Whew!
It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but we are back in the swing of things and have A LOT to post. Hold on to your seats!
On our way to the conference!
The weekend of August 8th, we were able to attend an adoption conference/workshop that was required to complete our home study. It was truly an amazing experience. We learned so much I thought our heads were going to explode. It was an emotional, exciting and informational weekend.
We were able to meet other couples that were also in the adoption process. When you are in the middle of it, it really feels like you are completely alone. But when we walked into that conference room and saw over 200 other people on the same boat, it is such a relief. Everyone in there was just as scared, excited and nervous as we were. There were people from all walks of life, all different backgrounds but all of us were on the same journey and had the same goal, to bring our baby home.
Throughout the weekend we attended a series of workshops, which were smaller groups and we discussed different topics that applied to our adoption journey.
The first night we got to hear an adoption story from birth to adulthood. Which was amazing, mainly because it was about our social workers supervisor, Christy's adoption. She was adopted as a baby and her parents told their story. It was amazing to hear how they told her she was adopted even before she could communicate. When she was a baby/toddler they would love on her and say "my darling adopted daughter!" Such a wonderful idea, because even before she knew what the word adoption meant, she knew it was associated with love. They also made sure that they always spoke about her birth mother with love, even celebrated her on Mother's Day. They urged us to make sure we keep our adopted child's story, their story. and not to tell anyone until the are old enough to hear the full story. The last thing we would want is for our daughter to hear something about her birth mother or about her story from someone other than us. So we have decided that the details of how she came into our family until she is old enough to hear it from us.
The next morning we were able to hear from a birth mother that used Lifeline to place her son for adoption, when she was a teenager. It was a tear-filled testimony. There wasn't a dry eye in the room. It really brought us a lot of perspective. We learned how and what to pray for our birth mom, and how to treat her during the process. It was incredible to hear her story, and we truly learned a lot.
We did it!!
It was a great weekend, it was so informative and we left there feeling like experts on adoption! Plus since this was an overnight thing, we had to leave Blake with a friend of ours and he did great for his first sleepover!! Words can not express how thankful I am to have friends willing to help us that way. We were able to make it a little weekend getaway, too which was awesome. And of course we got our traditional treat, Krispy Kreme donuts :)
Thank you for your love and prayers!
If you would like to donate, you can
here!
Brooke
