Sometime soon I'm going to come back and add to this post about our trip to Ethiopia, which we took in June 2011. It was our first international trip together and though we didn't understand why we were asked to be a part of the team at first since we had absolutely no adoption experience other than an open heart to love the orphaned be willing to follow when God moves, it proved to be part of God's plan to help us open our hearts even more so that we could return home and put feet to our heart's words.
We traveled with two great families – both who have experienced adoption themselves. One family has seen God's hand in two international adoptions; the other couple has been blessed with two domestic adoptions; and then there was us – the couple who was 'thinking' about adoption, but hadn't really started the first step. God still used us though and he worked through the two couples in our lives on that week-long trip. Between walking the plane aisles to stretch our legs, go the restroom, or catch a glimpse of the sunset on the 12-hour trip, both of our new friends answered our ga-zillion questions on both domestic and international adoption with a smile. And I even finished an entire book, Adopted For Life by Russell D. Moore, on the way there.
We had been studying the Bible looking for all the scripture and stories of adoption of God's people and his command for us to follow his model. We met as a team to go over the plan for our day-long meetings we were going to have with local church leaders and interested Christian families who were thinking of stepping up and fostering.
You think we were only preparing to encourage and show God's command to the Ethiopian families? No, God was surely prepping us as well for many blessings to come ... if we were ready to surrender.
We are a family of four (one soon-to-be adopted son in addition to our bio son), plus a great dog, and praying for more, children that is. This is our journey.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Saturday, March 3, 2012
God pointing the way
Well, already a lot has changed on our path as we started this seemingly long road to expanding our family. As I shared in my first post we hit quite a few road blocks at the beginning as we took in all the resourcing, agency information, and personal experiences from others.
• We went from being discouraged at various agency meetings because:
- Most christian agencies wouldn't let us consider adoption of a domestic newborn or international adoption for our family until we have been married five years (currently going on three)
- Secular agencies didn't seem to hear our hearts when we spoke of our faith on this journey. We attended an info. meeting at one agency where we were one of two couples that were in a heterosexual relationship where we felt like no one "got" us.
- We began a homestudy with a local agency who's approved to do only the homestudy portion, meaning when complete we'd be on our own searching for a birth parent match. In our visits with this agency, we didn't have solid feelings in working with them as they seemed to just want our money. They were very discouraging to where we felt our hearts were being directed to take in an older child. I am generally tough when it comes to expressing my feelings to strangers - and the professional counselor this particular agency pointed us to was so harsh and made me cry as soon as I survived the hour long phone call of her telling us what is best for our family, despite where we feel God calling, and she hadn't even met us on paper or in person.
- And alas, one day something told me to check back with the Christian agency we first were interested in to see if they would work with a second-marriage couple if we were open to an older child. Bethany Christian Services DOES partner with the state in older child adoptions and we fit their specifications! We were so relieved, but also curious as to why we hadn't learned this route at our first info. meeting with them over a year ago. At the first meeting a year ago I guess the focus was only on domestic newborn and international adoption which we don't fit their specifications ... yet. So we closed our homestudy with the previous agency and began a new process with BCC for a domestic older child adoption.
• Soon after we said yes to God's calling to adopt, we learned that doctors say we may not be able to also have children together biologically. Wow. I can tell you this could be devastating to most, but because we had already known God has led us to adoption and he is in control, we were able to take in this new information with hope. As we continued the homestudy we also chose to continue meeting with fertility specialists to discover whatever issues health-wise we are dealing with. A year and many tests later, we have it figured out and we are simply trusting God for complete healing and a miracle if that is his plan. Though recently we learned that if we were to get pregnant we would have to halt the adoption process until our bio child is a year old. Wow – how do non-believers handle all of these unknown factors when they don't have the Lord to surrender all of their hopes, fears, and worries to? We trust that if God chooses to give us a miracle by adoption first, then that is his great plan. We trust that if God chooses to give us a miracle biologically that is also his great plan. Let all the details be in his hands. We ultimately want to experience both, but the law doesn't allow us to do both at the same time. So, we continue down the adoption road and trust it to our Lord.
Since we discovered where the open door was for our family, it has been a smooth process full of confirmation and blessing. We now have completed our homestudy with our adoption specialist at Bethany who was wonderful by the way, and are awaiting our state's final stamp on it - which should be 45 days max.
So, here we are – eighteen months later from when we first took the obedient step to care for the fatherless and we are so thrilled.
Our eyes and hearts have been widened since then – through personal experiences of lending a helping hand to single mothers or an assaulted teen on the side of the road needing help at midnight and daytime; through attending support meetings for adoptive families and adoptees at local churches; through reading and more reading of various books and articles; through continued prayer for both our family and the child as God prepares and protects us all; through being able to share with family and friends our story and calling; and through being shown new opportunities to pray for those on the other side of this journey.
I hope to be able to write about more updates sooner than later this time.
Patiently waiting for the Lord's timing, together.
Until the next update ...
• We went from being discouraged at various agency meetings because:
- Most christian agencies wouldn't let us consider adoption of a domestic newborn or international adoption for our family until we have been married five years (currently going on three)
- Secular agencies didn't seem to hear our hearts when we spoke of our faith on this journey. We attended an info. meeting at one agency where we were one of two couples that were in a heterosexual relationship where we felt like no one "got" us.
- We began a homestudy with a local agency who's approved to do only the homestudy portion, meaning when complete we'd be on our own searching for a birth parent match. In our visits with this agency, we didn't have solid feelings in working with them as they seemed to just want our money. They were very discouraging to where we felt our hearts were being directed to take in an older child. I am generally tough when it comes to expressing my feelings to strangers - and the professional counselor this particular agency pointed us to was so harsh and made me cry as soon as I survived the hour long phone call of her telling us what is best for our family, despite where we feel God calling, and she hadn't even met us on paper or in person.
- And alas, one day something told me to check back with the Christian agency we first were interested in to see if they would work with a second-marriage couple if we were open to an older child. Bethany Christian Services DOES partner with the state in older child adoptions and we fit their specifications! We were so relieved, but also curious as to why we hadn't learned this route at our first info. meeting with them over a year ago. At the first meeting a year ago I guess the focus was only on domestic newborn and international adoption which we don't fit their specifications ... yet. So we closed our homestudy with the previous agency and began a new process with BCC for a domestic older child adoption.
• Soon after we said yes to God's calling to adopt, we learned that doctors say we may not be able to also have children together biologically. Wow. I can tell you this could be devastating to most, but because we had already known God has led us to adoption and he is in control, we were able to take in this new information with hope. As we continued the homestudy we also chose to continue meeting with fertility specialists to discover whatever issues health-wise we are dealing with. A year and many tests later, we have it figured out and we are simply trusting God for complete healing and a miracle if that is his plan. Though recently we learned that if we were to get pregnant we would have to halt the adoption process until our bio child is a year old. Wow – how do non-believers handle all of these unknown factors when they don't have the Lord to surrender all of their hopes, fears, and worries to? We trust that if God chooses to give us a miracle by adoption first, then that is his great plan. We trust that if God chooses to give us a miracle biologically that is also his great plan. Let all the details be in his hands. We ultimately want to experience both, but the law doesn't allow us to do both at the same time. So, we continue down the adoption road and trust it to our Lord.
Since we discovered where the open door was for our family, it has been a smooth process full of confirmation and blessing. We now have completed our homestudy with our adoption specialist at Bethany who was wonderful by the way, and are awaiting our state's final stamp on it - which should be 45 days max.
So, here we are – eighteen months later from when we first took the obedient step to care for the fatherless and we are so thrilled.
Our eyes and hearts have been widened since then – through personal experiences of lending a helping hand to single mothers or an assaulted teen on the side of the road needing help at midnight and daytime; through attending support meetings for adoptive families and adoptees at local churches; through reading and more reading of various books and articles; through continued prayer for both our family and the child as God prepares and protects us all; through being able to share with family and friends our story and calling; and through being shown new opportunities to pray for those on the other side of this journey.
I hope to be able to write about more updates sooner than later this time.
Patiently waiting for the Lord's timing, together.
Until the next update ...
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