In May 2009, during a conversation with friends, adoption came up and at that moment God whispered to my heart...I couldn't get it out of my mind. I immersed myself in learning more about the orphan crisis and adoption and I couldn't get those images, facts, and stories out of my heart. Often I would just sit and cry (actually, I was pregnant, so it was more like sobbing). I was crying for the children without a family and I was crying because I was overwhelmed with emotion at the fact that what began as a whisper was turning into a loud and definite calling.
After talking with Nathaniel we decided to pray and see if this was truly where God was leading us...since I was pregnant with Nora at the time we couldn't adopt a baby even if we had thought it was the right time (due to regulations on children order and age ranges by the agencies we had looked into) and maybe God was calling us to help orphans in another way since really it is kind of a crazy idea for a young family with a 2 year old and one child not even born yet, right?
Over the next year God didn't take the calling to adopt a baby off my heart, but we did have lots of other life changing events going on (that made adopting sound like an even crazier idea!) so it didn't consume me like it had in the first few months. Even though many things happened that could have easily led us off of the path of adoption we continued to pray for Him to open our eyes to what He wanted our family to do.
And, CRAZY thing, God put thing after thing, event after event, person after person, story after story about adoption in our face, and on our path, so that eventually it became so obvious to me that it was kind of funny.
Okay, I'm listening...I get it. He wants us to adopt. For sure.
While Nathaniel was open to adoption he wasn't necessarily on board. He kind of thought it was...well, CRAZY to do at this point in our lives. But like I said, he was open and if God is calling me to do something he wants to be open and obedient to that.
So early September our church offered a class on adoption that was led by
Gwen and Scott Oatsvall (amazing!). We decided to go and hear what they had to say. After hearing their story about their adoption process and how God is working through their lives and their adoptions we felt even more encouraged. We continued to be be in discussion and prayer over this big decision and felt like this was where God was leading us, not only through the people He had placed in our lives, but the words He had given us through scripture. So, we decided to take a leap of faith and be obedient to God's calling on us. We were nervous, excited and a little scared, but felt certain in our decision.
We knew we wanted to adopt from Ethiopia so we chose an adoption agency, sent in our application, and got approved in record time!
We would love for you to join in our journey on our blog as we plan to document this very special time in our lives as much as possible. Mostly, we covet your prayers for this journey that we have started. We know it may be a wild and crazy ride, but we have stayed in our comfort zone long enough and we are ready to step out and be crazy for God...and hopefully it's the start of a lot more craziness around here :)
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