Even though we were thriving by the grace of God under the circumstances of a cross-country move and a surprise deployment, we knew the pace our family was keeping was just not sustainable.

One trip to Vietnam, two trips to China and one trip to the hospital, and we were officially now a family of six.

Plus one.

At just two months home from our first trip to China, we were solidly in the weeds. In fact, we were buried deep in the dirt somewhere underneath the overgrowth of crazy that had begun to consume our home.

Deacon was 6 years old and Salem was now 1, and as we watched one sweet boy heal and thrive even despite imperfect, mostly single-parent circumstances, and we saw what life could look like for the other one when a child indeed had from birth two parents to love, we knew we couldn’t let our experience in Vietnam remain there.

Deacon was this ball of hope and light, and although he required constant reassurance, loving him was just so easy.So when we found out three months after we returned home from Vietnam that we were pregnant with our second child, we were thrilled.

We had only been married for a week when D.C. Williams sat me (and all of the cockroaches) down in his Army “geographical bachelor living quarters” to tell me, “I have good news, and I have bad news.”

Before there was a passion for the fatherless or a jerky store to serve them or eight sets of lunchboxes and little shoes decorating the front foyer of our home, there was a boy and a girl in a third grade class at Bishop Elementary School in Bishop, California.