Their reasons and ours for growing our families through adoption are different. God has placed a specific call on Veldon and me to adopt an orphan, to follow the mandate in James to care for the orphans in their suffering. I feel overwhelmed, and unworthy of the call, but we will do as we feel He is leading. To be perfectly honest we don’t need another child, we have three…we are busy and fulfilled. But we are compelled, we can’t help ourselves, we must follow God wherever He leads. Part of the beauty of this journey is that our kids are right here with us. They ask us, sometimes daily, if there is any new news about the adoption…any updates? They have looked at profile after profile with us and have been so encouraging. They believe God is calling our family to do this as much as we do. I am glad that they are experiencing this at their ages, they are old enough that they will each have strong memories of these events, they will be able to tell their younger brother about our search to find him and their part in all that happened. They pray with us, cry with us and offer constant comic relief. They understand the urgency of what we are doing, they are with us every step of the way...they get it…sometimes more than the Christian adults who cross our path.
Last week I was at a Christian teacher’s conference, the last speaker for the conference stood up and said, “There are 50 million girls missing in China”. WOW 50 million…how can that be, how can that many little girls just be gone? What can we do about this? This information made me even more thrilled that one of my dearest friends leaves tomorrow, with her family, to travel half way around the world and get their 5th child, a baby girl, from CHINA. This is something they have been working on for nearly 4 years and finally they are on their way. They didn’t need another child either but they heard the call from God and obeyed. There is now one less orphaned little girl all alone in a cruel and dangerous world. She will forever have a mommy who knows where she is and what she is doing. She will be swung around in the arms of a loving father who will point her to her Heavenly Father. She is no longer alone, she is loved and wanted and will be well cared for. Every child deserves this, every one of those 50 million girls deserves this, but not every birth mother and father can provide it. For whatever reason our world has 143 million orphans, children that don’t know the love of a mother or a father they have no idea what it means to be in a family. I am so...so grateful that God has called us to pluck one out and bring him home.
One last thing...today we were told that our home study is done and will be mailed out this week. What great news this is for us! We still have miles and miles to go on our journey to Max, every journey requires many, many steps, this brings us one step closer to the finish line. Praise God. Adoption won’t define our family, as infertility did not, it’s not who we are, it’s just one more piece in the mosaic that God is painstakingly creating that ultimately will define each of us.
