Monday, October 4, 2010

so much to say

i wish i  could be better at articulating what is going on in my mind and heart right now. i will do my best but i know it will still some how come out murky.

this past weekend was wonderful, challenging, heart breaking, encouraging, productive and very very needed. gregg and i were able to attend the Together for Adoption conference that our church, along with several others, hosted here in austin. going into the conference i wasn't really sure what to expect but my hope was that we would get two main things out of it:

1. a confirmation that God is truly calling us to adopt and that we aren't just trying to do this on our own
2. direction for where and how to start our adoption journey

praise God, we walked away with both of those needs met.

during one of the main sessions saturday afternoon, i turned to gregg and told him i felt like i had spent 2 straight days crying-in a good way. i've been struggling lately with knowing if adoption if something God has truly called our family to do or if it's just something i want to do for my own selfish reasons. i feel like God made His call to my heart very clear over the weekend. driving home friday night, gregg asked me what i thought about the first day. when i tried to respond i couldn't even speak-at the risk of sounding "corny" i told him that i felt a physical weight on my heart for the orphan. i told him that God was breaking my heart all over again for the homeless children and that i was so grateful to Him for making His will for our lives clear to me.

throughout the weekend we kept hearing again and again about the number of children in the U.S. foster care system. and then we would hear the number of Christian churches in the U.S.  there are approximately 500,000 children in foster care in the U.S. and approximately 300,000 protestant churches. hearing these numbers, broke something in my spirit. if the church, people who profess to be followers of Christ, were responding to the needs of the these children, wouldn't we be able to meet this need entirely?

going into the conference gregg and i had pretty much decided to pursue domestic infant adoption through a private agency. after getting a clearer picture of the desperate need for families for the children in the foster care program, we've decided to make that the route we pursue first. we are planning to go to an informational on getting started next week and see where things go from there. there is a training process and some things we need to get settled on our end before we can make our home open but we're hoping to get the process started as soon as possible.

all of this makes me very excited but also very scared. please don't think i take this lightly or that i don't understand that adoption is hard. the need for adoption is a result of a fallen and sinful world. i do not expect this to be a seamless or painless process nor do i expect the transition of eventually adding a child to our home to be an easy one. i am confindent in the One who is leading and calling us to this next step in our life and find great encouragement in 1 Thessalonians 5:24 "He who calls you is faithful and He will do it."

4 comments:

gm said...

LIKE x 10! ;)

a little foster baby to adopt forever sounds wonderful, and then a little ethiopian child after that. plan, secured.

Kathy Ormont said...

Glad the conference went well, wish I could have gone to it.

Anonymous said...

i just watched the movie easy a this weekend. in the movie was the best/healthiest way i've ever seen for the adopted child. its a small part (hes the little brother of the star girl) but it made big impact for some reason on me. maybe because the parents seem to parent like me. (sort of) with humerous reality. "it is what it is but we can find some reason to laugh about it". i know from experience you can have 4 kids and only loose 1/2 your mind.

Anonymous said...

its emily.