So much has happened since my initial post announcing that we are answering the call to adopt. Where do I start? Well, lets start where we left off on the last post. We have been seeking the Lord and asking Him to show us what direction He intends for us to step in. After much much MUCH prayer and fasting, we have heard from Him :)...but just to keep you interested and to show you just how BIG the God we serve is, I want to take you down the road we traveled to get to where we are today. We began by praying through countries and asking the Holy Spirit to lay places or burdens on our hearts that He wanted us to pursue.
We started really being burdened for orphans in Africa, so with much prayer we explored the countries in Africa that we would be eligible to adopt from. We decided that we would pursue any country we felt God giving us permission to explore and that was supported by the agency we had prayed about and felt confident in using. We agreed that when we felt God closing the door on that corner of the world, we would be obedient without hesitation, not trying to hold a closing door open. No matter how bad it hurt our hearts to let it close. God's ways are higher, we can't understand Him. Praise God we don't have to understand Him we just have to trust Him! amen?
Having been to Uganda when he was a teenager, Jake has a broken heart and intense burden for the precious Ugandan babies who are being abandoned and orphaned daily. We prayed and looked into their requirements, which we met, but the way they do adoption didn't sit right in our hearts. We were a little sketched out by the fact that you don't actually adopt the baby when you go pick him up, you apply for guardianship, bring him back to the states and then start the adoption process. Meanwhile, if there is a change in government or they shut the door to outside adoption or change adoption requirements or policies before the adoption in finalized then they can come and "repossess" your baby, taking him back to Uganda and you will likely never see or hear from your child again. If you are at all familiar with recent Ugandan history you know that this could easily happen with their current unstable government. We had no peace, I am sure that this option is right for some people, but our Spirit would give us no peace when we prayed. Next, we felt lead to pray about Ethiopia, after a lot of prayer, we really thought this was it...this is where the next Hendon baby was going to come from...wrong. Turns out, due to the high volume of interest in Ethiopian orphans, the agency we had decided to go with, was taking a hiatus from adoptions in Ethiopia. Really? Yes, I guess the demand was outweighing the supply. Praise God! What a wonderful problem to have: too many people wanting to adopt, and not enough orphans :)....so in obedience we moved on to another country...The Congo...this part of Africa has always elicited fearful emotions in me, largely in part to the book, "Heart of Darkness" that I was required to read in my high school English class haha, but I promised at the start of this journey to be open to wherever the Lord lead, so to The Congo we went, in our hearts and minds anyway. Just when I felt myself becoming attached to the idea of The Congo giving us our new baby, I mean literally a week after I got warmed up to the idea, I am notified that the Congo has closed their doors to outside adoption. Are you kidding me? What are you doing to us, Lord??? Needless to say, at this point, He more than had our attention. We began asking the Lord if He was closing the door on the entire continent of Africa? Was Africa our desire and not His for our family? He was. It was. We had to get over the fact that our desire was not His desire. His ways are higher, remember? So we decided that our prayer would be for Him to shape our desires to become an exact match to His. This takes time. A lot of time. Hence the lack of updates. I cannot update you on things that the Lord has not yet "updated" us on haha. Okay, so Africa is out, and that only leaves a few countries that have requirements which we as a family meet. We loved the idea of adopting from China, but who doesn't!? As a whole, those babies are the cutest babies in the world in my humble opinion. But its worth mentioning that as a youth pastor and stay at home mom, we will never meet the income requirement set by the Chinese government. ha! Moving on to more realistic options, we looked into countries in Russia, Asia, and South America but no matter how bad we wanted it or how much we prayed, we could not get peace. About anywhere.
Meanwhile in the background of my life, everything I read, watched and listened to would have some little nugget about domestic adoption and the need for people to care for and love the hurting orphans of our nation. At first my heart was a little, okay a lot, guarded. I was very nervous about domestic adoption for a lot of reasons, but mostly because of the potential for the birth parents to find us down the road (there are ways), forcing their way into our lives and disrupting the bond we had worked so hard to form with our precious adopted child. Or even worse was my fear that when my child got older, they would seek out their "real mom". Leaving me as just some lady who raised them while their "real mom" got it together or decided she wanted to be a mom. It scared me and selfishly I wanted no part of that drama.
Faithfully, and like He always does, God softened my heart. Through people, books, blogs and especially His Word, God showed me that if I am the mom that He has called me and equipped me to be to this precious child then I shouldn't feel threatened at the possibility of that child one day seeking a relationship with their birth parents or vice versa. An intense and miraculous peace started to grow and take over my heart. I knew where God was leading us. Domestic adoption. I couldn't wait to share it with Jake, but the Lord impressed on my heart that I was to keep this revelation to myself and wait on Him to reveal it to Jake in His perfect time. So I kept it to myself, we share everything so this was definitely supernatural strength that enabled me to be obedient.
One night, about three weeks later, while I was cooking supper, Jake came in and shared his heart with me. He told me that God had been showing him things and while he was not making a unilateral decision that affected our whole family, he wanted me to know that God was really opening his eyes and heart to the need in our own "backyard". That he had started to feel extremely burdened for babies here in the United States. Especially, the babies who are being aborted daily. He shared me with that he felt the Lord pushing us in that direction. To be a part of the solution to our own hurting nation. To be an option for a pregnant birth mom who feels abortion is her only option. About midway through this conversation, I just started to smile, I couldn't help it. I didn't want to interrupt my husband so I continued to listen while smiling uncontrollably. At the end, when he was finished, he asked me what my deal was? ha! Why I was smiling? He didn't expect that reaction at all, in fact, he was a little apprehensive about telling me, afraid I wouldn't feel the same way. I felt the Lord giving me permission, telling me that now was the time to share His revelation. So I told Jake all about what the Lord had been showing me and how he had softened my heart and given me confidence and peace about this direction He was leading us in. Even though we continued to pray and seek the Lord, the decision to adopt domestically was made that night. Such a long grueling process and then just like that the decision was made. The Holy Spirit was leading, we were just along for the ride. Hanging on for dear life.
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