I have been extremely nervous and excited to talk about this on the blog for quite some time now. I kept waiting for that “right” moment to break the news. The moment where all the stars align and I say “Today is the perfect day to tell the world….”
Except I kept finding that no day was ever the perfect day.
I worried about how people might receive the news.
Will they be happy for us? Will they be faithful in praying for us? Will they think we have lost our marbles?
So I decided that no day will ever be perfect and the sooner that we have your prayers…the easier this process will become.
And if I’m being honest…I am nervous right now to click publish…
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We are adopting.
There I said it.
I am so glad that is off my chest.
Phew.
I know what your thinking.
“Mandy, you already have 3 kids, why on Earth would you need to adopt?”
Your right. We have been blessed BEYOND belief with 3 biological children of our own. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to get pregnant and carry a child. I am so grateful to have my boys.
At the same time, I feel like our family is not complete. I also feel like God has put adoption on my heart for quite some time.
I think I always knew that I wanted to be a mother. From the day I learned to play with baby dolls I had that “motherly instinct”. It wasn’t until I was in college when I began to think about how cool it would be to not only have my own children (if God so allowed), but to also be able to adopt a child that needed a family.
I can’t say that the thought crossed my mind much more until this past year. I just felt the thought of adopting keep coming to my mind. Over and over and over.
God is funny like that, right?
I was actually thinking….wow…I’m a lunatic for thinking these crazy thoughts. And God, your even crazier for putting these thoughts in my head.
And then one day I got the courage to ask my husband what he thought about my crazy thoughts.
It went something like this:
Husband walks in from work and sits down at the table.
Wife says, “So babe…I have something I want to talk to you about.”
Husband looks at wife like “Uhhhhhhhh oh crap…what did I do now.”
Wife giggles.
Husband is thoroughly confused.
Wife can not get the words out because she is so nervous he will reject her idea and think she’s looney.
Husband stares.
Wife finally blurts out (as she is looking in a completely different direction – in hopes of not facing the weird face she is about to receive), “Soooo………………what do you think about adopting a baby?”
PAUSE>
PAUSE>
AND MORE PAUSE>
Husband is the coolest husband on the planet and actually doesn’t shoot my idea down.
Yea. That’s how this all began.
There really was no easy way of bringing it up. I am so thankful that he didn’t just dismiss my idea, but that he actually heard me out.
We began praying about it and asking God to reveal to us if this was the right decision. For me, I knew instantly what God was asking. For my husband, it took him a little longer.
After a few months of praying and researching and thinking and praying, I made my first phone call to an adoption agency (in January 2012).
We will be adopting from the Phillipines (my husbands nationality). It’s going to be a long process. Right now the wait time for a child from the Phillipines is 3 years. Yes…THREE years.
We just finished up our adoption training last week and are closer to having our homestudy complete. It would be so great if you could pray for us through this?
I will be writing about our journey the whole way through. Don’t worry, this blog won’t become an adoption blog, but I will throw in posts on how it’s going here and there. In fact, I have already been writing the posts since we started over 3 months ago.
I think six is our number. The number that will make our family complete.
Similarly, bringing a person into a family by means of adoption is done by choice and out of love. “His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave Him great pleasure” {Ephesians 1:5}. As God adopts those who receive Christ as Savior into His spiritual family, so should we all prayerfully consider adopting children into our own physical families.
But, it works for my daily routine.
