"God gives people the exact experiences He wants them to have in order to shape the specific destiny He's designed for them."
I read this quote several years ago and immediately thought of how true this would be of our adoption journey one day.
I have waited 11+ years to begin this journey... It all began after my freshman year of college when I spent 7 weeks of my summer vacation on a missions trip in an Albanian orphanage. Within the first 5 minutes of being in the orphanage, I knew that God had placed adoption on my heart and I would one day adopt. However, I did not know once I returned home with pictures and stories that my parents would also feel God tugging at their hearts to adopt. As a 19 year old only-child, I got to be a part of a pretty incredible experience as my parents adopted a little boy. How neat it was to walk through that adoption process alongside my parents and be there to bring my brother home from Albania. God gave our family a 2 year old boy - I suddenly had an amazing little brother!
Turn the clock ahead several years and I met Todd, who is now my husband. It wasn't long into our dating relationship that I mentioned my desire to one day adopt. It was sort of a package deal - me and agreeing to one day adopt... Todd has a huge heart for the hurting so this was something he agreed to easily. Clock keeps going... 4 years after we married, we were blessed with a sweet baby girl, Addison Mackenzie. As Addison grew older our hearts continued to know adoption was in the future but the timing was still our own and not God's. Clock goes another 4 years and we have baby boy, Xavier Thomas. When I was pregnant with Xavier, I spent hours researching country options and adoption processes. I knew the time was coming close when we would begin this journey.
We decided to begin the process when Xavier turned one. Well... he's 5 months old and we couldn't stand it any longer. Through lots of research we decided quite a few months ago to adopt a little boy from the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) in Africa. We don't have an amazing story for how God led us to this country, but we do have some pretty fun ways that He assured us we were right where He wanted us. After already being pretty set on adopting from the DRC, one day we were standing in line at Target. There was a young boy right in front of us wearing a t.shirt that talked about helping orphans in the DRC. Todd and I both laughed and said "okay, God, we get it."
I love what Francis Chan says when talking about orphan Sunday... "this is not about us rescuing a child but about an opportunity to do something to represent how God rescues us and adopts us into His family." We don't want this blog, or story, or journey to be about us. We want it to be about God, who has rescued us and taken us as His adopted children. We also want it to be about orphan awareness - we want people to see the need. Not everyone is called to adopt but we ARE all called to help orphans. John 14:18 says "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." That looks different for everyone but for us, it's the call to adopt.
We ask you to join us on this journey by praying...
- Please pray for us to move quickly through this process. We're all anxious to bring our little guy home and be a family of five.
- Please also pray that God will provide financially. People have already asked if they can help financially. Why, yes, you certainly can and it would be greatly appreciated. We begin this journey not knowing where the money will come from but we're confident that money will not be a reason we don't bring our son home. We're not asking and we won't be doing lots of fundraising but if God places it on your heart to help, we're learning to set aside our pride and accept help because we can't do it on our own. If you're interested in helping, you can send checks and we'll put them in our adoption fund. We know that God has called us to adopt so we're also trusting in Him to provide financially.
- Lastly, please pray for our little boy who is probably already born. A day doesn't go by that as I'm loving on Addison and Xavier that I don't think and wonder about who is loving on my other little boy halfway across the world. Who is holding him as his teeth are coming in and hurting? Who is cuddling him before bed each night? I don't have these answers (and quite frankly, the real answer might not be something I want to hear) but I am trusting God that He's holding our little boy very tight while we can't right now.
I know there will be many ups and downs through this process but we know that God will remain faithful and steady through it all. (Please remind me of these words when I am ready to fall apart at some point during all of this!) We are crazy excited to have begun this journey and we can't wait to see the story God creates from it. I dream of the day when I get to post that we have our son in our arms, meanwhile we invite you to join us on our journey we like to call Always Forever... Near and Far.
Kristen
