Going into this first/second blog post, I know it will be long. Just bare with me and read it completely to understand where we feel God is leading our family. In typing I decided to make this first entry into two post. I pray and know you will see God's hand in everything from here on out. I haven't typed anything of importance yet, and already in joyous tears, so grab a box of tissues! Here we go!!
Part 1: Pre Adoption
For the many reading one of my blogs for the first time and for potential birth parents, I''ll need to start with a little background before the adoption subject came along...
Kirk and I have been married going on 10 years in 2014. Life was perfect as we knew it. Kristen was born in 2007 and Drew in 2010. We found out we were pregnant with our third and what we thought would be our final child in 2011, to be born in 2012. In our 20 week ultrasound we found out Kendall had a condition called anencephaly, in which she wouldn't be able to live outside the womb. Our full story with Kendall was blogged here. Through the ups and down of that experience we came to a closer relationship with the Lord, our family and our church family. A depth of love that can't be described.
2 Corinthians 1:3-7 had become one of my life verses. In short (my words), we suffer as God and Christ suffer, and we feel comforted through Christ and others, so that when others suffer, we know how to comfort them. God knew what it was like to have to give His child. And through the comfort of other families stories of loss, I knew we weren't alone. And neither is a birth family.
After Kendall was born and passed away within 20 minutes, I knew I wanted to do something to help other families create memories of their children.With that, The Kendall Keepsake Foundation (KKF) was founded by myself and sister-in-law (Ashlee).
The stages of grief after Kendall went by fairly quickly, although there is still a loss. I felt like I learned what it was God wanted me to learn through it all. And I am grateful and thankful for Kendall's life and the affects we have seen through it all. Six months later we were ready to try again for another child to continue to fill our home with laughter again. It was the same week, a year later, that we had found out about Kendall's anencephaly that we found out we had two sacs, but the pregnancy didn't look great and we had our first miscarriage.
While my body took it's pretty time to heal again, more tragedy struck our family. Kirk's only brother died from cardiac arrest, as well as other family diagnosises. During that time Kirk and I had been praying that we'd be on the same page about having another child. I felt God telling me, "Don't worry about that now. Focus on the family you have here." I felt confident on getting on birth control, and with that, thought that was the answer to the prayer. That I was finally going to feel we'd be done having children.
It was then God started to redirect my path. Almost like He chuckled, smiled and said, "No, no... just changing directions". Mid May 2013, I started to feel the tug of adoption.
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