Waiting to Adopt

While I was pregnant with Thing 2, my husband and I began to feel a strong calling to add to our family through adoption. We began talking about it, praying about it, and searching out what God's word says about adopting. We knew we felt like we should adopt, but once we began studying scriptures about it, we knew we were going to adopt.

We shared the news with a few people. Some were supportive and others were what some may call "realists", providing reminders that "adoption is expensive", "there's so much paper work involved", and my favorite "you don't know what your going to get" (yes we do....it's called a CHILD)! When God calls you to something, all of those things become irrelevant. We didn't (and still don't) have a plan perfectly written out, step by step, before us, but we had enough.

We knew that we were supposed to adopt, so we began to act on what we did know. We began searching out our options, which ultimately led us to domestic adoption (within the country) from a private agency. We prayed, researched, and received confirmation about a specific agency, made the call, and began the process. There was paperwork to complete, classes to take, books to read, questions to answer, and checks to be written. Amazingly, none of this was overwhelming. I think that it could have been, but knowing that God was in this, allowed us to see the big picture. It allowed us to see that little hand wrapping around our fingers instead of stack of papers to fill out. We saw a child being raised to fear the Lord, instead of bouncing in and out of foster homes and prison. We saw the promise of life, instead of money leaving our bank account. God showed us the eternal picture, and that was enough to act on.

Now we are just waiting and expecting. It's sort of like being pregnant....except we don't know the due date. What's a due date anyway! My first was a week early, and my second was two weeks late. Due dates don't really tell us much as we want them to. Psalms 68:6 tells us that "God places the lonely in families". Thing 3 will be added to our family when God sees fit. We don't need a due date. For now, we are just waiting. Waiting and praying for our baby and the courageous woman who chose to give him or her life.