Our Story

Ben and I have been married 20 years and we have two beautiful girls, Emily and Anna. Emily is now 21 years old, recently got engaged to be married, and is finishing her junior year at Clemson University. Anna is 18,  taking classes to become a CNA, and is dual enrolled at Kennesaw State University to finish out her senior year.

Ben has been self employed for 17 years, and I have been a stay at home mom and homeschooled our girls for the last 8 years. Ben and I had felt led to foster for many years, and in 2019 we found FaithBridge, a Christ-Centered Licensed Child-Placing Agency, and decided to take that step.

In May of 2019 we received our first placement.

T. was only 2.5 years old when he first came into our care, and there was some major orchestration that happened that he was even placed with us. He was brought into care in a different county and placed with a friend, as an emergency placement, who fosters straight through DFCS. Because we are with an agency who contracts with DFCS,  placements come to us only if they can’t place with a DFCS family. After some days of DFCS not placing T. in a permanent placement, our friend reached out to us, found out we didn’t have a placement, and had him placed with us. Furthermore, seeing God’s hand in it all, at the time we didn’t know that while mom was in a different part of Georgia, the rest of her family all lived within 10-15 minutes of us.  

Over the course of the next 15 months T was with us, we developed a relationship with the family, mom, and grandparents and it was a beautiful process of reunification. He never even missed a holiday with his extended family. After mom was reunited with T. the next 18 months was filled with much of the same. Mom moved in with her parents so T could be in a good school and we could still be a part of his life, and help her. I continued to pick him up from school at least three days a week and take him to his therapies, kept him during school breaks, when he was sick, overnights, holidays, vacation, etc.  He has continued to call us “Daddy” and “Mommy Angel” and Emily and Anna are his sisters. We have truly had a great co-parenting relationship for the last three years from fostering to a more supportive role with mom. 

“Life is what happens while you are making other plans.”

T. is now 5 1/2, and because of some recent events with mom, and her ongoing personal battles, we were asked to bring T. back into our home, which we were happy to do. For the last month T. has been happy to move back home with us. He loves having his own room and being home with his sisters, and mommy and daddy, and we have been able to keep him at his current school so there has been no interruption whatsoever. Up until March 24th we believed this to still be more of a supportive role until mom could rehabilitate. BUT… life is what happens while we are making other plans, and in the last week, with T’s mom and grandparents support, we have been honored to be given the right to fully adopt T. with an open adoption with T’s maternal family.

We all love T. and have always felt he was a part of our family, in a way other foster kids have not. So last week we filed a petition for adoption in Superior Court. There is a possibility this will mean fighting “bio dad” and terminating his legitimated rights. He has not been a part of T’s life and we have full confidence that we will ultimately be able to adopt and make him a permanent part of our family, but if “bio dad” wants to fight us that will be another part of the legal process.

This has all happened so fast, for various reasons, and we are overwhelmed, surprised, and excited by it all. In a season where both our girls either have, or are striking out on their own, and we thought we would be young empty nesters, God is giving us a son. We are all thrilled to be trusted with this life, and we do thank God for it. We are thankful that his mom chose life, and that she has chosen to trust us with his life, to do what’s best for him and give him more than she can at this time in her life. 

However, while T first came to us through foster care, he is not a foster child, and this is not an adoption through DFCS. This is a private adoption, a possibly  contested private adoption, and as such comes the price tag that goes along with it.

Though we know where God guides, He provides, it’s a huge unexpected expense. 

We have already had some family and friends donate to us, and we are so thankful for that, but the legal fees and the extra costs to even be approved for an adoption  (like an $1800 adoption home study, for example)  are adding up quickly.

Many people have said to us over the years “we want to help with foster kids, but we can’t foster” and asked “what can we do?”

Well Friends and Family, here is an opportunity to help  a foster family in a big way. =)

First, we need financial help, and ask you to consider donating to our legal and adoption expenses. We are thankful that we even had the initial retainers to start the process, but we were not saving for adoption, and lawyers think a lot of their time (and our attorney has been 100% worth it.) 

We are thankful to the friends who’ve already stepped in and helped us by donating. But this is far from over, and we are asking now, if you can help in any way, financially, we promise it is a seed well sown. 

Ben has listed out some of the expenses we have already been made aware of, and we will add to the list of expenses as we are made aware of them, and check off the expenses paid for. At this time we are sending this out to friends and family that we hope know, and trust that this is what this money will go towards, so we are just using PayPal for payment to avoid the fees eating into donations from crowdsourcing sites like “GoFundMe”.  

We also ask for prayers: