Creating a Forever Family

My husband and I met at church and contrary to storybooks it was not “love at first sight”. Rather the opposite, we both couldn’t care less for each other, but God had other plans. I prayed for a year that God would give me a husband and then God prompted Ed to make a call and ask me out to “bless me with dinner”. I reluctantly said ok, but something strange happened, we had a good time with each other and within two weeks we had decided to “go steady”. Within two months we knew that we were going to get married and 7 months later we were. We became a blended family with his two teenage kids and within a year began the process of expanding through foster adoption. We adopted a 15 year old girl, when the other two kids were 18 and 21. Then we felt it was finally time to try for a biological child. After 8 months of trying, the Dr. felt a fertility specialist was necessary. It was then a rocky rollercoaster of tests and fertility treatments to find out that I’m a carrier for syndrome that would almost guarantee a severe special needs child without IVF. Since we couldn’t afford IVF, we took a break and then got a second opinion about a year later and that specialist said that recessive gene I carry was, in fact, not a concern for any generation in my family tree and might only possibly happen to be passed down hundreds of generations later. Putting aside my anger and fear, week tried multiple rounds of fertility unsuccessfully for one silly reason or another and then the cost caught up to us again, so we had to take a break. Meanwhile, our Daugther graduated from Highschool and I was feeling empty nesty, so we got a puppy and started to host foreign exchange students. We have tried to adoption a second time and have been matched successfully, then it fell through. Despite everything, We are hopeful that Nightlight will provide us with the opportunity to expand and create a forever family.