God is Faithful

Remember our adoption puzzle fundraiser? Here's the finished puzzle! 

Today, Chris received a job transfer to Indiana that will allow us to begin the work of church planting with our friends, the Garrisons. This is a move we have been praying for and working towards for months. Even though we're in packing mode for our move to Indiana, I think we'll leave the puzzle out for a while as a reminder of God's faithfulness and kindness. He provided through so many of you for our adoption costs. Each puzzle piece has the name of a donor on the back (which I won't show for the sake of privacy). Each piece represents a specific act of kindness from friends, family, and sometimes, complete strangers.

We are still waiting for our little one. It is not easy to face the potential of leaving North Carolina without a placement. But God has answered so many of our prayers this week. The burden of prolonged waiting in multiple areas of our lives was lifted a bit, which is a kindness we don't deserve. I am encouraged that this same God is Lord over our family. After all, "unless the Lord builds the house, those who labor build in vain." I am excited to see what God is building! 

So, we wait with hope.

The Easy Way

I was gifted a book of poems by a dear co-worker who also adopted young ones. I think the poem below expresses perfectly the emotions surrounding conversations about adoption. I also believe it's a good reminder to be kind (and more sensitive) to one another; what you and I may perceive as the easier way -- whether that's in growing a family, marriage, or some other issue altogether -- may be the most difficult moments of a person's life.

The Easy Way

The easy way to have a child,

The gossips would agree, 

Is just to place an order

And avoid the pregnancy

Why bother with the nine months wait, 

The gain, the girth, the pain?

Why try so hard just to conceive?

It's really quite inane

When all those homeless babies

Wait behind the agency doors.

Why overpopulate the earth 

When those kids could be yours?

The easy way to have a child

Is just to order one,

And drive right over and pick one out -

Either kind - daughter or son!

Besides, they say, God's plan must be

Both wise and circumspect,

That you will raise the children

That the rest of us reject

The easy way - no muss, no fuss,

No worry before the birth.

The easy way - no recovery time,

You can hurry back to work!

The easy way? Ah, mavens!

Perhaps you didn't know

The wait has stretched to years, not months,

Adoption is so slow. 

And twenty-five eager couples wait

For every babe who's placed.

There are rules and regulations,

Investigations to be faced.

And if we pass inspection - 

Are approved for a daughter or son - 

We face a years long "pregnancy"

And supervision 'fore it's legally done.

And then we face the gossips agains.

Their questions and comments hit home.

Do you know his real mother and father?

How sad there's not one of your own!

Or, How could anyone ever give up

Their very own flesh and blood?

Poor baby, he'll miss real mother love. 

How kind of you people, how good!

Then it's How could you ever do that - 

Take such a child to your breast?

The child won't know where his place is!

He'd be better off somewhere else.

Adoption avoids the labor, 

But there's pain of a different kind. 

There's just as much worry beforehand,

No less apprehensive a mind.

But, then, children don't ever come simply.

There are trials in every way

To gain the treasure of love in a family.

There isn't an easy way.

-- Pat Johnson, Perspectives on a Grafted Tree

Summer Fun

This summer has been packed full of trips and getting ready here at home for little one, as well as preparing for our move to Indianapolis (Hi Garrisons! We miss you!). The pictures that follow are a visual update about what we have had going on. We continue to be thankful for your support and prayers; your encouragement keeps us clinging to our good Father's plan. For me, spending time with so many friends and family that we haven't seen in a while has been so restful and needed after a tiring journey with adoption and fertility.

While this isn't technically an adoption update, I thought I'd show what we've done this summer while we wait.

We celebrated 5 years of marriage on June 5th this year! While those 5 years have not all been easy, Chris has always been a kind gift from the Lord to me. We were in Florida spending time with family during that week, and we were able to spend the day together at Universal on our actual anniversary.

Finn had a blast with his "cousin" (my sis-in-law Katie's dog, Belle) during his week in Florida.

Finn turned 2. Yes, we are those dog owners.

We've enjoyed spending lots of time with our Small Group this summer. They are a constant source of encouragement and growth in Christ. We could not do this without you, SG! This is my favorite SG picture from this summer :)

This has been a summer of weddings! It was a joy to be able to see our friend since college, Nathan, and his bride Jenny get hitched. Congratulations, you two!

At Nathan's wedding, we were able to finally meet the son of our good friends, the Wyllys. We were thankful to get a little extra time with them and their 2 kiddos at the Georgia Aquarium. We hope to see you again soon!

My best friend since high school, Molly, also got married this summer! I am beyond grateful that I was able to be a part of her wedding and spend a couple of weeks with her preparing for the festivities. I have been praying with my friend for years for a godly husband, and it is good to be reminded that God answers prayers.

After Molly's wedding, I got to see my brother and sis-in-law, Danielle for a week. It has been over a year since Chris and I have seen them and I have missed them terribly. Love you both.

Thank you, Lord, for your good gifts. 

Thank YOU

While we don't have any updates about the arrival of baby Anest, we do have a very important update to share with you: our adoption is FULLY funded! This is a huge praise! Because we're now on the waiting list, it takes a great deal of stress away knowing that we will be able to say "YES!" whenever we receive that very important phone call.

I know several of you have asked us about a timeline. I wish so much that I could give you one! Our domestic adoption may be a little different from what you probably think of with adoptions, though. For many international adoptions, families are given a waitlist number. That is not the case for us. At our agency, a birthmother has the option to choose the family. To me, this is a beautiful thing! I see this as one of the ways our agency cares for the birthmother; it offers a little bit of closure knowing that she was able to make a decision about the life her child will have.

I wanted to take a minute to express our deepest gratitude to you all for the way you have shown us generosity over and over again in our endeavor to bring our little one home. We were moved to tears many times just seeing the way that God provided through your gifts to us.

We still want to see you wearing your t-shirt. If you bought one from us, please send us a pic! 

Homestudy Celebration Day

This is the look of two people who are on the waiting list! 

We signed our home study document, paid the waiting list fee, and now we just wait. 

We celebrated with a coffee date (our favorite). 

Continue to pray for us as this we expect this to be the hardest part. Our adoption agency gave us a cautious timeline and told us to expect a 12 month wait. However, we know that it could be quite a short time before we get "the call," so we are preparing a nursery and getting things ready now. My mother-in-law is actually helping us paint a dresser for the nursery as I type this (thank you, Deanna!).

We are closer to being fully funded, and praise the Lord for that. If you would like to support us and help us raise the last of the adoption funds needed, please click the link on the right side of this page. We also have just FOUR t-shirts left: 1 medium, 1 large, and 2 XLs. Let us know if you would like one, and we'll gladly get that to you! 

We're waiting on you, little one. 

--Chris and Jessica

What is a Homestudy?

What does a homestudy look (and feel) like? So many of you have asked that question, and now that we have finished the meetings for ours, I thought I would share my experience. Hopefully, will help you understand our experience and also alleviate some fears for those of you who are about to go through one.

First of all, we completed what felt like a mountain of paperwork to prepare for our homestudy. The social worker reads this and asks questions based on what is in your file. In order for our homestudy to be valid in North Carolina, we had to have at least three visits with our social worker that were at least one week apart, and one of those visits had to be in our home. The purpose of these is to establish that the home is a safe environment -- physically, emotionally, and physically -- for a child and to gather more information for the report.

I have to say that I feel very blessed. I imagined that it would be a terrifying experience, but our social worker was just amazing. She made us feel comfortable to share and encouraged us with Scripture often during our meetings. This is one of the wonderful things about our agency! I felt from the start that I was free to share my feelings about God leading us toward adoption and how our faith impacts our lives.

Each meeting was different.

Meeting 1 - we met at the agency and discussed our marriage and a little bit of general information about ourselves
Meeting 2 - we met in our home and our social worker looked around to make sure that we had smoke detectors and fire extinguishers; we also talked about our intended parenting style and how we plan to discipline
Meeting 3 - we met individually with our social worker and talked about our upbringing, our extended family, and how we each felt about our marriage

Some of the questions sounded like this: "Why do you want to adopt?" "How do you handle conflict in your marriage?" "How would you want your child to describe you?" "Is your family supportive of your adoption?" "Describe your husband." "Tell me about your journey with infertility."

How does a homestudy feel for the adoptive parents? Although I feel that we had a great experience, it still felt a bit awkward. It is difficult to not have the (however fleeting) thought that it is not fair for every part of my life to be examined so thoroughly. Even though we had a wonderful social worker, I am still an introvert and sharing my deepest thoughts about some difficult issues on command with a stranger is very difficult.

What is funny is that I was so stressed about the visit to our home, and it wound up being completely fine. My friends and I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned the weekend before, and the social worker was so relaxed about it and just looked around for about 5 minutes and then moved on to talking with us about the topic for that visit.

BUT the whole experience was so valuable and worth it. I always felt encouraged by the things that Chris and I got to share about one another. It reaffirmed to me how great of a father he is going to be! And, we are one huge step closer to bringing our little one home. At the end of it all, there is nothing I wouldn't do for our child, and that includes the homestudy.

What is our next step? We wait. We wait for the social worker to send us the completed homestudy document. We will sign that document and have it filed with the state. We then pay to be placed on the waiting list at our agency. And then we wait again for THE phone call! We don't have any idea how long that could take, but we appreciate your prayers as we do a whole lot of waiting in the next few months.

Thanks for sticking with me through this quite long narrative. I hope that if you are going through the adoption process, it has encouraged you that it is not as scary as it may seem.

 

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." {James 1:17}

 

Adoption T-Shirts!

Hey everyone!

First, a brief update: we are starting our homestudy this week! Please keep us in your prayers. We probably won't post another update until we have completed this part of the adoption process.

We are also getting closer to having all of the funds necessary to complete the adoption! Praise the Lord. We have decided to sell adoption t-shirts to help with the remainder of the funds needed. You can see the design below. The verse is one of our favorites: John 14:18, which says, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." We hope you like it!

Here are the details:
- The price of the t-shirts is $20.
- Sizes are adult Small - XL. XXL and XXXL are also available, but will be $5 extra (the company is charging us extra for those 2 sizes).
- You can give us cash or a check. If you do choose to give us a check, please make it out to Chris or Jessica Anest.
- We can ship your shirt to you! If you live outside the Raleigh area, please just let us know and we'll gladly send it to you.
- We will be taking orders until February 24. All the shirts will be ordered at that time, and you should receive your shirts shortly afterward (delivery time will depend on if we ship it to you).

HOW DO YOU ORDER?
You can comment here, on Facebook, or by contacting us directly (face-to-face or texts are fine!). We need to know how many t-shirts you would like, the sizes, and how you would like to pay us.

We love you all! We couldn't do this adoption without you.
Chris & Jessica

Quick Update

For the sake of brevity, I'm offering just a few updates in the form of what we're celebrating (praises) and what we're asking the Lord to do.

Praises:
- We turned in the last bit of pre-homestudy paperwork yesterday! Now on to the homestudy!
- We are nearing our fundraising goal. In fact, we are just under $4,000 needed.
- We should be starting the homestudy this month!

Prayer Requests:
- There is a lot to do in preparation for the social worker actually visiting our home. We have to re-submit a background check, get our home in order, and prepare to move, all in the midst of Chris's last semester of seminary.
- Lord willing, we will be moving off campus sometime this semester. We are working with our agency to figure out how to best proceed with the homestudy while we're not yet in our new place.
- Pray that the Lord will provide the rest of the money we need, whether that is through fundraisers or through adoption grants.
- Pray that God will give us perseverance to finish well.