Well, here I am posting my first blog!! First and foremost, the title says it all, this is about our adoption and where God is leading us through it. I want to share our story, both to encourage others and to display the power and glory of our God who has and continues to open doors and lead us through this amazing network of challenge and blessing.
It all began as a thought I had about 11 years ago. The thought was, "Wow, there are a lot of kids that need homes." I knew that I could love any child that the Lord brought into my life. And I felt such a love and concern for those who had no one to protect and cherish them. Fast forward about 6 years, to the time when I was falling in love with a sweet boy from the neighborhood whom I'd been friends with for years. As we talked about life, love and marriage, we decided that we would make adoption a part of our life together.
Let's do a bit more time travelling to 2008...I was sweeping the pine flooring in a bedroom of our new, bigger home. Suddenly, it occurred to me that now we have a spare room. Why not find some-little-body to put there? What's to stop us?? I began researching and having discussions with my husband, Dan. We settled on domestic, waiting child adoption, meaning that we wanted to adopt a child that was in foster care. We made it as far as getting a pre-application approved. Then Dan lost his job and we had to shelve our dream for a few years.
Now it's 2011 and we are working with a great agency that we love, called God's Children Adoption Agency. We attended a meeting where we met our future case worker, who has been such a blessing to us. At this meeting, we found we needed to modify our adoption plan in order to adopt a child younger than Lu, which we thought best to do. We decided to do an infant adoption, and are very excited for the sweet one that the Lord will bring into our lives. We submitted our application in January and when it was approved, set to work on our home study, an extensive report, written by our case worker, outlining our childhood, personalities, home life and everything else you could possibly write about us! It was quite the process. We finished that project in May and received the news yesterday (June 27th) that our home study was approved.
Oh, and one more step in this whole process is the dreaded profile book. To some wonderful couple, this may actually be the fun part, to me, it was not so fun. You basically make a scrapbook of your family's life together, with a bit of biographical verbiage. I can write all day long, but I could not for the life of me find enough pictures that were current, with uncluttered backgrounds, that weren't blurry, or where each character was giving the camera it's deserved attention (meaning they weren't looking at the camera):) Not to mention dealing with a laptop that must have been made about the same time as the wheel came into common use...I'm still a little peeved about the whole matter. In the end, with much help from friends, family and my case worker, it finally came together, though the editing process will continue, as it remains in electronic form until we are sufficiently pleased enough by the result to mass produce it in print.
We like to call this part of the adventure the roller coaster. Since finishing our home study, we have had various emails, talking about "situations" of birth mothers who feel that they cannot parent, searching for adoptive parents for their children. Each situation has it's own bit of tragedy, and it pulls on our hearts every time. We have been using the phrase "our hearts are getting ahead of our brains" lately, because we just don't have the funds yet to even begin to think about some of these cases, as they are about double what we could scrape together. It's heartbreaking, but we know the Lord is in all of this and has a plan. Ok, typing that is easy, living it is painful and difficult.
So, here is a prayer request. Some of you reading this may know that we are in the process of being "viewed" by a birth mom, meaning she is looking at our profile book and deciding if we are the right family for her baby. The baby is born, a baby boy, with some, perhaps very significant, health needs. The birth mom is spending time with the baby, and as more time passes, I think she is having a very hard time making her decision. We have a special place for this little boy in our hearts already, and Lord willing, we would love to take him home. However, as the days pass, we feel it more and more unlikely that she will choose adoption. It is wonderful that she feels love for her baby and wants to keep him, but whether she is ready to parent, even she herself doubts at this point. The last thing I want is for her to give up her son if she is ready and able to give him a good life. Whether that is the case is what remains undetermined at this point, so we wait and continue to pray that, no matter where he goes, that his health would be good, that he would be healed and that he and his birth mom come to know Jesus.
Thank you for reading this, I will keep you all updated on all the latest in Our Adoption Adventure:)
