When my husband and I began doing foster care, almost ten years ago, our goal was to help kids. We fostered a lot of teenage girls, but if you had asked us to adopt a teenager, we would have laughed.

But in 2008, Brittney came to live with us, after two years of foster care and a failed adoption.

She is a perfect fit into our family. Being the parent of a teenager isn’t always easy, but having an impact on her life and steering her in the right direction is so exciting. We weren’t there when she took her first steps, but we celebrated her sweet 16th birthday, got her driver’s license and bought her first car. And we will be there when she graduates from high school and college, gets married and has kids.

Adopting an older child is an amazing experience, one that we will quite possibly repeat!