Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress...James 1:27

Our Story

**God is amazing. Before any other words are written to document this story- those words have to be heard. Brad and I are continually amazed and in awe at how our heavenly father speaks to our hearts, puts us in situations, and confirms His heart in our own. His timing, His plan, His heart. These are all things we have some knowledge on in our faith walk the past 34 years of our lives...but what blows us away is that our story isn't over. God is looking the world over for willing hearts to share His vision and love for the entire world. Our story, our world, and our imagined future are about to be changed. We are more than thankful to allow God another opportunity in our stories to show us His faithfulness, His goodness, and His ultimate plan for our lives here on earth. Our time here is short- but we want to make a powerful impact during it. We are thankful that God's word, the Bible, has given us a tried and true, sure fire way to make our time here on earth count.**

All of that to preface our announcement that .....God has placed the calling of adoption on our hearts and into our family story! We have walked around, talked about, and prayed about adoption for a few years now. I will attempt to lay out the process of how we have gotten to this very exciting moment in time.



Brad and I were blessed with three precious biological daughters back to back to back. We prayerfully made the decision for our family to take a rest after our third child, and I had a tubal ligation after my c-section with Hannah. We have always said we did not foresee us having any more children biologically- but would always leave the door open to adopt one day down the road.

And here we are down the road. 4 years later- to the date to be exact- October 25, 2015 and Brad and I start the discussion of seriously pursuing adoption. But of course there is some backstory. As a mother- I feel like my heart was always softened to the idea of adoption from the simple understanding of a mother-child relationship. It broke my heart to think of precious souls out there with no one to love and nurture them. Through out the past 4 years God has lead us to watch and befriend several close families as they have gone through the adoption process- domestic and international. We have listened and gotten familiar with a lot of foster and adoptive circles and always felt brokenhearted each November when Orphan Awareness hit the front lines of our church.

 About one year ago I brought up the notion to Brad and we seriously prayed about if it was the right time and the right move for our family to start the adoption process. My very best friend Melissa and I would talk DAILY about how heavy the burden was on our hearts to just do SOMETHING to help. Was it to foster? Adopt? Volunteer? We both started reading, meeting with informed people, and just really searching for ways to get involved and educated on this matter. As a couple, Brad and I would pray each night before bed asking for both Brad and my heart to be lead in the same direction, with the same peace to move forward. Brad wasn't feeling the same peace and excitement that I had at the time. He was open to praying and thinking on it- but didn't feel lead to adopt at that point in time.

God answered our prayer in a very real way last spring by bringing our family into a trial that wouldn't allow for much added excitement to our family. Brad was diagnosed with cancer in March of  2015 and all of our focus turned to treating him and getting his health back to normal. Praise the Lord we walked through that chapter of our life and God has healed Brad's body and he is cancer free since May 2015. We endured a surgical operation, and then one round of chemotherapy for Brad. Our prayers and our focus shifted to total dependence on God for healing during this time.


God spoke clearly to my heart about adoption. I knew I didn't "need" more children in our family. I am not feeling "incomplete" or "unfinished". My heart is truly broken for these real life souls who are sitting in orphanages...with no one to show them the hope of Jesus. Being willing, and amply available to be agents of change in a persons life..I kept hearing the phrase "if only ONE person is impacted for eternity with Jesus, then your purpose is played out." I felt confident that we were being called to impact ONE more little life in our family.

Every now and then I would be revisited by the thoughts of adoption, but decided that I wouldn't bring up the thoughts or even talk seriously (for fear of pushing it on him) about adoption until I heard the words from Brads lips. I knew God had been working in my heart and I felt confident, but I wanted to see God work and believed that he would change Brads heart if it was meant to really happen. Sometimes waiting is hard- but seeing the amazing hand of God work in your own life is worth the wait.

When we moved a year and a half ago, I started praying that God would direct me in finding my "niche" or my mission field. Would it be youth work? Work with women? Or simply focus on my own family as we homeschool this year and grow as a family. In Little Rock I was able to pour into the medical spouses that I encouraged through our Side by Side Bible study. But here, now,  I wasn't getting any answers. I was frustrated. Here I was asking God to confirm a calling for my life, heart, time, energy, and He was staying silent. I began to believe that God must be wanting me to simply stay put and focus on my immediate ministry of my girls and our family right now. I began to feel a heavy burden for mission work. We started praying for missions opportunities for Brad and I both to venture into. I have had a strong love for missions and my soul has a sort of "international" brand on it- from my childhood years spent overseas in Korea. God places things in your heart that are meant to stir up a passion and action in each and every one of us. Discovering what breaks your heart is the ticket to finding where God wants to use you.

God answered my prayer in His timing on Hannah's 4th birthday- October 25, 2015.  Brad and I are sitting around the dinner table talking as the girls played around us. He started talking about how he missed having a little one around and how sweet they used to be. And continued...what if we had one? Not biologically of course,..but adopted one. I listened, and then continued in conversation for a little about it. That evening we talked again and I told him about how I had been allowing God to lead and was patiently waiting for his heart to bring the idea up again. We talked and prayed some more and this time...Brads heart felt differently. This time he felt like we were ready to take some steps. As we talked and prayed about it the next 2 days God was molding our hearts together- isn't it amazing how God does that? Brad was asking me some FAQ about adoption and so I simply googled one of the agencies that I had heard about from some friends, and as Brad said the words "I wish there was a formal informational meeting we could go to" I clicked on a sidebar that listed this agencies next meeting. It was the next day,October 26. It JUST so happened to be in HUNTSVILLE. And it JUST so happened that we didn't have any plans on our calendar for that evening.  No, it did not JUST happen- we give God credit when He shows up in cool situations like that. So we rsvp YES to the informational meeting the following day. Also- it JUST so happened that my friend could come keep the girls in order for us to attend this meeting.

And so we went. We heard about Lifeline's heart for adoption and both felt drawn to their underlying passion of showing orphans foster children, birth moms, and families the gospel love of Jesus. Brad and I left the meeting and felt on the same page about pursuing International Adoption.We both believed that there is NO greater visual of Gods love for us- His adoption of us into His own family. Someone who didn't deserve it, someone without hope, someone who was alone and in need of saving. Brad and I were very excited and somewhat overwhelmed by the idea of stepping out in obedience, and faith! But we were ready.

 One of the most important decisions we had to make on our first application was which country we would adopt from. After praying, and researching and asking a lot of questions, we chose China. All things Asia are special to me- but that isn't the main reasoning behind choosing China.

Things we had to consider when discovering where and which country we could adopt from internationally:
-The Lifeline agency we chose works with 16 different countries
-The travel time spent in country when adopting varies from 5 days to 3 months.
-The age of children that can be adopted from 12 months to 16.
-The time period it can take in order to bring a child home from 11 months to 3 plus years.
-The relationship and rapport that Lifeline has with the officials in the countries.

Here is what we discovered about China and why we ended up choosing China.
-Lifeline has the longest relationship with adoptions in China- they have professional relationships with many organizations and government agencies that expedite and almost always turn out to be problem free adoptions. The positive relationship and ease that China has with the agency is a huge plus.
-The travel time required by China is only 5-10 days. This works within the limits of Brads vacation time and would be possible for us to do as a family of 5.
-Children can be as young as 12 months when adopted. We feel that keeping the birth order in our family is important to us and we would want to bring in a child as young as possible.
-On average- the time from application to bringing home a child from China is around 12 to 24 months. We were not keen on the idea of finding our child, and then having to support him/her for years before having them in our home. IF our child is 12 months plus upon adopting...then our sweet little blessing could already be born.

Please begin to pray for our family. We have a long road ahead of us but couldn't be more hopeful for bringing home our 6th family member. The girls are thrilled and elated that they will be getting a new sibling..male or female is yet to be determined!! Pray for peace, affirmation in decisions, and a heart full of faith throughout our adoption.

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