Rooted In Love Adoption Conference

This past weekend Brady and I were blessed to attend Rooted in Love, a conference that our adoption agency hosts in Alabama for all of their adoptive families as part of their required adoption training. We attended with over 60 other couples who are also adopting both internationally and domestically. We were so incredibly blessed by the speakers, the times of worship, the opportunities to connect with other couples and the education we came home with. We truly cannot say what a gift this conference was to us! We walked way feeling so refreshed, equipped, and eager for the next steps in our adoption journey. We want to share just a few of the highlights for us of our time at Rooted in Love and some of the ways we saw God’s provision!

One of the most amazing parts of the conference was how Gospel centered every aspect of it was! From the moment we walked in and started the conference with worship and prayer, to the way each speaker encouraged and reminded us of God’s sovereignty over this adoption process, to wonderful friends we made who love the Lord and are passionately pursuing Christ in their adoption journeys… we were so encouraged in our faith the entire weekend! The very first session we attended was about the Gospel and adoption and the speaker so wonderfully put into words how adoption displays what Jesus has done for us by adopting us into His family. We were reminded of who God is and encouraged that He is in control of every step of our adoption process! This really helped set the tone for the rest of the weekend as we learned about some of the beauty of adoption, but also some of the very real struggles we can expect to face as we welcome a child into our home through adoption. God provided this in just the time we needed it… we were starting to feel a bit exhausted from all the paperwork required for the home study so the reminder that God is in control of this process and He is displaying the Gospel tangibly to us through it was such a blessing to us!

After that first session we went to multiple breakout sessions to learn about different topics related to adoption. There were a great variety of sessions where we learned about things like sensory processing disorder in adopted children, how to include biological siblings in the adoption process, how trauma affects a child’s brain and behaviors, how to disciple our children, and how to strengthen our marriage in the adoption process. We were also able to hear from a panel of adoptive parents who shared some of the joys and challenges they’ve faced as well as learn about funding our adoption by hearing from various organizations who specifically help with that. Each of these sessions and the multiple other sessions we attended gave us so much education and so many practical ways to help our family thrive through this adoption process and also post-adoption. We got back to our hotel each night feeling so much more equipped with tons of tools and a resources and a better idea of what to expect when we bring our little one home! God provided amazing speakers who continually pointed us to God as the healer of our children, who is able to redeem the areas of our children’s lives where loss and grief and trauma has been experienced. Isn’t that such an awesome display of what He has done in our lives as Christians! Even when we felt a bit overwhelmed with all the information we were told over and over again that God cares for our children and for us and He will give us the wisdom we need to parent our children for His glory!

We were at a table with other families who are adopting from India specifically. I believe there were over 20 families total who were adopting from India and we were able to hear many stories of how God has led families to adopt! Hearing these testimonies and connecting with other families going through the same process and paperwork was such a highlight of our weekend! These couples were a huge source of encouragement to us and really just a lot of fun to talk to! We feel like we have an “extended family” of couples from all over the U.S. now who we can lean on, encourage and support as we each welcome children into our homes! God provided 3 couples at our specific table who were all parents of two young children adopting their third child from India (just like us!). These couples were also all at about the same point in the process as us! What sweet encouragement and a reminder to us that God really is involved in all the details!

We were able to meet our case worker, Merrill, at the beginning of the weekend. This was the first time we had ever met her in person as all of our previous conversations with her have been through phone and email. We were so excited to finally put a face to a name and to get to talk with her more! She has been such a vital part of our process, “holding our hand” each step of the way and walking with us as we do everything for the first time! She has been an amazing source of encouragement for us and we feel so blessed to have her for a case worker! Were were also able to meet many other Lifeline Children’s Services (our agency) staff and talk with some of them as well as learn from them as they were speakers throughout the weekend. God provided us with such a great reminder of what an amazing blessing our agency and their staff is to our family! Brady and I could not stop saying how God has truly blessed Lifeline with such wonderful Christian staff who are so dedicated to the families they serve! This is one of the greatest ways He has provided for us so far in this process! We could not be more thankful for a Gospel centered adoption agency!

Brady and I were able to stay at a hotel a few minutes away from the conference and we were even able to sneak in a dinner out and a date night to watch The Lion King at the local movie theater the night before the conference started. This was the first time we had left both boys overnight and although we missed them, it was so wonderful to have time together to focus on our marriage, this adoption process, and just have fun together! We were able to talk and process together all that we were learning and it really made us feel like a team on this adoption journey! God provided a wonderful time of refreshment, encouragement and fun for us as couple to really strengthen our marriage as we parent our boys but also as we prepare to welcome another little one into our family! We had some wonderful conversations, learned a ton and had so much fun just relaxing and resting!

Finally, when Brady arrived home (I’m still in Michigan but will head home next week), we had a letter in the mail that we’ve been waiting for notifying us that we have a Federal fingerprint appointment now scheduled (yay! another small, but important step of the process to complete) and we also had a generous check that covered a significant portion of the cost of that fingerprinting appointment! God provided by encouraging us that He is truly in control of every little detail of this adoption! He is working and He is providing for us and we get to stand in amazement as He works even through this challenging process for our good and His glory!

God is truly good. His timing and provision are perfect and He is teaching us so much through this adoption journey! We are so thankful for a wonderful weekend away to the Rooted In Love conference but even more thankful that God is allowing us to be parents to a child through adoption. We were reminded of what a gift and privilege this is over and over again throughout our weekend. God already has the sweet little one chosen for our family and we are eagerly anticipating the day we get to see his sweet face! For now, we are praying for CARA approval of our paperwork (hopefully in the next few months) so we can be matched with a child and processing all that we have learned so we can start to implement some things in our home to make us better prepared to welcome our little guy into our family! We are also applying as much as we can for grants to help offset the upcoming costs of our adoption and trusting that God will provide in that area as well! We would appreciate your continued prayers for our family!