The Power of Possibility
Omni Visions Team Leader Drew Mullins has spent eight years encouraging prospective foster parents, telling them “we’re a family and we’re going to be through this process together.”
Last Valentine’s Day, Drew followed the same path he’s encouraged so many others to take and adopted two school-aged brothers. How did he get from feeling like family to being a family? How did he become a single, full-time dad with school conferences, finger paintings taped to the fridge and booster seats in the back seat of his car?
The Story of What’s Possible When Love Wins
As a gay man, Drew knew he wouldn’t be likely to have his own biological children. And he had already been seriously thinking about becoming a foster parent.
“Then, out of the blue, God put these two boys in front of me,” he says.
The siblings were going on two years with their loving foster mom, Miss Daisy, an older woman who was not in a position to adopt them. The boys had suffered severe physical abuse at the hands of their biological parents, whose rights had been terminated.
Time For a Forever Home
The boys were five and four years old at the time, well-adjusted given what they had gone through and should have found a match quickly. (Families always seem to want younger children, rather than the pre-teens and teenagers that Omni Visions usually works with.) But none of the options available to the Child and Family Team seemed quite right. Frustrations mounted among the staff. Drew, who had not yet met the boys, remembers joking to a colleague “Well, if nothing works out, I’ll just adopt them myself.”
Now here’s where that familiar “working in mysterious ways” comes in. As Drew tells it: “Once I met them, I began to fall in love with them. It was definitely a God thing.”
The Adoption Process
He began visiting regularly with the boys at Miss Daisy’s and on outings. The adoption process was set into motion when the brothers and Drew both moved under the auspices of another foster care agency – protocol when an Omni staff member adopts.
He had been approved to foster the brothers when he first petitioned for adoption. With this latest turn of events, they were finally able to move in with him — embarking on the six-month minimum fostering period required for pre-adoptive placement. No issues emerged; it was a match that held.
Six year-old Jayden is quiet and reserved. He hangs back and observes new faces and situations at first, but warms up soon enough.
Charlie is a five year-old spitfire, a sassy, talkative smart-aleck.
Drew Mullins is Their Proud Dad
They’re a family, home at last. You can read more about this new family who were featured in local Chattanooga news story: https://buff.ly/2wi9D7c
Congratulations, Drew, from everyone at the Omni Family!