We are expecting baby number THREE! But not quite the way you
think… We are both excited and
anxious to announce that we have officially begun the international adoption
process to adopt our next child from China. As most of you may know, we have talked about the
possibility of adopting somewhere down the road for a couple years, but
recently God has specifically laid on our heart that now is the time. This letter is not intended to take the
place of the many months and years of conversations to come, but help us convey
a straightforward, well-organized explanation of our decision.
First, we will walk you through what we have been doing over
the past 8 months, and how we have come to the point of submitting our formal
application and finishing our home study in hopes of bringing an orphaned child
into our family.
Why are we adopting
(Theologically and Morally)?
As Christians we believe that we live in a broken world,
caused by sin that we have all been born in to from our heritage as children of
Adam & Eve and their disobedience in Genesis. Because of this sin, we are
all orphans removed from God’s family. But, and only because of his grace and
mercy, we have been made acceptable to God and our sin has been washed clean
through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. Scripture repeatedly talks about our
adoption as sons and heirs through Christ. We weren’t born into it, we didn’t
earn it, we don’t deserve it, and still it is just given to us for no good
reason at all. Laura and I look at this adoption in the same light. Somewhere
there is a child with no mother or father, abandoned because they were not
perfect or couldn’t be provided for. We want to show a child the love they
would never be able to experience unless we offered it freely with no expectations
of repayment or perfection from them.
In the book Adopted for Life, by Russell Moore, we
see that adoption offers no greater picture of our heavenly Father’s love for
us. It says in Romans 8:15 “the
Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry,
'Abba, Father." This means we are not just made acceptable to God through
Christ, but we are truly branded as sons and daughters, complete with an
inheritance and brothers and sisters and unconditional love.
Clearly, we feel that there are two important reasons we
want to convey to all of you about why we have decided to adopt. First, we
believe in God, and his goodness to us by grace alone. Secondly, after
researching the current conditions many children live in at orphanages across
the world, we are crazy for not wanting to do something about it for at least
one child. We do not believe this means everyone is called to adopt. We believe that God has specifically
called us to adopt at this point in our lives. Here are some good resources to
help you understand our heart for this:
-Adopted for Life, book by Russell D. Moore
-Somewhere Between, documentary film on netflix
-Stuck, documentary film on netflix
-Adoption: Pondering the Privileges: Galatians 4:4-7 by Tony
Merida at Summit Church, sermon podcast on 7/21/2013
The decision of
International
Last July we began to pray specifically about adoption and
what God may have in his plans for us. In the past we have given financial
assistance to another family who was going through adoption, but God was
working on our hearts a little different this time. We initially thought if we
were to adopt, we would adopt domestically. After seeing this process first hand at the Christian Life
Home in Raleigh, we thought it was something we could handle and the costs were
relatively low.
Typically there are two ways to adopt domestically: one is
through the foster system and the other is adopting a domestic infant through
an agency. Laura began the process of contacting our local county foster system
to find out more information.
After many phone calls we found out that we only qualified to adopt a
child from the foster system who is over 6 years old. If we wanted a younger child we would have to foster the
child first. We were open to this,
but they told us we did not qualify to foster because we were considered too
mobile of a family (potential of moving due to John’s job). We felt God had made it pretty clear
the foster system was not the route he had for us.
We were still open to domestic
infant and decided to attend an adoption interest meeting in September led by
Bethany Christian Services. It was
about a 90min drive, past Orlando.
We arranged childcare for Everett and attended the 3 hour meeting. There were about 4 couples there. All of which were infertile trying to
adopt their first child. It made
it a slightly awkward when we walked in with our 6 month old in a stroller. 2 of the couples even coming up to us
and saying “why are you here.”
These are the exact questions we expect people to ask and are excited to
dialogue with people. During a break, one of the social workers talked to
us. Her words were profound and we
will never forget them. While
explaining the difference in domestic vs. international adoption she said, “we
have waiting families (many infertile) here in the US who are anxiously
awaiting the next pregnant mom to walk through our doors, while we have waiting
children overseas anxiously awaiting a family that may never come.” As we left that meeting we both got in
the car and felt God was leading us down the international path.
Over the past 6 months we have met with other adoptive
families, one of the pastors at our church and been communicating with our
adoption agency. We submitted our
initial application in January, which gave the agency basic information about
us to see what countries we qualified for. The application didn’t cost any money and we were not
committed to the process yet. We
got word back that we qualified for Albania, Bulgaria, Colombia, China,
Ethiopia, Haiti, Hong Kong, South Africa, South Korea, and Uganda. One thing they never prepare you for in
school is how to chose a country to adopt from. So we began our research. Many of these countries only offer
adoption of older children, which was not something we were willing to
consider. We had always felt that Everett should remain the oldest child also
called keeping birth order. This
immediately eliminated many of the countries. Other issues we ran into were that some countries are no
longer accepting applications because the wait times have gotten so long, ie.
Ethiopia. Without going into all
the details we have decided that China is the best option for our family at
this time.
The unknown details
of our child
Bethany’s China program is tailored for children with “minor
correctable needs”. These babies
have been abandoned on the street most likely due to their problem. We know
that our child will have some kind of medical/physical condition. Examples could be cleft lip/palate,
clubbed foot, missing digits, anemia, epilepsy, scars. We had to go through extensive paper
work highlighting needs that we feel comfortable with. Of course this was a heartbreaking task
knowing that checking the “no” box to a specific condition could mean a child
being institutionalized for life.
This being said we have to be responsible for our marriage and current
children and will lean on God’s direction during the process. We are working
very hard with Bethany to identify needs that both they and us feel we can
handle.
We have asked Bethany to look at very young children. Our hope is that Nora (now 12 months)and
our new child will be 9 months apart when we bring him/her home from
China. It is crazy to think about,
but it’s possible that right now a Chinese baby has been abandoned and is in an
orphanage waiting for us. This orphan will be our son or daughter.
Time Frame
Adoption is a very long process. There is a lot of paperwork and a many government agencies
have to approve each step. This
takes time! We have recently
finished our home study and will soon be filing for immigration. Without going into to much detail we
hope to bring him or her home
summer or winter 2015.
Fears
I think the biggest fear is the unknown. What health problems
will he/she have? How will the other children adjust? How will we afford it?
How will our friends and family react? The irony of this experience is that
these are similar questions that we all ask when we are pregnant. For some reason we feel we have more
control when we carry the child to term ourselves, but in reality we really
don’t have much control at all.
The health issues/concerns our Chinese child will have could be the same
problems our next biological child could have had. We must believe that God’s plan is better than ours.
Pray for us
-Pray for this (potentially) unborn child in his/her
mother’s womb, that they would be loved even through early abandonment
-Pray for our patience through the ups and downs of a long
adoption process
-Pray for Everett and Nora’s hearts for their new little
brother or sister
-Pray for the funding we will need to raise
-Pray for immigration process, and our dossier
-Pray that lives would be changed for Christ and God would
have the glory
Future blogs:
The process of adopting from china
How much does it really cost?
Why are their more boys than girls?
What is the progress of the Chinese one child law?
Why are children abandoned in China?
And more as we go through the process.
We look forward to sharing with you throughout the
journey. Please feel free to
message us on facebook if you have any questions.
With Love
John and Laura
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