Before I write about our current experience with our (God-willing) adoption, I thought I'd give some background about how we got to this point.... It's a fairly long story, but I will condense it here. If you want to know more, feel free to ask!
For years, probably at least 10, I've wanted to be a foster mom. My grandparents were foster parents for years and maybe hearing stories as a child of their experiences made me think about that more than most people. Unfortunately, my husband didn't share that same desire. While I was not happy about the decision to not pursue foster care certification back then, I can see now that God had given my husband the wisdom to know that neither of us was prepared to take on that responsibility.
Fast forward several years.... We hosted a wonderful young girl from Belarus for 7 summers. We considered Alesia our "daughter", and for the last 3 years of her visits with us, we also hosted her younger brother, Kiril. What interesting times those were, with 4 kids in the house, each a year apart in age! They got along so well and Rich & I were both able to see how we could love children that were not biologically ours.
That hosting program ended and there was definitely a void in our house each year.....Enter the David Platt book, "Radical". This book challenged us to go beyond "church as usual" and really live out our faith in a radical way. In one chapter, Platt talks about his own experience with orphans and adoption and that got me thinking.... what could our family do to help orphans? In the age of the internet, the answer was as easy as a Google search, which led us to an orphan hosting program in Atlanta, GA.
Our "plan" to host went something like this: we'll host ONE orphan from Russia....OK, we'll host from Ukraine....Oh, those 2 siblings are adorable, let's choose them....What if we are to adopt them?....Yes, we're adopting them!....Maybe we'll adopt....We're definitely NOT adopting them!
That's the short story.... But once the decision was made to not adopt K & M from Ukraine (we were not the family for them; God had 2 other wonderful families chosen for them- another LONG story!), adoption had not left my brain. I would look daily at the NC Waiting Children website and see the 200+ children already free for adoption just in our state. And so I asked the question of my husband- if we were so willing to adopt from Ukraine, why not consider adopting through foster care?
I was nervous about Rich's answer...if he said no, I was ready to accept that. If he said yes..... and he did! I was quite shocked for several days and kept asking if he was serious. And he was! Several months and countless hours of classes and paperwork later, we are waiting on our Homestudy to be scheduled so that we can be certified as foster parents and begin the process of matching with a child (or children!) who we might be able to adopt!
I have mentioned to several friends that there are days where I think "I can do this!" and there are just as many days where I wonder what we are thinking! Those days, I just read the verse I have posted under the title of our blog and remember that WE can't do this, but GOD can!
No comments:
Post a Comment