Faith Focus: A blessed gift
Editor’s note: May is National Foster Care Month. Join us in prayer each day this month for children involved in foster care, the families who care for them, and for Buckner foster care and adoption staff. This post originally appeared here.
James and I were married in the summer of 2007. We waited a year to try for a baby and one year turned into five. Those five years were long, hard and devastating. We could not understand why we were not able to conceive. During those years, adoption came up in conversation a lot. We talked through several different avenues of adopting, but we never felt at peace to move forward.
In the summer of 2012, we heard the testimony of a woman at our church who had a very hard childhood. Her testimony tugged at our hearts, and we were drawn to the idea of helping hurting children. We decided to attend an informative meeting at Buckner. While in the meeting, we learned of the great need for foster parents, and we believed that was God sealing the word for us to move forward to foster.
In September of 2012, we took all of the necessary classes to become foster/adoptive parents. The process was long, and I was anxious. One night, as we were waiting to be licensed to adopt, I turned to James and said, “You know, if God had allowed us to become pregnant five years ago, we would most likely have three kids by now. It breaks my heart. What is God doing?” I could not understand why God was allowing this to drag on.
We were licensed on April 2, 2013, and three hours after we got the call that we were licensed, we got a call for our first placement. The call was for a sibling group of three (a boy age 6, a girl age 4 and a baby boy 4 months). A moment of panic set in at the thought of going from zero children to three children overnight.
I called Buckner and said that maybe this was not the right time or placement for us right now. As I talked to Sherri, our home developer, she assured me God had a plan. As she spoke, I remembered the night when I sobbed for my “three unborn children.” These children needed to be our first placement, and Sherri assured me Buckner would be with us to cheer us on.
On April 5, 2013, we met our kids. Let me tell you, friends, God is faithful. From the moment we met our three blessings, my heart was theirs. The sweet baby came to us malnourished and needing attention. Our older kids came with their own heaviness. Over the next several months, we all learned trust, patience and unconditional love.
Friends, the stories I could tell you of their lives before we had them — such heartache and pain. As the months passed and the court dates came and went, we wondered if God was calling us to more than just fostering these three. Maybe, just maybe, these three precious gifts would be ours forever.
In November 2013, we went through the hardest court date of all—termination. As a mother, it is heart-wrenching to watch a family be torn apart. But that was not the end of our journey. God led us through their birth mother’s appeal and brought us out the other side miraculously.
God led us to walk in full abandonment to him. He called us to walk in his peace knowing he alone held our children and their future in his hands. Through nothing short of a miracle, their birth mother relinquished her rights and the children were available for adoption.
On November 7, 2014, we walked hand-in-hand through the courthouse doors and came out an hour later as an official family of five. What a blessed day and what a gift God gave us. God entrusted James and I with the gift of life, precious life. Friends, never doubt that our God is faithful, that his timing is perfect, that he knows the desires of our hearts and that he still performs miracles today.
Today, pray to thank to God for the families who open their hearts and their homes to be a family for children in need.
James and Hannah Williams are foster-to-adopt parents with Buckner in East Texas.
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