A Change of Heart

Ben and I (and our girls of course) are incredibly excited to finally announce that we have decided to begin the adoption process! God has been so clearly at work in our hearts as we have come to the point of making this decision. I can sit here and explain to you how God adopted us into his family and tell you how he has compelled us to answer his call to build our family in this way too. I can give you scripture to support our call to care for the orphan, but I think it may be most meaningful in this moment if I give you a window into God's work in my heart over the past year. You'll have to bear with me as this may be long, but God is just too awesome not to let his ways be seen. It is by his grace alone that this post can even be made.

(If you'd like to skip the full backstory and jump ahead to current happenings, you can find that here.)

For those of you who know us well, you probably are quite surprised by this news. From the time Thea was born, I had very concretely stated (with Ben's agreement) that we were done having kids. End of story. Two children in a 16 month time span was a doozy! We maintained that position, and even as my awareness of the need for and call to orphan care grew, I was so sure that my part in orphan care would be supporting others as a rope-holder. I came to love supporting adopting families (even some I had never officially met) through participating in their fundraising or helping them design and set up a blog just like this one. I had close friends who began the adoption process, and others who became foster parents. I admired them and prayed for them (and I still do).

Sometime in the summer of 2019, I was sitting with my girls in the "school room" doing a craft and I began to daydream about bringing another child into our family. When I realized the thoughts that were going through my head, I thought to myself, "what are you doing?!" I brushed it off and went on about my business. This continued to happen here and there over time, and then we began to make plans to move our youngest into a big girl bed for her third birthday. I'm the type of person that moves things out when we are done with them, and since we weren't planning on more kids I had been quickly donating or selling all of our baby gear as soon as she outgrew it. But, this time it was different. I couldn't shake the feeling that we should keep the convertible crib. It was then that it hit me... those thought's I'd been trying to ignore weren't just random daydreams. I whispered, "God, are you really doing this to me?" I'm not sure why I asked the question, because I clearly already had a pretty good idea what the answer was going to be. I guess I just wasn't 100% ready to fully accept it. But, I also knew that there was absolutely no way that Ben would be on board with this, so I kept my mouth shut and kept my growing (and somewhat reluctant) desire to adopt to myself.

Fast forward to December 2019, and Ben and I decided to steal away for a date night the week after Christmas while he was off work. We had a great time just the two of us and on the way home we began to discuss deeper things about how God was moving in our church. We talked about the scary possibilities of big steps God may ask us to take one day, like moving with a church plant for example. I shared with Ben that I hadn't felt called to do that at this time, and that when I felt like God was asking something big and somewhat scary of me I was usually quite certain what it was. I told him that usually the Holy Spirit will bring it to my mind over and over until I just can't deny it. Then I paused, contemplating if this was the time to try to bring up adoption. As we pulled into the garage, he put the car in park and said, "I think it's usually the same for me too. Actually, I've had something keep coming up recently and I want to see if maybe it's been the same for you..." At this point I'm literally holding my breath and thinking to myself, "don't say it, don't say it", because if he says it, there is no denying it and I'm not quite sure if I'm ready for that. Then, after only a few seconds that simultaneously felt like 20 minutes, out it came... "adoption." In that moment I knew, there is no going back - this is a done deal. God has called us to adopt. The mix of emotions that rushed over me in that moment are impossible to explain.

Once again, if you know me well, it also won't surprise you that I took my excitement and fear and nearly immediately dove into researching every possible option for adoption, haha. For a few months we talked about it occasionally, prayed over it, and just sat under God's word and an impeccably timed "chosen" series at church. On March 8th, we attended Mercy Hill's adoption and foster care interest meeting. It came at just the perfect time. For the previous two weeks our girls had been incredibly whiny and emotionally explosive little things. In hindsight, it was clearly an attack of the enemy as my mind tried to settle into feelings of inadequacy; "Who am I to think I can handle bringing in another child? I can't handle the two I have!" But that day, in our flustered and worn out state we sat and heard testimony after testimony of God's beautiful work in adoption and our hearts were encouraged and our call further confirmed.

In all of my research prior to this meeting, I was really trying to determine whether or not I felt more of a pull to international adoption or domestic adoption. I had a pretty heavy bend toward domestic adoption through a consultant group. I've always cared about the unborn and had in recent years become more passionate about caring for the mother's in these situations. Being a part of the answer to some of those problems through adoption seemed a natural fit. I think also the idea of bringing in a newborn rather than a toddler seemed a bit less intimidating to me. But when Ben and I would talk, I got the feeling he was really leaning toward the opposite and had more interest in international. It was the days following the interest meeting that I began to look a little more broadly into international adoption. A program to adopt from the Philippines caught my eye and I set up a phone call to discuss the program further with an adoption advisor. Her kindness and helpfulness were evident immediately when we began our conversation, and I felt so at peace talking to her. I was sitting there ready with my whole list of questions about the Philippines program. As she asked me questions and shared information with me about several programs, I felt my heart being tugged another direction. I can't put my finger on one specific thing, but this was the day Colombia found it's way into my heart. Within a matter of hours I was vacuuming the floors and daydreaming about traveling to Colombia. Even the thought of having to stay in country for 3+ weeks, possibly over half of that without Ben, wasn't really shaking me (this was initially the reason I passed over Colombia as an option). So, it was now time to continue to fast and pray and see if God brought Ben to the same conclusion.

I shared the details with Ben and we planned to take some more time to pray, and then COVID-19 hit and the whole world seemed to turn upside down overnight. Everything turned virtual and people all around us were facing pay decreases, loss of jobs, and other hardships. We knew that we have an unchanging hope in Christ, but processing the physical and relational changes that were happening so quickly was still taking up a good bit of our mental capacity. It was hard to imagine announcing an adoption and beginning to fundraise while we couldn't be face-to-face with our people and so many people were facing financial insecurity. I have to be honest, I was rather discouraged to have to "wait", but by this point I've already learned that God's timeline isn't always mine. A few weeks passed and we really hadn't had an intentional conversation to revisit the adoption plans at all, but then I received an e-mail about a $500 scholarship if you submitted your application during the month of May. I casually mentioned it to Ben in the car soon after and suggested we should maybe pray about moving forward. I didn't think he really seemed very interested or ready, so I just decided not to bring it up again. Another week (or two... it's honestly all a blur) passed and one morning I shot up a quick prayer and said, "God, if you want us to go ahead and move forward now, you'll have lead Ben to resume the conversation." Merely hours later, Ben walked in the door from work and within minutes of being home said, "I was thinking on the way home, and I just don't know what we're waiting on." Clearly, God is teaching me not to be surprised when he works in these ways.

That night, we talked a little more and scheduled another call with the adoption advisor to discuss the program and process more fully. That call started a wave of conversations, prayer, planning and decision making. Amidst all of this, I was convinced that we were actually officially starting this process and began to prepare this blog and design our fundraising shirts. We knew that we still had some family to bring into the loop on what we were planning, so we had those conversations and only 10 days after the "I don't know what we're waiting on" statement was made, we started filling out our application. Now, these applications are a bit of a beast...so, it took some time, but we officially submitted our application on Saturday, May 16th. Somehow, this journey is already so deep, yet it is really just beginning.

We are thrilled to have you in our corner, to pray with us, encourage us when the waiting feels long and the numbers feel big, and to support us along the way. Seriously, if you read this whole post, you're family now, so be sure to subscribe below and stick around!

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