Sunday, February 25, 2007

Our Adoption Journey Begins


Since 2002, I have been praying about international adoption and whether this was God's will for our lives. My husband did not feel the "call" to adopt back then. We had our fourth biological child in October 2003 and thought our family was complete. In the spring of 2006, I began to desire more children and once again my heart was yearning to adopt an orphan. I began to pray for God's wisdom, and I also mentioned the idea to my husband. He quickly responded that I must be crazy. Well, I knew I could not adopt without my husband's support. Thus I prayed that if this was indeed God calling me to adopt that He change David's heart as well.
From the beginning, I felt drawn to China because I kept "seeing" an Asian child in our family. This was before I ever looked at the individual countries' requirements for adoptive parents. However, when I did research the various countries, China was the only country that made practical sense for our family.
By June 2006, David had begun to talk openly with me about adoption and had committed to attending an adoption seminar. We were both praying for God's will to be done in our lives. The seminar was sponsored by Christian World Adoption and was held on July 22, 2006. We went to the seminar looking for a reason NOT to adopt from China. We left the seminar with many new reasons why we should adopt but not a single reason why we should not.
We started the paperwork at the end of July and turned our dossier in on October 21. We had set out to adopt a healthy baby, but we also decided to look at the Special Needs lists of Chinese children that our agency received every few months. On December 7, I saw my daughter's face for the very first time. As I looked at her, I knew she was meant to be our child. David and I quickly conferred over the phone. Then I e-mailed the agency requesting the medical information on 06.12.4. After an agonizing hour of waiting, we found out that she was ours!
We were all overjoyed. We had been calling her "Lilly" for months but now we had a face to go with her name! God is so good!

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