God laid adoption on my heart at an early age. I'm not sure what the initial prompt was but I was certain that my future family was to be made up of both biological and adopted children. Before I met my husband, he too had it in his mind to adopt after working for several summers in overseas orphanages. In that respect we were a perfect match.

We were married straight out of university and settled down to a couple of graduate jobs in the city and it was a few years before we started to think about a family.

After having our birth child we felt it was right to explore adoption. Originally we were considering, and pursuing, international adoption through my husband's links abroad but as we looked more we realised how much need there was in our own country on our doorstep. We prayed for guidance and when it came time to start the process, the country we had been looking into closed its borders to international adoption. That was our decision made. We called a few agencies and finally made the decision to go through the process with a local council.

The journey to approval was long. All in all about 18 months from the initial meeting to the approval panel and yes, there was doubt through the whole thing. Was it worth it? Can we really do this? Is this really God's will for our family? Let's just have more birth children… But something inside kept us on track and we made it through what turned out to be the easy part.

Anyone who's been through the process can tell you about the waiting. I just didn't realise how hard this next step post-approval would be. Months went by and nothing. Then slowly but surely we came across profiles that seemed promising but one after one we were rejected as a potential match. The first few rejections were the hardest but after about eight or nine I started to feel numb to the pain. We made it as far as being down to the last two or three families for a couple of children and these rejections were like full on body blows when they picked the other families.

I couldn't understand why it was so hard, especially when I knew deep down that this was God's will for us. The only comfort I found was believing that those children were placed with families that could better meet their needs and that there was another child out there who needed us.

After 19 months post approval, just over three years since our first meeting, we got the call. We got the paperwork and everything we'd considered down to the last detail was in those papers. We couldn’t believe it. Our social worker couldn’t believe it! All those tiny unspoken prayers hoping for the right child for our family were answered, even down to the name that we believed had been placed on our hearts so many years ago.

We are thrilled to say that we are now a family of four and it was worth it. All the pain, all the uncertainty was worth it. And for our little one, I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. We are now their forever family.