Since last June, we have had eighteen mothers choose other families over us, one mother chose us and then changed her mind (the adoption failure last fall) and one mother chose us last month but we were unable to go forward with it due to legal complications.

It’s been a hard process. At times it has felt like the Lord is absent and though I know that isn’t true, it is giving me an opportunity to learn how to lament. God is faithful to us and He gives us good gifts, even when those gifts do not come as we think they should.

The last situation was a mother from Arizona. She said yes to us and we initially said yes to her as well but we found out that adopting from Arizona while living in Oregon would be difficult (perhaps not impossible but complicated and potentially risky). We made the difficult decision to withdraw from the match last Tuesday, March 10^th.

A few days later, we heard about a new situation with a mother and father who live in Nevada, where it is less tricky to go through their legal process to finalize the adoption. A number of things drew me to these parents but one of them is that they picked out a name for their son (yes, it’s a boy!) and it’s the name of my (Ashley’s) Great-Grandfather who was a wonderful man! The couple was to receive profiles on Monday morning. We got the call that they picked us at about 11am on Monday!

We are excited about this situation! We are expecting challenges but we can’t know exactly what that will entail until the baby is born. Of course there is risk with this – and any – adoption but overall we are very comfortable with the agency and we’re eager to connect with the expectant parents.

This is an agency adoption so it is expensive, as we expected. But the fees are reasonable and less expensive than other agencies we have looked at. We will be applying for lots more grants and we trust that the Lord will provide for our needs. He has been so faithful in providing for everything that money is really the least of our concerns. If you are interested in supporting our adoption, our Fundraising page has options!

Alina is still wonderful! She turns three next month and her personality is absolutely blooming. We love her dearly and believe that she will be a sweet big sister. I don’t post her picture online but if you want to see a recent picture, send me a text and I can share her cute face with you!

Thank you for reading about our story and praying for us! I will eventually post a list of the things we learned the hard way through this process for those of you who are interested in learning more about adoption.