Can you believe it???

National Adoption Day, November 20th

World Diabetes Day, November 14th

November just so happens to be National Adoption Month AND...wait for it, wait for it...National Diabetes Awareness Month! Bet you didn't see that one coming, huh? Well, it's absolutely true.

And so with that in mind, I'd like to dedicate a few posts this month to these two causes that are near and dear to my heart. I have a passion and a love for adoption. I want people to understand the joy and blessings that adoption has brought to my life. Can you imagine our family without Tyler? I also have a deep desire to share more understanding and education about diabetes. I want people to understand Robby's special needs and give more compassion to other families in our same situation.

Funny that the experiences that I have had with each of these have had the greatest impact on my life over the last several years. And even more interesting is that I truly believe that our experiences with infertility, adoption, and diabetes are ironically intertwined. I see now so clearly that God had a plan for our family. He always has. He knew what would be best for our family well before I ever figured it out.

I look back to our years of struggling with infertility. How badly I wanted a baby. That desire nearly consumed my every thought and emotion. I prayed more fervently for that one desire than I ever had before. But the Lord knew two things that I didn't- first, he knew Tyler needed to come to our family. How thankful I am that he lovingly and tenderly lead us down the sacred path of adoption. We needed Tyler and Tyler needed us. The second thing that He understood was that if Robby had joined our family with his special needs at that time, we would have struggled far beyond what we were capable of handling.

At that time (when we first tried to start our family), John was working on his master's degree and I had just graduated. If Robby had been born then, we would be six or seven years into his diagnosis. We would have been on BYU student insurance and neither his particular type of insulin pump nor his continuous glucose monitor were on the market. And even if they were, there is no way our student insurance would have approved either. That might not sound like a big deal, but it is. Diabetes is expensive. We would have struggled financially, emotionally, and physically (because lets face it, without the CGM, we'd be up every 2-3 hours at night checking that kid). I know that these struggles would have put a heavy strain on our delicate, new marriage. I believe with a surety that the Lord reserved Robby's arrival to our family for a time when we were in a better position to handle it. I wish I could somehow go back in time and tell myself during my darkest hours of infertility that the Lord knew of our circumstances. He knew of our little family. He has a plan, and loves us enough to give us trials that will bless us in the end, even if it means we have to experience heartache and disappointment. I am grateful that the Lord orchestrated a plan that would allow our sweet Tyler to join our family and would allow Robby to join our family at a time when we could provide for him the best possible care. God lives and loves us and blesses us through our trials.