Doors Opening and Closing

I'm guessing I probably have about 4 blog followers at this point which is ok because this is purely so I can remember for myself.

The last 8 months have been full of ups and downs. Brian and I spent February-May going through foster care training classes and TONS of paperwork to become certified to be foster parents. Everything went smoothly and our social worker said we would probably have a placement by July! Then.... a week after we submitted our licensing application to the state we get a call that there was some concern about the lake we live beside. After 2 weeks of phone calls, emails and about 100 photos of our lake and yard we were told that we live too close to the lake and we would have to fence in our front yard for them to even consider licensing us, even though we had sent them a copy of our HOA governance that said no fenced in front yards. Door closed. I had felt so sure and so led by the Lord to step out in faith and pursue foster care. I felt so lost!

Foster care was honestly something I had never even considered until God laid it on my heart like a 50 lb weight back in January! It was like when you buy a new car and suddenly you see it EVERYWHERE like everybody on the planet now owns the same car you do. I was reading a book completely unrelated to foster care, it was actually about how to plant churches but in the book the author mentioned the need for the church to play a role in adoption and foster care. It stood out to me like it was highlighted in bright pink and from that moment on every truth I read in that book sent me back to that one idea. It was crazy, I had a just turned 3 year old son that was about to drive me crazy and I was homeschooling my daughter. It wasn't like I had time to foster a child, but God kept working on me. Every podcast I listed to, every verse I read in the Bible, even people I met at TJ Maxx, everything kept leading me back to this foster care idea. So finally after several weeks I brought it up to Brian fully expecting him to say I had lost my mind. Instead he said ok, lets look into it. Thus began us stepping out in faith and pursuing foster care. I constantly questioned myself during the process. Could I handle it? Was I strong enough? Could I take the heartache? Is this really how God wanted to add to our family? Every time I was sure this was not the right thing, God would confirm himself and sometimes in ways so bazar, there was no questioning it was a message from the Lord!

I had prayed many times during this process for God to close doors if it was not the right path for us but every step of the process went seamlessly. That is, until it didn't. I've had God close doors in the past that lead my life in different directions and now that I look back I'm so thankful He did but before its always been more of a "hey Megan, your going to wrong way, let me close some doors to get you going in the right direction." Never had it felt like I was following the Lord, being lead by Him to go a certain way and then the road just abruptly ending!

I confess I spent a few weeks watching Netflix marathons and more cartons of Bryers ice cream than I want to admit, as I had a little pity party for myself