Yes, that's right.....our family is adopting. For most of you, this isn't something new. Most of you have known about this for a while, but some of you are hearing it for the first time. So far, this has been both an amazing and difficult learning experience all wrapped into one. For those of you who have been through the adoption process, are currently going through it, or know someone who's gone through it know exactly what I mean! Our story is nothing out of the ordinary, but I thought I'd take time to share it.
From the beginning of our marriage (and even before), Lance has always had a heart for adoption. He's mentioned adopting from day one. Right after we had Kelsey, he suggested it, and my response was..."Why would we do that?! We are having kids of our own!" Selfish, I know! That was the end of that, and it hadn't been brought up much since then.
Fast forward 8 years......God has blessed us with 3 beautiful, healthy children. They are growing up so quickly, each with a wonderfully unique personality. They are independent and SO much fun. We are done having kids. My pregnancies each got a little more difficult, and we were perfectly content with 3 kids. Then, last summer, out of the blue, God plants a little seed in my heart: Adoption. What?! For months, I struggled if this was really from God, or if this was me. I prayed and prayed.....God if this isn't from You, please take this desire away from me! But the desire didn't go away....it only got stronger. I heard about adoption everywhere: on the radio, tv, church sermons, facebook, etc. So I decided I needed to talk with Lance about what I was feeling. Maybe I should have told him sooner, I don't know. I just wanted to be sure.
When I brought the subject up with Lance, he was a little hesitant. His thoughts were that he had wanted to do this years ago, and now we have 3 kids who are older and more independent. By the time we get our child, our other 3 will be that much older....do we really want to start from the beginning again? Very good points. We took a couple of months to really think and pray about this, talk to our kids about it, and finally realized that yes....this is what God is calling us to do. Wow......
From this point, we weren't really sure what to do, but I had seen something about Loving Shepherd Ministries helping people get started with adoption. So, that's where we started. We filled out an application with them. We were very open with this idea. We had no specific country in mind, nor did we know which adoption agency to go with.....we were trying to let God lead us through everything. LSM was very helpful. They gave us several agencies to look into and also told us which countries we were eligible for. God slowly started closing doors on pretty much all countries except one.....Ethiopia. As far as agencies go, we looked into several and ended up with Bethany Christian Services. We liked it that they have an office close to home (Indianapolis), and they are a Christian company. We submitted our preliminary application and then formal application to them and were accepted in December 2011.
Like I said before, this experience has been amazing and difficult all at the same time. We have learned SO much about adoption and about Ethiopia, and we are truly amazed. God has opened our eyes to so many things!
We submitted our dossier September 7. It went to Washington D.C. to be authenticated and is currently on it's way to Ethiopia. It is definitely a relief to be done with the mountains of paperwork (for now), but it is also tough to know that now we just wait. There is nothing at all we can do to keep things moving. I remind myself daily that this is in God's hands, and it is in God's timing. So please pray for us throughout the rest of this journey. Pray for patience and wisdom and for God to prepare our hearts and lives for what He has in store for our family. Thank you in advance for your love and support! We love you all!
Here it is.....our dossier:-) Ready to be sent off!!!
