The CALL

It feels like so much has happened over the past couple of weeks, but yet I have no blog to show for lots of it 😦 We have been going 90 to nothing around our house.  One of the biggest things that has been keeping us busy is The CALL.  CALL stands for Central Arkansas Loving kids for a Liftime.  It has all been in the works for some time now, but we have just recently taken the steps to become certified foster/adoptive parents through the state.  It’s all kind of surreal.  As a young girl had a desire to adopt.  I always pictured it being children from abroad, my vision was always to have a multicultural family.  For years I have prayed about what this would look like in my life.  I had daydreams about what it could look like, but have prayed that I would be open to what God had in mind.  Well, about a year ago I went to church just like any other Sunday not knowing that God was going to tug on that part of my heart that very morning.  I was very pregnant with Lucy, I think I was within a month of her arrival.  I remember seeing the video about The CALL and crying and knowing that God was calling our family to that, I had no doubt about it.  We went to one meeting and began to pray about it and how we could be involved at this point since we were about to have a newborn.  We tried to go to other meetings to get the process started, but it seemed like there was always a conflict in our schedules.  The whole deal slowly made its way to the back burner of priorities until we kind of forgot about it.  Then this past August I was blessed with a couple of days away in beautiful San Diego, CA. Nathan was there for business and I was able to use airline points to join him.  It was great weather and so nice to have no schedule to follow.  I just wandered around during the day and then met up with Nathan in the evenings.  It was just what I needed, it just wasn’t long enough 🙂  So, after being without small children for a couple of days my mind had had time to unravel and rest.  I was on my way home spending lots of time in airports and airplanes which gave me lots of time to read and think and reflect.  In that time God began to stir my thoughts of adoption and fostering.  I returned on a Thursday and that following Sunday our church hosted The Heart Gallery in our lobby.  If you are not familiar with this then you can check it out at http://www.adoptarkids.org, and from what I understand they are about to launch one that is for Pulaski Countyso be on the look out.  Basically, photographers donate their time and talent to take professional pictures of children that are waiting to be adopted and then Bedford Camera has donated their services and printed them at no charge.  Then the pictures are framed and the gallery travels from one church to another.  It really hit home for me seeing their faces.  It made it all the more real for me being able to put faces with this issue.  So, I get to church and there is the heart gallery.  I began looking at all the pictures and there are a lot of older children.  Our family situation at this time is not equiped to take on an older child, so I just prayed for the kids as I walked by their pictures.  Then I passed by a little girl that looked like she was close to my Eli’s age.  At that point this became even more real.  I had this sudden desire to go find her and make her mine.  I cried through the service and began to sort through how we would arrange the rooms and what this would mean for our family.  It was at this point that I knew we could not put this off any longer.  It just so happened that there was a CALL informational meeting the next night, so we signed up and it has been a whirl wind since then.  That was towards the end of Aug.  Our training took place in Sept.  We attended two full weekends of training, learning, talking and processing.  It is all a bit overwhelming, but through all of this there has been a peace that we right where God wants us to be.  We completed the training on Sunday and then attended a support meeting on Tuesday.  We have finally got our physicals and TB test done and hopefully have all of our paperwork filled out.  In the midst of all this the Heart Gallery appeared in the church where our training was hosted.  There seemed to be many new pictures added since we had seen it last.  Of course we looked at all the pictures and found a little brother and sister that are about Eli and Lucy’s age.  I was ready to take them home 🙂  So on top of all this other stuff, we are now trying to sort through what it would look like to adopt these children and go from 2 to 4…………are we crazy??? Maybe, but as long as God is bringing us to all of this, I consider it a good crazy.  Who knows what God has instore for us through this process.  The desire to do something like this has been in me for so long that it is weird and exciting to see this new chapter starting.  AND, what a blessing that Nathan has a heart for this, too.  When we met I shared this desire with him and he was very supportive and open.  Over the past few years God has grown this desire in him, too.  I’m sitting here staring at the blinking cursor not knowing how to wrap up all my rambling………I guess there is no rule that says I have to make this real proper.  So there you have it, God is really rocking our worlds, and this is only the beginning cause we haven’t actually added any children to our home 🙂  Since we are still in the middle of all this that is where I will leave this post, incomplete.  If you are at all interested in any of this I would encourage you to visit http://www.thecallinarkansas.com  There you will find more details.  There are many opportunities to be involved besides fostering and adopting, so check it out.  I’m done for now, thanks for “listening”.  Till next time………………