Worth the Wait: Introducing Elizabeth Anne Rose Aist
8/2/18
It began with a phone call around 11:30 am on a Tuesday morning. My paint brush was mid stroke when I realized there was an incoming call from Waco, Texas...where our adoption agency is located...upon answering, our agency director immediately asked if I could call in Jason so he could be in the conversation too...the tone of her voice was a giveaway...we had only been in the waiting process for three weeks, but we were already matched...a birth mother chose us!...and the baby girl was already born ...and she lived in Kentucky...and when could we start driving?
That was three weeks ago today.
We dropped everything, called friends and family with the life changing, incredible news, asked for help to quickly go get essential baby things we needed, to help us pack, to help us rejoice, to help us stay focused while Jason and I tried to take everything in and get ready to start driving across the states all at once. Driving toward our daughter!
On August 8th of 2017, my oncologist had to tell me my initial treatments were not working and that I would have to have the hysterectomy to get rid of my cancer. I would not be able to have biological children.
One year later, on August 8th, 2018 in Kentucky our daughter Rosie was born.
We were given our Rosie on Wednesday, August 22.
Just shy of the one year mark since my surgery, the Lord made us parents.
Awe.
This is the how I would describe how I am doing. Awe of the Lord's incredible plan. Awe of His provision. Awe of the perfect little girl He knew would be our daughter from the beginning of time. Awe of His goodness. His control. His detailed presence in our lives.
It will take me a long, long time to truly process and capture the emotions, thoughts and details of the past three weeks. It was a whirlwind to become parents so quickly, yet it feels normal and right.
Dear Cake Pop,
We are so, so thankful you are here. We love you more than you will ever know.
Mommy & Daddy
Waiting Family!
8/2/18
Only hours after I published my post on Friday, we received an email from our case worker to sign some final papers. Then yesterday, we got the anticipated email saying, "Congratulations! You are now a waiting family and can be shown to birth families!"
I have never been so excited to be in a waiting season!
It is a stark contrast from last year. As we looked forward last year, the end of our "wait and see" season was a scary, life changing surgery. Looking forward felt hard, dark and sad.
As we look forward now, the end of the "wait and see" is joyful. Hope. Life! (I mean literally, a little baby life!)
So now we wait again. With joy. With hope. With patience (prayerfully), knowing the Lord has been in each step throughout this whole process. He will continue to be there in this one as well.
He knows the child for us. He has known the child/children the whole time. We told the agency we are open to children 2 years old and younger, up to 3 children at once (although in private adoption this is not as common), of any race. So we wait and pray.
Lately, I keep thinking of the joy we will feel when a baby is placed in our arms. When the Lord says, "this child was my plan for you. I really did plan this from the beginning of time." It has me thinking about how despite how incredibly joyful, excited, and full we will feel, how it will only be a small glimpse of the joy we will feel when we see Jesus face to face in heaven. Oh what a glorious glimpse we will get and then will have fully one day!
Anticipation in the Waiting
7/27/18
There is an anticipation in the air as transition is on the horizon for so many as August approaches. Teachers, parents, kiddos...all trying to savor the last days of summer, taking those last vacations, weekend getaways, trips to the water park or grandma's. Parents, honestly, ready for a more routine schedule to hurry up and get here.
#aistfamilylife
8/2/18
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| We will be able to show all of her after the adoption is finalized in February, but for now know that is the cutest face ever under that heart! |
It began with a phone call around 11:30 am on a Tuesday morning. My paint brush was mid stroke when I realized there was an incoming call from Waco, Texas...where our adoption agency is located...upon answering, our agency director immediately asked if I could call in Jason so he could be in the conversation too...the tone of her voice was a giveaway...we had only been in the waiting process for three weeks, but we were already matched...a birth mother chose us!...and the baby girl was already born ...and she lived in Kentucky...and when could we start driving?
That was three weeks ago today.
We dropped everything, called friends and family with the life changing, incredible news, asked for help to quickly go get essential baby things we needed, to help us pack, to help us rejoice, to help us stay focused while Jason and I tried to take everything in and get ready to start driving across the states all at once. Driving toward our daughter!
On August 8th of 2017, my oncologist had to tell me my initial treatments were not working and that I would have to have the hysterectomy to get rid of my cancer. I would not be able to have biological children.
One year later, on August 8th, 2018 in Kentucky our daughter Rosie was born.
We were given our Rosie on Wednesday, August 22.
Just shy of the one year mark since my surgery, the Lord made us parents.
Awe.
This is the how I would describe how I am doing. Awe of the Lord's incredible plan. Awe of His provision. Awe of the perfect little girl He knew would be our daughter from the beginning of time. Awe of His goodness. His control. His detailed presence in our lives.
It will take me a long, long time to truly process and capture the emotions, thoughts and details of the past three weeks. It was a whirlwind to become parents so quickly, yet it feels normal and right.
Dear Cake Pop,
We are so, so thankful you are here. We love you more than you will ever know.
Mommy & Daddy
Waiting Family!
8/2/18
I have never been so excited to be in a waiting season!
It is a stark contrast from last year. As we looked forward last year, the end of our "wait and see" season was a scary, life changing surgery. Looking forward felt hard, dark and sad.
As we look forward now, the end of the "wait and see" is joyful. Hope. Life! (I mean literally, a little baby life!)
So now we wait again. With joy. With hope. With patience (prayerfully), knowing the Lord has been in each step throughout this whole process. He will continue to be there in this one as well.
He knows the child for us. He has known the child/children the whole time. We told the agency we are open to children 2 years old and younger, up to 3 children at once (although in private adoption this is not as common), of any race. So we wait and pray.
Lately, I keep thinking of the joy we will feel when a baby is placed in our arms. When the Lord says, "this child was my plan for you. I really did plan this from the beginning of time." It has me thinking about how despite how incredibly joyful, excited, and full we will feel, how it will only be a small glimpse of the joy we will feel when we see Jesus face to face in heaven. Oh what a glorious glimpse we will get and then will have fully one day!
Anticipation in the Waiting
7/27/18
There is an anticipation in the air as transition is on the horizon for so many as August approaches. Teachers, parents, kiddos...all trying to savor the last days of summer, taking those last vacations, weekend getaways, trips to the water park or grandma's. Parents, honestly, ready for a more routine schedule to hurry up and get here.
Until two years ago due to the job I had working with college students, my life was always on this schedule. August was always the busiest month, but I loved the anticipation of what was to come. What a new school year would hold. With everyone else, I roamed the new school supply section so excited to pick out a new planner, notebook, and set of my favorite pens. There was a built in schedule that created the feelings of newness, hope, and change.
Although, few things in my life are dependent on this schedule anymore, I still love the anticipation that August brings. In our adoption process, it is the hope that we will be officially approved and waiting. In my last post, I mentioned that we had done our home study interview. That was a huge hurdle to pass. We were told it should take about 4-6 weeks for the state to officially approve us to be a waiting family. We are in week 6, and still waiting to hear back. So we wait.
In the meantime, however, we have been busy. Each family creates an Adoption Profile Book and Video for the birth moms to be able to view as they decide which family they desire to place their child with. It was an overwhelming process to think about how to genuinely depict your family in a limited space, but it was also an overwhelming worshipful process when looking at the end result. I am so proud of our book. It just makes me praise Jesus for all that He has done to bring Jason and I where we are today. Praise Jesus for the family and friends that He's put in our lives.
So it has been a summer of thankfulness. A summer filled with remembering what He has done, as well as creating lots of new memories with friends and family.
Will you continue to pray with us as we wait to get approved? Pray it would come quickly, so that we can then be a waiting family? Pray for our future child/children and their birth mother. Pray that we are patient in the hopeful anticipation.
Enjoy our ADOPTION PROFILE BOOK & video!
#aistfamilylife
6/19/18
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| Celebratory "Home Visit is Done" Burgers! |
So that is exactly what the hubs & I did...all weekend. We do not regret it.
Last week was a huge one for checking off major things. We finished all of our adoption training hours ending with a CPR/First Aid training class. I am still cancer free (PRAISE THE LORD!) & the home visit went well.
A home visit is a requirement from the state, where a case worker comes into your home, asks two and a half to three hours worth of questions & glances around to make sure you complied with the list of home safety requirements they had sent you earlier. They put all of their findings into a report that takes about four to six weeks to be approved by the state when then, FINALLY, you are "approved" to be able to adopt.
Our case worker was kind & made such a nerve wracking experience as easy as possible. Unless you happened to have already had one of these, who really knows what you are supposed to do to prepare for a home visit? I went the route as if we were going to be showing our house to sell, so you better believe that our house was spotless, the candles smelled like cookies & at the last minute, I asked Jason to get cookie dough so we could offer real cookies when the case worker came...& she had three.
So now we wait 4-6 weeks. Hopefully by the end of July birth moms will be able to see our information & decide if we are the best family for their child. In the meantime, we will be working on a Profile Book, Website & Video that birth moms will be seeing. (The links are examples of other people's.)
ALSO...the Lord provided a videographer to help us with our video!!! Through connections, we were introduced to a guy who is so graciously helping us with our video! He is a videographer for Round Rock ISD, as well as has his own wedding video business, Randy Robinson Films. We met with him after our home visit, & it was so refreshing to meet with someone who wanted to hear our story. Who asked questions not because it was his job to get answers & then write a report about us, but because he genuinely cared & wants to help us. Saying we are so thankful is quite the understatement.
For our wedding we used #aistwedding as our catchy hashtag. It switched to #aistmarriedlife once we got married. A kind friend mentioned on social media the other day how excited she was for #aistfamilylife. After last week, we seem so many steps closer to that family life with our little cakepop!
The End of Paperwork
6/5/18
I had another post written at some point in April for my personal blog that I decided to delete. It felt too raw at the time to actually share, & as time and paperwork have passed it feels like a new hopeful season.
I value others learning from our story, though, so I wanted to share that season in a nut shell. As we worked through hours & hours of paperwork, saw the 18 1/2 hours of training we had to have, not that we chose, & began thinking through how to represent who we are to a birth mom in a book & video which feels impossible & overwhelming, let's just say a large feeling of bitterness took over in the month of April. Answering questions detailing every aspect of your life as you "applied" to be a parent & tried to prove you would be a capable person to take care of a child in the midst of remembering the hard cancer journey to even get to the paperwork can take a toll on a person. Thoughts of "Other people just get pregnant. They don't have to apply to be a parent & have a State or organization give them permission to be one" ran rampant. Those are tricky, bitter filled thoughts that can only lead to dark places my friends. Let's just say it was a battle in my head to remember truth...to remember the big picture...to trust the Lord as this is His journey for us...a good, beautiful journey...filled with so many people in it with us that love us & support us...to remember no one has a picture perfect easy journey...everyone has their own individual story, & the Lord is in control of each of those as He is with ours.
I'm thankful April is over to say the least. I think when we pressed submit for our last form to fill out, a huge burden went away. The end of our part felt so much closer, & the big picture of why we were doing what we were doing flooded back in!!!
So, here is what we've done so far, & where we currently are in the process.
This adoption timeline sheet helps explain more of what each step means.
- Initial form to agency to ask for information - end of February
- Meet with agency representative to find out more - end of February
- Fill out initial basic application - March
- 3 hour orientation meeting in Waco (agency headquarters) - April
- Work on hours of Home Study paper work - March, April, May
- 8 hour educational training meeting - May
- Finish additional 9 1/2 hours of training material - June
- Home Study visit - June 15
- Make online profile, profile book & video - hopefully by the end of June
- Raise Funds - continual process - katiesflowershop.us has been so blessed!!! Thank you for all of your orders! With each payment we have had to do so far, the Lord has given us exactly what we need.
- Wait - until the Lord matches us with a birth mom
Now that things have slowed down, I will try to have more posts with details about our agency that we love, about how our adoption will be an open adoption, & sharing things we have been learning along the way. Thank you for being in this journey with us. During my cancer journey (which I'm sure will always be a part of my life journey), I used to say we had a global village praying for & caring for us. Little Cake Pop Aist is so blessed to have that same global village care & love them before even knowing them. So thank you!
Dear Cake Pop
5/30/18
Adoption is exciting. It is scary. It is hopeful.
Beginning in the summer of 2016, before we had even begun to try to have children, I began to write letters to our "cake pop." I do not remember how we came up with that nickname, but writing these letters to our future child was a way to pray for them, dream about them & entrust them to the Lord. Our journey has taken many unexpected turns, but the letters have continued. Now that we are fully in the adoption process, it is time to write a new letter.
Dear Cake Pop,
Oh how we love you! We have just begun the process to find you once again. To follow the Lord's leading and path that will one day end up at you. We might not know you yet, but we are so thankful that God has chosen us to be your parents. Please always know how brave, loving, and sacrificial your birth mom is for knowing what was best for you. For loving you so much that she made the incredibly difficult decision to allow others to raise you. We have been praying for you for years, but now we pray for her as well. We pray that she knows the Lord's love and care for her. His comfort and peace. The life that is in Him. We pray she knows how grateful we are for being entrusted to take care of you. That she knows how grateful we are to be trusted us with this incredible honor. Our words will never say enough to let her know how humbly grateful we are to her.
We pray the same for you. That you will know what an honor it is to be your parents. A gift. A treasure that is bigger than any treasure. We pray you know how much we love you, but more so, how much Jesus loves you. He loves you with a love that is bigger than even your daddy and I could ever love you.
This new part of our journey to find you is just beginning and so unknown. We do not know what the Lord has planned for what you will look like, what your personality will be like, when you will be born, if you are already conceived or maybe even already born, but we do know that God is good. He is in control, and He will always be with not only us, but you and your biological family as well. And that is enough.
Little cake pop, we hope to meet you sooner rather than later, but we will continue to wait and know that the Lord knows where you are and who you are. Until we meet you we will continue to pray for you and your mommy. We will pray that we are patient and trust the Lord's plan for this family.
So we will continue to wait and pray.
We love you so, so much,
Mommy & Daddy