in California) meant FREE!!! And this included free services like respite, therapy, and medical care until they are 18. I know not all states are the same- but I am pretty sure that it is super affordable in every state or free.

So we jumped. It was a long jump and it was around two years from when we started the process until the girls came. But we are amazed how well they did with our match- I know that these are our daughters. God just happened to have them grow out of someone else’s tummy instead of mine. I am always teasing that I am not sure how these girls got my DNA People even say they look like my husband and I.

We have decided that 2011 is the year to share our story. We want to encourage others to adopt. So you are going to start seeing a banner on the site of FFD for The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. We will be donating a portion of the proceeds from FFD to them. I hope you will check them out and find out more about foster adoption.

If you are thinking about adoption I highly recommend it. Don’t worry if you think “I don’t know if I could love them as much” YOU WILL. Don’t worry about the cost- It can be affordable, even free. Go for it!!

Images by Kathy Ziegler and Beki Dawn

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