Shipley gets a gift of happiness

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We are the Shipley family. We are a happy family who love to spend time together. We have not always been as big a family as we are now. When my husband and I started planning our family we thought we would have two biological children and then adopt two children. After having two beautiful daughters we decided we would like to adopt two little boys to round out the family.

We started the process to adopt through DHS. We took weeks worth of classes and filled out stacks of paper. When we finally had a home study completed and we were ready

to start looking at bulletins we were told we would most likely not get a younger boy unless we did foster

care. We were scared to do foster care and have our hearts broken in the process so we prayed about what to do next. We felt like maybe looking into adopting an older child was where we were being led. We talked to our adoption worker and she said that adopting an older child could cause all sorts of problems for our little family, she also stated again that the best children get picked out through foster care and that we should switch our home study over to a foster file. We did switch over to being foster parents and then waited and waited to get a phone call.

As the weeks drew on we still felt very drawn to the idea of adopting an older child. At that time I had a friend who was doing long term foster care for a 12 year old girl. She had been connected with this placement through the heart gallery. My friend gave me Christy ‘ s phone number and said ” Just give her a call, she is great! ” So I did. After I explained my situation to Christy she said there were many great older children waiting to be part of a forever home. She asked if I had seen the profile for Shirell. My husband and I looked over Shirell ‘ s bio and felt an instant connection. We switched our file back over to adoption and asked our adoption worker to summit our home study.

It took a long time for our adoption worker to submit the home study. She was concerned that we didn ‘ t have enough information and that we might be making a big mistake. We had done a lot of praying and we were sure this was the right move for our family, even when we at times doubted, we were continually guided back to Shirell. Then we got a phone call. Shirell ‘ s case worker had to move Shirell as her current foster placement wanted her moved.

We were asked if we wanted to take Shirell in as a foster child with the intention to adopt. We said ” yes! ” and changed our file back over to foster care. Shirell moved in two days later and was officially adopted a little less than a year after that date. We have had another family member join the group within this last year and are thinking we still need to go back and adopt a couple of boys at some point. We have worked hard to become the family we are and feel joyful for all the happy memories we have created thus far. We have had lots of emotional ups and downs over this journey of adoption but we wouldn ‘ t change a thing. We are so blessed to have Shirell as our daughter and so thankful to the Heart gallery for all their support along the way.