An Unconventional Family

Ten months ago a young girl was giving birth to a baby girl.

Ten months ago I had no idea what God had in store for my life.


Do you ever think about how each decision you make changes your life and the life of so many others around you?

I find it so crazy that each decision I make can have a huge impact (good or bad)  on my future and the future of the people I know and love.

I know I have made some bad choices in my past that have hurt my family.
I know that I have wasted so much time and energy on "me" that I have forgotten to care for the people that need me.

When I look back at the bad decisions I made and see how those decisions brought me to the joy, happiness and peace that I now live in... it is crazy to me!

Each time I made a bad decision or wrong choice I felt a big weight of guilt and regret.
For all the times I wasted doing things that were not beneficial to my future...I felt frustrated that I gave up so much time and energy and delayed my hopes and dreams of what I wanted in the future.

For the last couple months God has been teaching me that all of these things, good or bad, have been used to bring me to where I am at today.

I can choose to look on them as negative experiences, or I can choose to look at my past, all the way back to the decisions I made in high school, and recognize that God has used all things for His good and mine.
I didn't always recognize that during painful moments...because lets face it...it is hard to see that anything good can come when we are living in pain.

But He reminds me over and over and has taught me that in fact good can come from pain!
The process is a long and difficult journey.
We have to make a conscience decision after moments of pain and struggle to pick ourselves back up and somehow find beauty from our pain. That doesn't mean we are saying what happened to us is good or that we are thankful for the grief we are feeling, but no matter what has happened we have no choice but to move forward and make good choices so we can enjoy our future!

For so long I made choices in my life based on what "I" wanted and things never worked out. It wasn't until God closed every door that I believed I should be walking through that I realized His plan for me was greater and better than what I thought I wanted.

The road has been bumpy over the years, but I am so thankful that God used every decision and every choice I made to bring me to this place and time.

I believe that God gives us the desires of our hearts as we seek Him. My desire was always to have a family. His desire for me was to give me that dream in a completely different way than I would have ever expected.

Do you regret choices you have made in your past?

Please take it from me that living in the past does not allow you to move forward into your future.
God has big things in store for each of us and He wants to use our love, passion, past decisions and current circumstances to propel us forward and to touch the lives of people all around us.

I don't have it all figured out and I still don't make the best choices...but I have peace with my past and know that without God closing so many doors I would not have made the decisions to move forward with becoming a foster parent.

Although it might seem like an unconventional family to a lot of people, to me, it is exactly the family He was preparing for me!

I don't know how many children I will meet in this process or how long each of them will be in my life...but I can't wait to meet them and love them!

In His will...we find peace.


Oh how He loves you and me!
Jeremiah 33:3