Starting in the top left corner is Drew, Alex, Annaliese Claire, Amber, Donald, Me, and Amarissa Pearl.
God has been so good to us, when Donald and I met back in 2002 he was raising Amber and Alex as a single dad with help from his Mom and Sister. When I met the kids it was in the capacity of "the babysitter". Donald works shift work and we both thought this would be the perfect venue for them to get to know me with out the label of "Daddy's Girlfriend". So I babysat and spent time with the kiddos and we bonded more and more. One night over homework 6 yr old Amber stated very proudly that I should date her dad. I was surprised by her announcement and explained that to date you had to be in love. Amber very enthusiastically declared "But Ms. DeAnna, my daddy loves you already." That is when we knew they could handle us dating. We married on December 19, 2003. Right away we knew that we wanted more kids and God started convicting us about having Donald's vasectomy reversed and taught us to view children as a blessing from His hand and to trust him with our family size. So we went in 2005 to Dr. Stanton in Arkansas, full of hope about what God was doing. I also adopted Amber and Alex the same year through stepparent adoption. Then on my birthday July 20, 2005 we were to find out that we would never have children biologically barring a miracle of epic proportions. God started leading us to adoption, during the next year. I mentioned to my friend Andi that we thought we wanted to adopt and immediately she told us of a family looking for adoptive parents for a baby girl due in about 2 1/2 mos time. We met the mom and she chose us right away. We went to Dr's appointments and were given the most beautiful sonagram pictures of our little girl. In June we went to the last appointment and found out our baby's mom was in labor and she was born about a day and a half later. She was the most beautiful baby I had ever laid eyes on, we decided to name her Elisabeth Grace, Libby for short. When Libby was 3 days old our adoption plans fell apart. She was not going home with us, we were not to be her forever parents. We were devastated and had no idea where God was leading us but He was clear, we were to adopt.
So we dug in spiritually with prayer and fasting. Donald came to me with adoption paperwork from the state that we had asked for before being introduced to Libby's mom. He wanted to pursue adoption through foster care. Immediately I said no....we had already lost a daughter, how could I walk down a path that meant possibly giving back many children before God brought us our forever family? Donald reasoned that we had been through the worse and we had survived. I couldn't argue with that. So just a month and a half later we applied to become adoptive parents through our state. We were approved in February of 2006. By May I was sick of waiting for a call, we had only been considered for one child and that was just to get our name out there, we knew we would not be picked. So in June we applied to be foster parents (we didn't know you had to have 2 separate certifications until after alot of phone calls to see why we had not been placed). In July our social worker had a family tragedy and was taking the summer off....God was saying wait. Wait??? Didn't God and the state know I wanted a baby? Time was of the essence and we only had one visit left....how little I trusted God during this time.
So we waited through all of July, I waited very impatiently I must say. Then in August we had our last visit. Whew, we were through, but in the back of my mind I wondered, had we missed our baby? Then on August 12th we got the call that forever changed our life for the better. Our social worker was calling to tell us we were approved foster parents. He was holding our certificate in his hand and would mail it out to us. Then he took a breath, just a normal pause and asked me if we would take placement of a 2 day old baby girl!!!! We were to get her the next day straight from the hospital!!!! Long story short the Lord worked it out where we were able to pick her up from the hospital and bring her home a long awaited dream of mine. She is now our 5 yr old Amarissa Pearl.
When Amarissa was about 2 weeks old our caseworker asked us if we would consider taking placement of her 6 yr old brother. We wanted to meet him first since older child foster/adoption was more scary to us than infant foster/adoption. I had the priviledge to meet Drew a week later. I was dropping Amarissa off for bio-parent visits and he was sitting in the back seat of the SUV used to transport. He had the biggest brown eyes, glasses and with a very serious face looked at me and in a low voice said "Thank you for bringing my sister to visit. I was in love! We agreed to take placement. God wouldn't orchestrate Drew's homecoming until 2 years later, through alot of tears, frustration and hardwork from our adoption worker, Guardian Ad Litem and his soon to be mom and dad. But it was worth every minute we waited. Drew blesses us continuously with his loving spirit and thankfulness for his family even when we aren't perfect. :-)
So I got ahead of myself but Drew and Amarissa's homecoming stories fit so well together, I couldn't help it. So I will back up a year and tell you how we were blessed with Annaliese. When Amarissa was a year old we had decided to not adopt anymore children...funny I know since you now know we have 5 blessings...lol. We were tired, still in foster mode with Amarissa and thinking we were not getting Drew. Our workers were changing and the reality of fostering had set in. Deep down I wanted a surprise baby. Dealing with infertiliy this was only a far fetched dream until...One afternoon in September Donald went out to run errands and I was home, homeschooling our older 2. The phone rang and it was our social worker. They were picking up a 2 week old baby that was adoptable and wanted to know if we would consider fostering and hopefully adopting him/her. I immediately said yes, we had wanted Amarissa to have a younger sibling if our youngest child came before her adoption was finalized. We were no where near finalizatiion. So I said yes. When Donald got home I was able to surprise him with the news that he was to be a daddy again, oh what joy that brought this Mama. And we were able to in turn surprise our family and Church family. Six hours later a gray station wagon pulled up in our driveway, we rushed out to find a tiny, screaming baby girl in the car seat. We had our Annaliese Claire. This is the condensed version...all of our children arrived within a 19 month span but it took 3 long years to finalize every one's adoption. God gave us amazing grace to walk this path, it seemed so normal at the time. Not to mention it took us from being a family of 4 to a family of 7. Our home has so much love amid the chaos, this is the life I always dreamed of. I am forever grateful that I walked in obedience to God's Will for our lives even when it seemed that it would only bring more grief. He didn't leave us in the ashed of infertility and the despair of losing our 3 day old daughter. He took these heartaches and used them to lead us into beauty and a life filled with joy. Not a perfect life but a life that is perfect for us.
~DeAnna
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.~Isaiah 26:3
