Family Like No Other Family

It has been almost a month since Niko and Mya have moved in with us full time. It has been such a wonderful, blessed time. I knew that fostering/adopting would be full of joy, but I had no idea just how much fun it would be and just how much the Lord would grow my heart to love overnight.

Since January when we started down this road of becoming parents, it has been filled with one blessing after another. The greatest blessing from God has been our church family and I just want to brag a little bit about them...

In order to have Niko and Mya live with us, we needed a 3 bedroom home. We had put an offer on a home/gone under contract with a bank the same week that we decided to move forward with having Niko and Mya move in with us. We were supposed to close at the end of February and have the kids move in sometime in March, but needless to say, nothing ever goes as planned.

Buying a foreclosed home turned out to be a nightmare. As of March, we found out it could be June until we moved into this home. By this point, Niko and Mya had been spending every weekend with us and we were already committed to being their "mommy and daddy." It was such a trial and so frustrating to try to figure out why this was happening and how we could get them to live with us as quick as possible.

As we asked those around us to pray, a couple in our church offered to switch houses with us. They had a 3 bedroom home just down the street. Within two weeks of joking about it, we were packed and ready to move. These were brothers and sisters in Christ we had just met and here they were just giving us their home. They packed up everything they owned in two weeks and swapped houses.

We moved four days before we had the kids move in with us full time. So many people showed up from church to help us move that both of our homes were completely moved in under two hours. After that, about ten women stayed and helped me unpack and put everything in the entire house away. By the time the weekend was over, we were moved in and ready for the licensing company to inspect our new home Monday morning.

It was a whirlwind and one of the most amazing things I have been a part of. To be on the receiving end of such a beautiful example of Christ-centered community moved me beyond words. I was able to go to work and tell all my co-workers about this great act of love.

Another sister from church gave me her car for nine months. Vermon and I had been happily sharing one car, but she was given a company car to drive back and forth to work in and wasn't using hers during the week. Instead of just letting it sit in her garage all week like most people would have (probably even me before all this), she gave it to me to use (and she kept paying her own insurance).

Other church family have instantly adopted Niko and Mya into their own families...seeing no distinction between their "biological" nieces and nephews and Niko and Mya. Others showed up our first three weeks to give us meals. Someone else arranged for firefighters to drop off bikes at our house for the kids. Others helped so much this first month as I have tried to finish out my work commitment/ late schedule with watching Niko and Mya, housekeeping, helping Vermon with some of his church commitments, and the list could go on and on…almost all of this happened without Vermon or I asking or suggesting this.

It has been a great illustration in our children’s lives as we talk with them about how nothing we have belongs to us, but it all belongs to God. We then talk about the many, many friends we have who have shown this to us. We talk about what it means to live life as though we had nothing, yet we have been richly blessed with everything. We tell them that we have more riches then we could ever hope for or imagine and all of this belongs to God and his purposes.

Recently, we were at the park and a homeless man approached us for money, I offered him one of our sandwiches instead and after he left Niko eagerly said, “but mommy…our money belongs to God, not you…shouldn’t you give him some, like Faith and Ryan gave us their house?”