Twice the Blessings

I am the oldest of three kids and Stef is the oldest of five. As I looked at our family with our three wonderful children, I was very content and saw no reason to have any more. Stef, on the other hand, still felt like our family was  incomplete.

At Disney World.

So, we compromised. We decided that four kids would be a a nice number to land on and so we agreed to have one more if the Lord so blessed us, but we were not in any rush and, quite frankly, weren't really trying.

We had received our foster care license after "retiring" from  five years of house-parenting at Gateway Woods and were excited about the prospect of filling our house with children in need of refuge (we were approved to have 2 foster children in addition to our 3 children). We were also this year's Gateway Woods Auction Coordinators which was scheduled to be August 2nd, 2014.

So it was with some surprise when Stef first realized she was pregnant. We wondered how that was going to fit with our recently acquired foster care license, but thought that we could still make it work to have one extra child in our home even after a forth of our own. We also wondered how that was going to fit with the Gateway Auction because the due date seemed to be landing on the first week of August, right at the time of the GW Auction.

Imagine my surprise when I came home from work after Stef's first doctor's appointment and she handed me the ultrasound image. (She was going to wait until the kids went to bed, but just couldn't contain herself.) I stood dumbfounded and speechless as I stared at the two little peanut-shaped figures on the black-and-white image.

At 12 weeks.

I was, for a few hours, in denial that this was actually happening. But after the initial shock wore off, an excitement and almost giddiness overtook me as a realized the miracle that was unfolding before our eyes. I now tell people... "I wanted three, she wanted five, so we compromised at four. But, of course, she figured out a way to sneak an extra one in on me and get her way."

At 16 weeks.

 

Olivia's version.

As for foster care, we now knew that would not be a possibility in the near future anymore. We wondered why God had put that desire in our hearts and why we went through the whole training process to not use it. We had to trust God and put our desires at His feet and walk the path that He put us on. We were disappointed by the thought that foster care was out for now, yet filled with joy at our rapidly-expanding family. As for the Gateway Auction, we still wanted to be as involved as possible given that we might be having babies during it.

In the coming months, as Stef and I talked about having twins in our family, we were filled with peace, calm, and excitement. We felt honored and blessed to be the recipients of a double miracle. Our hearts were filled with awe and amazement all over again at the miracle of creation, of birth, and of life as we had during the three previous pregnancies. But this time... times two.