Boy meets girl.  Girl falls in love.  Boy and girl get married.

They lived happily ever after with a house full of little boys and girls.

Wait!  That isn’t how it went?  Nope.  Hold up!  Boy and girl did meet and fall in love and marry, but marriage is where dreams and plans of a wide-eyed optimist ended and real life began.

I am that dreamer.  I love to shoot for the stars, dream big dreams, and I really do believe I can do all things…through Christ who strengthens me.  But, I’ve learned in my 40 years of life that my plans and God’s plans aren’t always simpatico.  I’ve also learned that his are SO MUCH BETTER than I could ever imagine.  It sounds cliche, but it is so very true.

My husband and I married in 2007 and immediately planned to start a family.

A few months go by, and we have nothing to announce.  A few months later, same story.  Years go by and still, no announcement.  We sought medical referrals, advice, procedures and the like and still had no baby on the horizon.  It wasn’t until we stopped trying so hard to have a family OUR way that things fell into place.  We stepped back from our plans and truly plopped our desires at the foot of the cross.

We knew that if we were meant to be parents, it would be by the grace of God.

I think so many parents dream of holding a new born baby in their arms.  I did.  Babies smell good (most of the time).  They are soft, delicate, dependent, and oh so pure and lovely.  At this point in our lives, we really just said, “Lord, here we are.  Show us the path you have for us.”  Our desire became to please the Lord and make choices that honored Him.

The only way I can explain the next few weeks, months and years of our marriage is that God took us by the hand and led us to our babies.

We met our daughters through an organization called New Horizons for Children.  It is an international ministry for children in need.  Turns out, our babies were 5, 10, and 12.  They were beautiful, soft, pure, lovely, and very dependent on us-just like I had imagined.  We met them for the first time at the Denver Airport.  We both just knew they were ours.  We were in shock, like any new parents.  Our adoption took about one year before our daughters were “home” for good.

God is so good and gracious, and we are so unworthy of the children we have been gifted.  They really are a gift.  Adoption is beautiful, but it comes with challenges.  Isn’t parenting in general hard?  We are so grateful for the challenges because we have been able to see our family grow, strengthen, and lean even more on Jesus.

I’ve always said that God is the best author.  The lives of the saints are so much more adventurous, harrowing, dramatic, and virtuous than any hollywood movie.  That is exactly the way I feel about the story of my family.  It puts my dreams and plans to shame.  I am so grateful that God made me a dreamer, but even more thrilled that his stories are bigger, better and more spectacular than my little heart can handle.

We currently have three children and hope to adopt more.  As with our first three children, our family and our children are completely in God’s hands.  We pray that more families hear the call to adopt, and consider older children.  They are precious in his sight!

“The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord’s Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2379