Starting the Adoption Journey

Ephesians 1:4-6

⁴ even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

June 23^rd 2010. It was our youngest daughter’s 2^nd birthday and Stew and I were in Chicago. We went out for dinner and Stew pulled out a map of the world and said, “it is time.”

For both of us, adoption had been a part of our lives. Many of our mentors have adopted children from all over the world. We ourselves had been adopted into God’s family as we both came to the saving faith in Jesus Christ, whom all salvation is from. Adoption was a part of our own lives. And we both desired to adopt a child when the time was to come.

So over dinner as Stew said those words to me and we looked at the map of the world, I knew that the time had come. So we prayed over all the countries asking God where our child was. We asked God to do the “impossible” and lead us forward no matter where that may be. We were excited and scared at the same time. The “timing” didn’t fit our “readiness” according to human logic. We were in the middle of paying off all of our debt. No savings for adoption fees. Not perfect parents or people. (that one is totally ludicrious) but, we continued praying.

And God has been faithful.

In September my husband met a man in a work meeting who was starting an adoption agency. That day he was getting license and needed families to begin the process. “where do we start”, stew asked. “I will send you an application”. Thus, we started the second step. We filled out an application and attended an adoption conference the next week.

Our steps have not been magical. They have been ordinary. And God has done the extraordinary before us along the way.

We are now in the process of adopting from Haiti. Everything about us adopting from Haiti doesn’t fit, except in God’s plan. We are learning that adoption has always been His ministry and His plan. And it is changing us each day.

We have a running list of what God is doing. He has given us favor with those in Haiti…shown us a few children to be praying for…provided over $4000 in 2 months…and sending us there in a week. And it keeps going with small stories that show us that this is HIS plan. We pray that God will do all things so that when times ahead get hard, we can look back and be certain God called us to this and will provide ahead to the end. We pray that our story will tell other, ordinary, unfit families, that God’s gift of adoption can be their journey too.

To be continued....