My Son is in China

I have started this post several times and it just seems like one of those posts where words can't do justice to the story. The story of our second child will be so different and complex, and simplifying to a blog post is difficult. When all is said and done, the plan is to adopt a boy from China who has medically correctible or minor special needs. That sentence sounds so simple, but arriving at that sentence is far from simple.

This post may get long but I hope you'll stick with it. It's my heart and I'm sharing it with you.

For those of you that are close to me, it will come as no surprise that we have decided to adopt an Asian child. One my friends recently said to me, "Anyone who talks to you for more than five minutes knows you want an Asian baby." And the truth is, this has been my heart's desire for a very long time. Before I knew Tom, before I had Bethany, I wished for this. I had even read books about adoption from China before I was married. But I never knew if it would ever be a reality. Little did I know that God was planting a seed.

And then along came my wonderful husband Tom. If you know Tom, you know that he has an incredible heart for the oppressed, for those in poverty, for orphans. He is one of the most giving, compassionate people I know. So for Tom, the decision to adopt was a no brainer. I'm not even sure who brought up the subject first. It was just an understood thing from the beginning of our relationship that we would one day, God willing, adopt a child. How nice of God to bring two people together who had the same heart on the subject of adoption.

Why adopt? There are so many orphans out there in need of a family and we feel led to do the best we can to provide a loving, stable environment for one of those children. We won't be perfect. We may feel in over our heads at some point. But we know we can love our son, because our God first loved us. Adoption is certainly not for everyone (see CNN for proof of that). But it is for our family. We will love him the way we love Bethany and we hope you will too.

We had Bethany because I had always hoped to be able to experience pregnancy and to have a biological child. I knew that there was no guarantee that we would be able to have biological children, but we wanted to try. And we are so happy to be able to have Bethany in our lives. She is a beautiful gift and I treasure the opportunity to look after her while she is here on Earth.

So, I hope that answers some questions for the curious. Yes, I am able to have biological children. No, I was not scared off by child birth so much that I don't want to go through it again. No, I didn't coerce my husband into adopting a child. This was a conscious decision, that we made years ago, researched greatly, and are following God's will for our family.

So, the last of the questions for me to answer tonight is "Why China?" It's basically been a process of a bunch of closed doors that led us to the one right door. We never considered domestic infant adoption because there are so many families waiting to adopt healthy infants. So our first hope was to go through the foster system. My friends Shannon and Jeff have had a wonderful experience with a foster to adopt program in LA. Unfortunately, Florida's system does not work the same way. After several talks with different employees in the FL foster/adoption program, we decided it was not the right fit for our family at this time. It's not a bad program, just not right for us at this time in our lives. To be honest, it was a pretty big blow. But we trusted God to lead us where he wanted us to go.

 So we started looking at international programs. Some factors were cost, eligibility, length of wait for a referral, etc. It has been many months of researching. And China seems to be the best fit for us right now. Please, please know that we do not go into this blindly. Of course you can never fully know what the road ahead will be like, but I do not take this lightly. If it's out there to read, we're reading it. If there's people who've been there, we're talking to them. Today at the end of church, our pastor said, "Pray not for an easy life. Pray not for your tasks to equal your power but for God's power to equal your tasks." Amen and Amen.

The process is long and filled with paper work and waiting. I'll fill you in as we go along on what stage we're at in the process. We have no idea when we'll have our child home with us. It will be at least a year but probably closer to 2-3 years. For now, we're working on some required training and beginning to fill out forms. We can't oficially apply until I turn 30 so bring on August 15th- we're ready!