Ever since my husband and I were dating, we have discussed adoption. In the Book of James, 1:27, we are told to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. I’m not sure if this is why adoption has always been in the back of my mind or not.
A few years into our marriage, we first started throwing around the idea of having children, though having a child naturally never came to our minds. We wanted to adopt. Our church was bringing some Ukrainian children in to stay for a few weeks and those children could be adopted if we so should choose. After deliberating, we decided to meet with the woman in charge of this program. Come to find out Ukraine would not allow the youngest child to stay with us because I wasn’t old enough. I was just 23 and I had to be 26. We met every other stipulation though.
So feeling a bit down from that, we decided to discuss with the woman doing a full-on international adoption. We really wanted to but the price tag and wait time was a bit cumbersome. So we started looking elsewhere. We were steered in the direction of fostering to adopt. For a whole month and a half we spent every Saturday at the Child Services building taking classes to prepare us for this process. Four months after completion of those classes, we still hadn’t heard anything. Come to find out our papers were lost–as if we hadn’t even done the requirements.
By this time we decided we would start to try naturally for our family. Many of things ensued, and in fact, trying to have a family of our own was very challenging in all its facets. We had clear signs we weren’t to adopt at that time. Then we had a miscarriage, struggled with infertility, difficult pregnancy, difficult birth (NICU stay). A year after our son was born we were ready for our next child and gave no thought to adoption.
But now that our daughter is weaned and nearing her 1st birthday, the topic has come up again. Dustin and I have become fond of watching documentaries from different countries. Many of the documentaries feature the lives of children. I cannot fathom the life these children have nor how the citizens just allow children to live on the streets. Children in some other countries are not even second or third class citizens; some animals are treated better than the children!
I’m not sure what God has in store for us, but this is something Dustin and I don’t take lightly and have considered many times and it seems like this is what our family is meant to do… at some point!
Have you thought about adoption? Are you an adoptive family? What’s your story?
