A couple of years after we adopted our daughter we felt like we were being lead to open our home and hearts to foster care again. We re-opened our license and started the waiting process. We felt like we were supposed to foster infants and were told that it might take a while to get a baby placed with us. There were several families just in our agency that were ahead of us in line. We were told to expect to wait for a placement for up to a couple of months! After about a week I got a call about a 3 day old boy who was being discharged from the hospital. Without hesitation I said yes! I didn’t even call to ask Jason first, I actually called him after I hung up the phone with the caseworker and told him they were on their way with a baby! I will never forget answering the door and being handed this tiny little man to take care of!
We started the fostering process with high hopes to cultivate a relationship with his birth mother and work along side her to help her get her son back. It started out ok. She showed up to court and we introduced ourselves, she seemed grateful to meet us and thanked us for caring for her son. We started doing visits once a week and wrote updates to her about how he was doing. After a month or so she stopped showing up. When we would have team meetings with the caseworker she wouldn’t show or even answer her phone. We started to let our hearts and minds wander down the path that this might end in her rights being severed and this precious boy being up for adoption. I tried with everything in me to stay neutral but just knew deep within me that this sweet boy was meant to be my son. I know that sounds a little crazy but I just can’t explain the way he fit into our family so perfectly and the love we had for him just grew and grew.
Once the caseworker started talking about severance I made sure she knew that we would take him in a heartbeat and were very interested in his adoption. She thanked me and let me know that he had two siblings that had been previously removed and adopted, and that family was considering adoption again so the boys could all be together. I kept it together through our meeting but lost it as soon as I got to the car. How could they give him to a family who didn’t even know him or hadn’t even met him when he was so clearly a part of our family?
A couple of months went by and the plan for him to move to his siblings adoptive family started to be put in motion. We made a last ditch effort to keep him by petitioning the judge at a court date. Unfortunately she sided with the plan to keep him with his biological family. Don’t get me wrong we understood completely why they would choose this plan. It was just so hard to let go, but we decided that God had the ultimate plan and that if that meant saying good-bye we would do it.
We planned a team meeting to talk about his transition and what that would look like with his caseworker and his sibling’s family; it was set for a Monday. The Friday before that meeting I got a message from his caseworker that she needed to talk to me right away. I tried all afternoon to call her back and when I finally got a hold of her she told me the best news I’ve received in my entire life! The other family had backed out of their decision to adopt him. I remember standing in my kitchen listening to what she was saying and just crumpling to the floor sobbing with relief. He was going to be our son!!
The process to get from there to his adoption was still difficult. We had some set backs in court and his biological mom’s rights actually had to be severed twice. The first time she had improper notice so it didn’t count. Crazy right?! We were actually afraid that the court would decide to just start her case all over again and give her another several months to see if she could make it work. She disappeared quickly after that though and things moved forward as planned. By Christmas he was officially ours! We changed his name to Theodore because it means God’s gift. He truly is a gift to us and was planned from the start to be our son, I just know it!
