The Best Life

I’m writing this blog the night I published by blog titled “Adoption $”. I was very confident in writing the money blog but very nervous in launching it for all to see.

Wow…just wow.

The support you guys have given me through your words of encouragement are more powerful than you know.

When I began dreaming about starting a blog aloud to Tim, he asked what my topic would be. I didn’t have a great answer. I told him that God has given me the spiritual gift of {oversharing}, and I wanted to be transparent with my life in hopes that it might be an encouragement.

Thank you for telling me it has. I’m completely honored and humbled by the response I have had from so many of you.

So in true form to who I am and what this blog is, let me tell you more personal details about our lives as the Kennedys.

Tim and I have always known that we would adopt. Tim actually wanted us to adopt our first child. I won that argument and we decided for a variety of reasons {1 being that I was 28 when we really started talking about having kids} that we would try to have a biological child first. That worked out for us and we have our sweet Luke. {I could easily write 20+ blogs on God’s timing, traumatic pregnancy, traumatic birth, how God saved our lives, NICU time, all the feelings, and how God redeemed it all. And…I probably will at some point.}

So the new plan was to have 2 biological children and then adopt.

I had a lot of fear and anxiety with the thought of getting pregnant again for the first 18 months of Luke’s life. Not because of the whole Irish Twins things but because of the first pregnancy almost killing me thing.

We didn’t want a huge age gap between our kids so we planned to start trying again right after the first of the year {2016}. The Lord gave me a lot of peace. The {literal} nightmares stopped and I trusted that all would be okay. At the same time, I had the thought that we should start praying that the Lord open my womb if His desire was for us to have another biological child or for Him to close my womb if He was ready for us to adopt now instead of later.

At first, this prayer was measly and more of an afterthought. But each month, the prayer became stronger and stronger. We were sure we would get pregnant fast as that is how it happened with Luke {it took us all of 1 month to get pregnant with him}. As the prayer got stronger, we started having more open conversations about the possibility.

One night I was telling Tim that I would be sad never getting to wear my cute maternity clothes again {I know, winner of a reason to get pregnant}, and then he got serious. Tim doesn’t talk about our scary time pre- and post-Luke’s birth much. But that night, he looked at me and said “I don’t want to be a single dad.” He was our rock while in the hospital and that was the first time I was able to see just how scared he had been for our lives.

That didn’t seal the deal on adopting but it got us that much closer to making that decision.

After trying to get pregnant for a few months, Tim was preparing to travel to Honduras to do his water thing. When my ObGyn caught wind of this, she strongly {severely strongly} recommended that we stop trying to get pregnant for 6 months because of the risk of Zika Virus.

We gave it our best go before he left, and we found out the day after he returned that I was not pregnant. It sealed the deal. We were all in. No looking back. This road of growing our family through adoption has been just the right fit for us.

I don’t know what the future holds in regards to more children. We may be a family of 4 or we may have 4 children {combination of biological and adopted}. But what I do know is this, living in step with God and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in ways you did not plan is the best life. It is the most beautiful life. 1 year ago this journey was not even on our radars. Now that it is our life, I could not {could not} be more thankful that this is the road God chose for us.

Challenge: Ask God what unfamiliar road He wants you to take. The Holy Spirit will lead and you will be left in awe and wonder! And then...tell me about it. I would love to relish in your story.

Photo courtesy: Wix.com gallery.