Just a sip of Coffey

 As September 11th gets closer, I have been thinking about our trajectories in life. Many people who were in the towers that day or in any of the hijacked planes were in those places because of previous events and decisions that put them there in the first place. Are their people who should have been in those places and weren't because they made ever so slightly different decisions? Most likely.  This thinking may be a bit selfish on my part because it makes me think about my life now, and how no matter how indirectly, this one day when I was a mere 12 year old girl would impact the way I live my life.  If we flash back to September 11, 2001 young Sam Coffey was in his 9th grade year. Upon seeing news reports of the events of the day, this teen made the decision that he would join the military. While he grew up with grandpas and uncles in the military, nothing was so compelling as this day to sway him to his decision to join. If you would have spoken to Sam on this day, I...

On August 25, 2021 our lives changed forever. We got the long awaited call for two children who needed a place to stay. We picked up these two children from the Christmas Box House later that day, and met the two most afraid children we have ever met in our lives. I feel the need to express my feelings about the past 6 months as a way to heal as well as write to remember our experiences.  I can’t even begin to express my feelings on this topic. Our kiddos moved on to a wonderful adoptive home about a week ago, and I didn’t realize that I could feel so many different emotions all at the same time.  The children had been living with us for a few months when we got word that the goal for their case was adoption. As two people who were expecting to foster multiple children before actually adopting any children, we felt overwhelmed. We discussed this topic from October on, and went back and forth with our decision daily. Sam and I fell in love with these kiddos pretty quickly and r...