In the First Place...

In most areas of my life, I feel pretty organized, pretty "on top of it," but for some reason, when it comes to this blog, all of my posts feel "scattered" to me. It's probably because I just sit down when I have a free minute here and there, and just start typing, without really knowing what I'm going to write about beforehand. That said, it just occurred to me that I've never really posted about how we came to be adopting in the first place...

Nathan and I had never talked about adoption until the birth of our stillborn baby boy (Silas) in September 2005. At that time, we didn't know if having healthy biological children was an option for us. But, we had just started considering adoption when we became pregnant with our girls. When the girls were a few years old, we became pregnant again and lost another baby (Job) in February 2009. It was after our second loss, that we started seriously thinking/praying about adopting a little one. And then all of these "crazy" things started happening that seemed to confirm that we should indeed move in that direction...

First, we sat with some old friends (who we rarely see as they live in a different town than us) at a mutual friend's wedding. These friends had recently adopted a little girl from Russia, and they shared their experience, and told us about a really great agency called AGCI...

The following week, we were visiting my parents and went to their church with them on a Sunday morning, and there "just happened to be" a family there, visiting from Oregon, with 3 biological children and a 1-year-old adopted daughter who they'd just brought home from Ethiopia...and they'd worked with AGCI...

A short time later, I was asleep one night and woke up in the middle of the night, fully alert and feeling like I had to wake up right then and read the story in Acts about Phillip and the Ethiopian. So, I did. Just hopped out of bed at 3:00 a.m. and read Acts 8 over and over and over again, and prayed over the country of Ethiopia and her people.

At this time, neither Nathan or I had told anyone about the Lord laying adoption on our hearts, and one particular night, we decided to pray specifically for confirmation about whether or not we should adopt at this time. The next day, I got this e-mail from my sister-in-law:

You have been in my thoughts and prayers quite often lately. I am very, very, very apprehensive to attribute things to God without certainty that He is the one moving me, rather than my own motivations or something, but I have to tell you that every time I pray about adoption, you come to mind and I feel a strong urge to to share something with you. For about a year, I have resisted saying anything because I didn't want it to be from my own mind and lips, or to make you feel pressured. But now I realize that I don't even know what God is doing with this, so it is presumptuous of me to think I know that I will make you feel awkward or something by sharing. I have continually asked God for discernment on my part, and I just feel like obedience tells me to share this with you, and to keep praying for your guidance. So this is what I have tried to find excuses to not share with you, because I was worried about your response:

I know it sounds weird (but then again, what is normal when we try to follow Jesus?!), but I felt like I should tell you that you can be used for adoption. I pray that my heart and words are pure and from God alone. I would not share this unless I felt like it would be wrong not to. I am praying fervently for you, particularly about this, because I don't get these kinds of..."impressions" or whatever you want to call them every day. I don't know what any of this means, but I trust that God will work in you and around you, and I will continue to pray for you. I pray that you will be blessed with discernment, whatever that means. May God be with you.

We just looked at each other after reading this e-mail and said, "Ok, this is it; we're going for it!"

We contacted a number of different adoption agencies, including AGCI, and asked lots of questions. We quickly realized that all of the agencies we'd checked into essentially required adoptive couples to prevent conception for the duration of the adoption process (up to 18 months). We weren't sure we were ready to prevent conception at that time. After another specific late-night talk, Nathan and I (mostly I) decided that preventing conception didn't make much sense (way to rely on human wisdom here), and we e-mailed the AGCI lady (Lorrinda, I believe) and said, "Never mind. We don't think we're ready to prevent conception right now." She was good with that. But, the night I sent that e-mail both Nathan and I slept fitfully and woke up in the morning realizing that we'd made the wrong decision, that after all of the aforementioned confirmations, to not adopt at this point would be disobedient for us. So, I e-mailed Lorrinda back, and said something like, "I hope you don't think we're complete flakes, but we've changed our minds and we do feel ready to prevent conception at this time." So, that's when it all began - pre-application, application, home study, dossier, US-CIS, fingerprinting, etc. :)

And now you know how we came to be adopting in the first place (if you made it to the end of this incredibly long post) :)