We are on a journey. An adoption journey, that is. We began this season of our lives in March 2014 and can’t believe we’re a little over a year into this adventure!
We are a blended family already. Between us, we have five biological children and two grandchildren (and we also currently have a little one-year-old foster son). Our children range in age from 14 to 25, and our little grands are one and three-years-old. A question we hear often when sharing about our choice to adopt…
WHY????????????????????
I’m sure it’s hard to understand, as we’re actually nearing a time in our life when things typically start to settle down, and we might even have more time for each other without all the distractions of parenting. Perhaps we could travel more, as I’m sure our parental financial responsibility will also diminish over time, as our children continue to get married, go off to college and begin their own careers. We’ll have time to rest more, play more, and simply do as we please. So, you might be thinking like so many others…
WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD YOU MESS ALL THAT UP BY ADOPTING MORE CHILDREN?????????????????
In short, we don’t feel like we’re messing up anything. Allow me to explain:
1) Our hearts have been forever broken for orphans around this world. As Christians, we are commanded to care for orphans and widows, and we take that very seriously (I also happen to be a former widow). While caring for orphans doesn’t always equate to adoption, in our particular case…we know it does. We know this is what God’s been preparing us for, and we’re choosing to obey His calling.
2) We love children, and we’re not scared of big families. We’ve already experienced so many incredible blessings in this life (yes…even with children in tow) and don’t expect this time of starting over, so to speak, to completely hamper our continued plans to live abundantly (yet simply) this amazing life we’ve been given. Children enhance our life, in all actuality, not detract from it.
3) There over 153 million orphans worldwide, and only a small percentage will ever be adopted. We can’t fathom being in similar shoes (or having our own children in similar shoes). What if we had been born in a different part of the world, in a country unable to care for their own abandoned children, into famine and disease and ended up orphaned? It could have easily been us, but we were blessed with this life instead. And yet…to whom much is given, much is expected. And so, we choose to help make a small dent in that 153 million by adopting a sibling group from Eastern Europe. We’ve been approved for up to three children, of either gender, and we’re currently in the process of waiting for a referral. That could be a short wait or a long wait, but we press on towards that goal.
4) We want to give children an opportunity to be raised by a mommy and daddy within the body of a family – rather than the institutional confines of an orphanage, as the majority are in the country of Eastern Europe from where we’re adopting.
We know this journey is hard. We’ve lived the paperwork bureaucracy of an international adoption already (with more to come). We have to raise every penny for our adoption, as it was nothing we had budgeted, especially with our biological children in or nearing college. Adoption fundraising is exhausting, but yet we continue for the children we have yet to hold in our arms.
Some of you may still consider us crazy. That’s okay. That’s your choice. However, we couldn’t be happier to be on this amazing journey…in spite of the good, the ugly, and the hard…or the fact we almost have an empty nest! We press on to bring our children home!
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