So, after many months of not updating our blog (sorry!) I have some big news. And it is pretty big!
Jimmy and I have decided on our next great adventure… it’s pretty exciting though it’ll take a lot of patience and even more trust.
We are adopting!
Okay, I guess it’s more precise to say that we are planning to adopt and we have started the very looooong process to adopt a baby.
How did we get here? Well, adoption has been a part of our lives for several years now in a couple of different ways. The most obvious is our own adoption in to God’s family. I know, I know… is that a bit cliche? Maybe, but it’s also a reality and the biggest reason behind why we are choosing to adopt. In some ways adopting seems really scary. Most of it, or really all of it, seems out of our control. Adoption for us is a way of putting feet to our faith. We believe that God has adopted us, loves us, cares for, and keeps us no matter what. In our calling to become more and more like Christ we see adopting someone into our home and heart as responding to what God has already done for us.
This brings me to reason two for adoption: for whatever reason Jimmy and I haven’t been able to have children biologically. And while we remain open to this as a future possibility, we have set our hearts on growing our family through adoption. Adoption has always been on the table, even before we were married we knew we wanted to adopt someday. This makes reason two a rather small reason, but it has perhaps given us more of an incentive to finally act on our desire to adopt.
While there are plenty of other reasons we want to adopt, the last one I’ll mention is our own personal experience through the lives of others who have adopted. We know many families who have adopted multiple children and have been able to walk with them some as they experience the joys and heartaches of the process. This is especially true of our friends Heather and Joel who adopted their son Darin. My relationship with Heather and having the privilege to know Darin–he is one of the coolest kids the world has ever known–is probably where my own heart for adoption first developed. Anything that scares me about adoption is easily subsided when I think about Heather, Joel, Darin, and Arabella and Holden. They came into my life right when Darin came into theirs. In a way we all sort of became family together.
I’m also convinced that Jimmy will be the most amazing dad. I’m confident that the two of us together will make admittedly imperfect but incredibly loving parents. And I hope that I’ll make a good mom. I also know that our kid(s) will be so amazingly loved by their grandparents, aunts, uncles, church family, and friends. If nothing else, I know that this little person will be loved.
So, why now? What made us decide this was the moment in our lives that we were ready to adopt? Well, I don’t know if we actually feel ready, but there are a few things that have reassured us that we are moving in the right direction. The first being this: when Jimmy and I got married I told him that after we hit the three year mark we needed to start the adoption process. Three years was the required time that most of the adoption agencies in Houston require before a couple could adopt. Seemed logical enough to me that this was as good a time frame as any. Jimmy, however, didn’t quite feel ready for children. So, I told myself the time for adopting would be right when Jimmy approached me about, not vice-versa. Over the years we fluctuated on our feelings about children, Jimmy mostly remaining unsure about them while I wavered back and forth on wanting to get pregnant or adopt (at one point desperately wanting to adopt our sponsor child we actually got to meet from Kenya) to a period where I thought I might not want kids at all. Within the last couple of years that started to change and the desire to expand our family grew not just for me, but Jimmy as well.
We wanted to be parents! Though nothing really changed we thought maybe we’d finally get pregnant. Maybe now that we weren’t both in school, we both have stable jobs, are working towards being healthier, and maybe a bit more mature, now would be the time we had a baby.
Then it happened. A few months ago, Jimmy told me it was time for us to adopt. And I knew–I knew this was the time and that this was our next great adventure.
Once we decided to move forward we excitedly told our family and are happy for their support and love toward our decision. We are happy that we will hopefully be making them grandparents and aunts and uncles soon.
That’s the news my friends–though it admittedly feels less real than announcing a pregnancy because there’s so much waiting to be done–we are happy to announce our plans to adopt!
So, now begins the waiting game. We have been looking into a couple different options on how to adopt here in Washington and think we have figured out a few options that seem like a good fit. I’ll try and expand on that more in a future update. Until then we’d ask to you do something for us: pray. Pray for us as we make decisions about the logistics of this process. Pray for our finances–in most cases adoption costs A LOT. Pray for our patience and trust. And pray for the birth mom–whoever she may be–who will also be (we hope) a part of our family.
Yay! We’re adopting. 🙂
