November is Adoption Awareness Month, so we asked around to some friends and family if they could share their experiences with adoption. Anna shares their story of adoption through foster care.
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The Cordell Story
This is our story about how God has directed us since we were teenagers to become parents to our three wonderful sons.
My husband, Shane and I met when we were 16 years old at a cousin’s house and dated for a short time before going seperate ways. We crossed paths again in 2006, and were soon engaged. During our engagement I mentioned to Shane that I had always wanted to adopt a child, and to my surprise he was excited about the idea and even said one of his cousin was a foster child that was adopted. In 2008, We were married and moved to a new area the summer of 2009. In the midst of moving we picked up the local paper and noticed an ad in there for foster parents needed. We discussed becoming foster parents and decided to wait one year before looking into it. The following Spring we were trying to decide whether to go through Foster Care or a private agency to adopt, when a friend introduced Shane to his son that he was in the process of adopting from foster care and mentioned that our town was really in a need of foster to adopt parents.
So in the Summer of 2010, Shane and I were going to the fertility doctors to figure out why we weren’t having any luck at having a biological child and we enrolled in classes to become foster parents. We thought the worst thing that could happen is we have two children at the same time. That summer we discovered that we could not have any biological child and were very thankful that we had started the process to become foster parents. At our last class to become licensed, we happened to meet this little girl and Shane and I just kept thinking about her and wondering if we were meant to ask about her. Less then a month after being licensed to become foster parents to at most two children less then 4 years old (our request), I received a phone call about helping out a foster family and keeping a little 5 year old boy for an extended weekend. I talked to Shane and said sure. I picked this little blond haired boy up the next day after school and his foster mom tells me she can’t keep him much longer and also that he is the brother of the little girl we met on our last day of training. Shane called our social worker the following Monday after keeping him and Dustin officially moved in
that week.He was adopted a year later.
Once Dustin’s adoption was final, I began to bug our social workers about when we were going to get another placement. In Spring of 2012, while I was at work sitting in a 3rd grade class I noticed that DSS was calling but I couldn’t answer the phone and then my phone begins to vibrate, I had a texted from Shane to call him ASAP. I stepped out of the class and called Shane and our social worker. I was informed that they had a 4 year old boy that needed a placement that night! I ran around telling the different teachers I worked with that I probably would not be at work the next day, waited for the final bell to ring, ran to get Dustin, sped home to fix the extra bedroom up for a little boy and Layland arrived at 8 o’clock that night.
Then in June, while hanging out at the neighborhood beach with Dustin and Layland, I noticed I had a message from DSS that said call us immediately. I called and couldn’t believe what they were calling about. They asked if we were interested in taking in Layland’s seven week old brother! A week later we picked up our youngest little guy.
Now they are all Cordells and our family is complete.
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According to the CCAI and The AFCARS Report No. 19, 400,540 children in the U.S. are living without permanent families in the foster care system. 115,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 40% of these children will wait over three years in foster care before being adopted.
Mama Knows What? 