A One-Of-A-Kind Family
Isaac Jorgensen joined our team in January. We have been enjoying getting to know him, his wife, Chelsea, their son, Aiden, and their story in officially becoming a family.
March 18th, 2022 – a day the Jorgensen family will forever cherish, the adoption of Aiden Jorgensen.
Aiden’s journey with Isaac and Chelsea began on May 27th, 2020, when he was placed in their home as a foster child. His infectious smile won over their hearts since day one.
When asked how the fostering process works, Isaac said, “Becoming licensed to foster is pretty simple. You go through classes to become a licensed foster parent and then communicate with Department of Social Services (DSS) in regard to age, gender, and the number of possible placements in your home, etc. There is a lot of need for quality foster homes, so almost as soon as your licensing is finalized, the placement calls will start coming in. At that point, you decide whether to say yes or no.”
For the Jorgensen family, the past two years have been filled with lots of highs and lows. “Aiden has experienced more hardships in his eight years than I have in my 32 years,” said Isaac. The more that Isaac and Chelsea are able to spend quality time with him, the more growth and healing they see in him. Isaac expresses all the joy that Aiden brings to their lives and their family. He has a huge heart and a charismatic personality that leads to lots of smiles for those around him.
When asked what the process looks like when wanting to go through with an adoption, Isaac responded, “I can only speak on adoption through foster care. There are private adoptions that are a whole different situation. Our goal with foster care was not to adopt the first child that came into our home. We are passionate about biological parents being reunified with their children. Foster homes are meant to be a temporary placement while the biological parents work through whatever they need to to get their children back, but unfortunately it doesn’t always work out that way. If the parents don’t do the necessary things, like in Aiden’s situation, then parental rights for the biological parents are terminated and the case moves into the adoption phase. DSS will then exhaust all possible family or kinship connections to try and place the child with a family member. If none of those options are fruitful, then typically the foster family is approached about adoption. Adoption can take a while, but for us, it took about 3-4 months. Each situation is different, and timeframes can be drastically different depending on the case.”
“Each day, Aiden reminds us that life isn’t about us,” said Chelsea. “It’s about stepping into foster care to share our love and resources that we have graciously been blessed with. It has only opened our eyes, expanded our minds, deepened our faith, and absolutely flooded our hearts with joy as we get to witness the small moments of healing in his journey. Of course, it’s not all butterflies and rainbows. Foster care could most likely be the craziest roller coaster of life you ever encounter. It can just be plain hard, but the hard place is where God chooses to reveal so many beautiful truths.”
Adoption day came and it was simply amazing. Isaac declared, “Aiden’s adoption day was incredible. Being the social bug that he is, Aiden wanted all his friends, family, cousins, school principal, school lunch helper, neighbors…everyone there! We were overwhelmed by the amount of people who came out to support Aiden and our family. He had a perma-smile the entire day, and the love he felt was so obvious. Other than the pizza arriving late to the party… there was nothing we would change about the day!”
The Jorgensens are truly a one-of-a-kind family. It’s not that Aiden is fortunate to have the Jorgensens or that they are fortunate to have Aiden. It’s that they are all fortunate enough to serve a God who can meticulously weave stories together to make beauty, even among brokenness and pain. On another note, they had a positive outcome in the hearing of the adoption for their almost two-year-old. We wish the Jorgensen family the best in their journey towards another adoption!
