Love What Matters

Have to share what happened in Nashville to my mom today. She’s had wayyy too much on her plate lately, so today she was headed out to the mall to do some leisurely shopping. On the way, she got an unexpected call that company was on their way to her house in the next few hours. Being the amazingly hospitable hostess she is, she turned around to go to the grocery store instead of shopping for herself so she could have food to prepare, and clean the place for their visit. $255 later after visiting Publix (grocery store), she was almost back home 30 minutes away and had the thought, ‘That is the cleanest back window I have ever seen.’ Turns out, her new Expedition (which she hasn’t had for long) has a button you can push to open the back hatch, and she didn’t realize it had opened! She lost almost ALL her groceries and didn’t realize it until she was home.

In November 2018, my husband, Derek, and I got married after being together for five years. We knew we wanted to begin growing our family shortly after marriage, and after a year and a half of no luck, we began seeking additional treatments with a local fertility clinic. I had been diagnosed with PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, in my early adulthood but was never really informed about the impacts it could have on my fertility. So when my husband and I had to seek out fertility treatment, I felt really defeated. This wasn’t how I envisioned us beginning our family and it felt really unfair. After extensive testing, we realized I was, in fact, the reason we couldn’t get pregnant. We had already completed a few rounds of Clomid and Letrozole to trigger ovulation and, unfortunately, had a chemical pregnancy followed by a few months of negative tests. Because of the many failed attempts at a medicated cycle, we decided to try our luck with an IUI or an Intrauterine Insemination. (Link In Comments)

Nurse life. When you marry a nurse, you marry their job. There are a lot of missed opportunities including missed events with the kids, missed meals with the family. Deep down you have to accept it. You realize that THIS is their calling. THIS is their passion. As my nurse sleeps, I quietly clean the house for her, do the dishes, prepare meals, do laundry, so when she is leaving the house an hour before she has to be at her pre shift, she has a clean home, clean scrubs, and somewhat sane children, and a meal ready to go for her.

Today I was picking up lunch for a Doctor’s Office and as I’m standing there waiting on my order and checking emails, I heard a gentleman ask this lady, ‘I would like to purchase something to eat but all I have is $5.’ So nosy me looks up from my phone and notices this gentleman wearing a backpack and holding a $5 bill who looks to be homeless, or maybe he was dealing with a hard time, but either way, as he asks about a few items on the menu he shortly discovers he may need more than $5.

I didn’t enjoy writing tickets, but you didn’t know. I cried when I found your daughter lying in a ditch, high on meth, but you didn’t know. I was devastated when I found the 32-year-old veteran dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but you didn’t know. I missed my kids birthdays, school plays, and family trips because I had to work, but you didn’t know.

I have no words right now that can express how I am feeling at this moment. I am in complete shock after my son’s act of kindness. The last couple weeks have literally been hell filled with so many tears, anger, confusion and heartache. Today, I got the surprise of my life. My son, William, is a lawn-mowing, yard-cleaning, and money-making machine. He had a job today that he had to go do and so I allowed him to go assuming it was like any other time. Well, as it turns out, this time was different. Very different. William came home and said, ‘Mom, I bought you a car.’ I of course laughed and told him, ‘Yeah, right!’

‘I never asked for any of this!’ screams my sobbing eight-year-old foster son to his new therapist when he learns. Despite being on an adoption track with me, he must endure more therapy and services, which he’d been forced to be part of since the age of four. Those seven words rip through my heart as they encapsulate the entire foster care experience for all children in care. They don’t ask for any of it, but are forced to submit because of bad choices by their biological parents and the demands of a bureaucracy-laden system forced by government to provide services the child may not want or even need. My journey as an adoptive parent begins in 2015 when I attend a Raise A Child event in Los Angeles to find out if, as a single man, I’m legally allowed to adopt, and am delighted to learn I’m eligible. I start classes at Penny Lane Centers—a foster family agency—and thus begins the biggest adventure of my life. Ronald is eight when he enters my home – excited, happy, safe, and comfortable from the get-go. We’d skipped over many of the interim stages pre-adoptive parents and children go through because we were such a perfect match from the beginning. (Link In Comments)

My husband and I were high school sweethearts that met at the grocery store where we both worked. After 10 months of working together, we started dating. We knew right away we would get married one day. Although there were a few bumps in the road, we got married after dating for almost seven years! We were ready to take on all that life would have for us in our careers and family life. Adoption is something we discussed minimally when we were dating and we both thought it would be in the form of an international adoption if we ever adopted. Foster care wasn’t something that was on either of our minds and neither of us had been exposed to. Only the universe knew during those first few years of married life that our future was about to look very different than what we were imagining. (Link In Comments)

“I’ve spent months shocked into silence after hearing many untrue and hurtful stereotypes. I remember the night I got my foster children B&B. I knew our life would look different to others. I knew there would be stares, but I don’t think I was fully prepared for the conversations and comments that would unfold in our future. One evening, I was at the grocery store when I had a woman come up to me and say, ‘Oh, they must look like their daddy.’ She preceded to say, ‘Wow, those boys are lucky to have been chosen by a white woman.’ (Link In Comments)

From the beginning, our adoption process has been a slow, steady course. Looking back, I’ve been guided by the Lord in small ways most of my life in order to come to this eventually. As a kid, I watched Roots for the first time and grew a deep respect and love for people of color. I always held onto this admiration. As a teenager, I had a strong desire to adopt children some day, when I had a family of my own. My older cousin Donna and her husband had adopted 6 kids, which included 1 Native American boy, 3 African American kids, 1 Caucasian boy, and 1 Hispanic girl through first fostering them. I thought the world of her and her husband. In fact, at one family reunion at Lake Tahoe when I was newly married, she brought 3 little kids with her that they were fostering at the time who were African American. The kids had been in foster care most of their lives and were confused at what a family was, so they immediately called me mommy and I took them everywhere with me that week. I was in Heaven! (Link In Comments)