These words of Scripture have been on my heart for several years now in relation to children. As I look at the stack of unfinished paperwork and the list of to-do items a mile long related to adoption, I pray the Lord will remind me continually of these words found in Proverbs 31:8-9:
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.
Today may we all consider how Christ would have us defend those who can't speak for themselves, especially the children in crisis around the world.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
The "process"
So we're going to adopt. If you're like us, the adoption process was is somewhat of a mystery, so we thought we'd share an overview of what we plan to be involved with in the coming months.
Domestic adoption--meaning adopting from the U.S.--usually involves working through either a private adoption agency or the foster care system to bring children into your home. We will be deviating from the path of picking one adoption agency to work through, since with our desire to provide a loving family for a young child of any ethnicity from anywhere in the U.S., we have also chosen to work through the minority program of Christian Adoption Consultants (www.christianadoptionconsultants.com) that helps place African American children in adoptive families. Our consultant Tracie Loux will advise us throughout our journey.
The first step of adopting is completing a home study. We'd heard in the past that during a home study you get asked tons of personal questions, get to fill out tons of paperwork, and have to have tons of smoke detectors in your home. The first two are true, but we really only needed two smoke detectors :-). We have met twice with the social worker from our home study agency, The Miriam Project out of Anderson, IN, and have completed approximately 2/3 of the required paperwork, so we're in the "plugging along" stage.
While we work on our home study, we are also preparing a family profile. This will be used to present to birth mothers who may be interested in selecting our family for their child. We have opted to save money on this part by creating our profile ourselves since I can design it, so this has added an additional load on top of "normal" life (whatever that looks like anyway).
Once our home study is complete, instead of working through only one agency to wait on a match with a birth mother, we will work with Tracie and apply with multiple agencies throughout the country who are in need of adoptive families. This way our family's profile will be available to many more situations that are in need of a placement instead of just waiting in line at one agency.
This will likely mean travelling cross-country to meet our new son/daughter(s?) and could mean doing so on short notice, but one big advantage with working through CAC is that they work only with agencies in "safe" or "adoption-friendly" states in which the adopting family are given parental rights very soon after birth. Once we are matched with a child, we will simply wait until the baby is born or rush to the state of his/her birth if it is a last-minute placement. There are many unknowns ahead, and for us "planners," we will just have to trust God in each step!
What happens at the end of the placement is still kind of blurry to us, so we'll just share those details after the fact. (Did we mention we will be working with a consultant? Yes, this ignorance is part of why we're doing so :-).) But the end result should be welcoming a new little family member (or members?) into our home within an unknown amount of time.
So there you have it. It's perfectly clear, right? Stay tuned to read how God has already been moving in the first six weeks of our journey and for how you can partner with us along the way!
Domestic adoption--meaning adopting from the U.S.--usually involves working through either a private adoption agency or the foster care system to bring children into your home. We will be deviating from the path of picking one adoption agency to work through, since with our desire to provide a loving family for a young child of any ethnicity from anywhere in the U.S., we have also chosen to work through the minority program of Christian Adoption Consultants (www.christianadoptionconsultants.com) that helps place African American children in adoptive families. Our consultant Tracie Loux will advise us throughout our journey.
The first step of adopting is completing a home study. We'd heard in the past that during a home study you get asked tons of personal questions, get to fill out tons of paperwork, and have to have tons of smoke detectors in your home. The first two are true, but we really only needed two smoke detectors :-). We have met twice with the social worker from our home study agency, The Miriam Project out of Anderson, IN, and have completed approximately 2/3 of the required paperwork, so we're in the "plugging along" stage.
While we work on our home study, we are also preparing a family profile. This will be used to present to birth mothers who may be interested in selecting our family for their child. We have opted to save money on this part by creating our profile ourselves since I can design it, so this has added an additional load on top of "normal" life (whatever that looks like anyway).
Once our home study is complete, instead of working through only one agency to wait on a match with a birth mother, we will work with Tracie and apply with multiple agencies throughout the country who are in need of adoptive families. This way our family's profile will be available to many more situations that are in need of a placement instead of just waiting in line at one agency.
This will likely mean travelling cross-country to meet our new son/daughter(s?) and could mean doing so on short notice, but one big advantage with working through CAC is that they work only with agencies in "safe" or "adoption-friendly" states in which the adopting family are given parental rights very soon after birth. Once we are matched with a child, we will simply wait until the baby is born or rush to the state of his/her birth if it is a last-minute placement. There are many unknowns ahead, and for us "planners," we will just have to trust God in each step!
What happens at the end of the placement is still kind of blurry to us, so we'll just share those details after the fact. (Did we mention we will be working with a consultant? Yes, this ignorance is part of why we're doing so :-).) But the end result should be welcoming a new little family member (or members?) into our home within an unknown amount of time.
So there you have it. It's perfectly clear, right? Stay tuned to read how God has already been moving in the first six weeks of our journey and for how you can partner with us along the way!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The weaving of our story: Part 2
And now for part 2 of our story (if you missed part 1, scroll down):
From February on, we worked on plans for Embrace with the founders Mike and Lori, who also happened to be one of the families whose foster children had made an early impact on my heart. As Lori and I met to brainstorm, she would ask me to share about our vision for our family, which was something like "we plan to adopt, someday down the road." But one afternoon, she challenged me
not to listen to "everyone else" who had opinions of when the right time, place, and age was to adopt but to listen to the Lord
and what He is calling our family to do at this time in life. Our
story doesn't need to fit someone else's idea of what is "right"; we are only called to
listen to the Lord and follow His call.
That
conversation completely changed our prayer times. From that spring
day until July 14, the date we planned for the first Embrace event, Daniel and I prayed together and separately every
day and sought the Lord's will for our family in the area of
adoption. We wanted to make sure we didn't ignore a call from the
Lord based on the opinions of those around us. We wanted to be ready
to get "out of the boat" if He was calling!
The first Embrace event was a picnic on July 14, during which families interested in adoption or foster care could come meet with families who have already adopted or fostered. When we started with Embrace in February, we thought we would just be helping other families in their adoption and foster care journeys for awhile, but we suddenly found the Lord moving us into the category of (very) interested families. July 14 came and we were anxious, knowing
how much prayer had gone into this event and wondering if the Lord
would give us any clear direction. We had heard so much about international adoption as we had followed Nathan and Jade's adoption so closely (by the way, you can follow Jade's blog at inaweofyourgrace.tumblr.com). The Lord also had crossed our paths again with our IWU saxophone professor, Chris Lessly, who adopted her daughter Caroline from China and is now very close to bringing her second daughter, Claudia, home from the Congo (you can follow her story at adoptingclaudia.blogspot.com). Two more families from Brookhaven had also just brought children home from Uganda, but despite all we had learned about international adoption, we didn't feel the Lord moving in this direction. Though we were drawn to adopting from foster care, we felt that a younger child would be better for our home and had been told you usually couldn't adopt young children from foster care.
So we went to the picnic, allowing our hearts and minds to be open and ready to hear what God might have for us. With limited seating thanks to the incredible turnout (the picnic was a huge success!), we waited to find seats until others had found tables and "just happened" to squeeze in at Nathan and Jade's table. Before I forget, just weeks before the picnic Nathan and Jade had just completed a second adoption, this time adopting a precious little newborn African American girl named Ruby. We knew very little about this adoption other than it seemed to have happened quickly.
So we went to the picnic, allowing our hearts and minds to be open and ready to hear what God might have for us. With limited seating thanks to the incredible turnout (the picnic was a huge success!), we waited to find seats until others had found tables and "just happened" to squeeze in at Nathan and Jade's table. Before I forget, just weeks before the picnic Nathan and Jade had just completed a second adoption, this time adopting a precious little newborn African American girl named Ruby. We knew very little about this adoption other than it seemed to have happened quickly.
After
eating and talking about random things, Jade asked us about our
story. Instead of answering her question, we ended up pouring out all
our questions regarding adoption--international? domestic? foster
care? As the Lord had perfectly arranged, we were also sitting with another friend, Joy, who has experience in foster care and confirmed for us that most of the emails she receives from the county regarding foster care adoption needs are for older children, an age we would love to embrace in the future but not one we felt ready for yet. Jade, however, spoke words we'd never heard before: in the U.S.,
there is currently a huge need for families willing to adopt minority
children. Like us, Nathan and Jade also had been informed several years prior
that adopting a newborn in the U.S. is very difficult as there are
long waiting lists. Being a couple able to bear children, we had no desire to jump on a waiting list that would prevent another couple longing for a baby to experience parenting. But these words from Jade cut straight to our souls--there were actually babies in the U.S. being born right now who would be placed directly into foster care simply because they didn't match someone's list of desired qualities! And as the positive message of adoption over abortion continues to spread, there will likely be an increase in the need for adoptive families for these precious little ones. I don't even think Daniel and I needed to discuss this, but when we did later, we both agreed that the Lord was definitely calling us to meet this need.
So, here we are, starting a blog on our first adoption journey, in pursuit of domestic minority infant adoption. The Lord is moving mightily as we jump into this process, but I will save those awesome things for another post on another day.
So, here we are, starting a blog on our first adoption journey, in pursuit of domestic minority infant adoption. The Lord is moving mightily as we jump into this process, but I will save those awesome things for another post on another day.
The weaving of our story: Part 1
Welcome to our blog! This is where we'll keep you updated on what God has been weaving into our lives these days regarding adoption and orphan care. Our story is not a beginning or an end of God's call to orphan care, but rather one thread in His beautiful masterpiece, so we hope you'll follow our story with hearts ready to embrace how God wants to weave your thread into His grand plan to set the lonely in families!
We would love to tell you our whole story up to now, so we'll break it into two sections so you just might read the whole thing. Grab a quick cup of coffee and read how our story has unfolded, as told by Mae:
From the day we were married, though children were not in "our" immediate plans, God wasted no time in weaving others' stories into our own to bring about His plans for our family. While I was teaching the 3-4 year Sunday School class at Brookhaven in the early days of our marriage, a couple families from our church followed the Lord's leading into foster care. Week after week, I would stare into the eyes of these beautiful children thinking, "Wow, I'm so glad the [insert family names] are being the hands and feet of Christ and loving these kids!"
During the few years I taught, I had about six different foster children come through my class. I absolutely LOVED each one of these kids, and through one little blonde-haired boy who gripped my heart from his first week with his foster family, God began not-so-gently tugging on my heart to do "something" for the fatherless "someday." At this same time, He began burdening Daniel's heart as well. After a stirring sermon on caring for orphans, we came home and sat in our bedroom for hours, talking about how the Lord had stirred our hearts for children that morning. We even tossed around the idea of becoming foster parents ourselves right away but just didn't think the timing was right. For over a year though, the burden just simply laid on a shelf in the closet in our hearts as we went on with life as usual.
The following year, a couple in our church, Nathan and Jade, whom we barely knew at the time, were called to adopt a boy from Uganda. This was the first international adoption we'd ever known of personally, so we were intrigued by this endeavor. The Lord, however, was more than "intrigued" with their obedience to His call and had amazing plans in store for them. Their journey was marked with difficulty yet amazing, powerful displays of God's faithfulness, even including the salvation of Jade's dad while in Uganda! Through each step of faith they took, the Lord kept tugging on my heart especially to get involved with their efforts. Financial support seemed obvious to us, so we began with responding in that way. But God had so much more for me to learn.
Prayer was no new thing to me growing up in a Christian home. But this time God taught me to pray in a way I'd never known before. Each time there was a court date for their adoption, God woke me at just the right time (usually around 2 or 3 a.m.) to pray for their need. For the first time in my life, I even fasted several times for this family. The Lord taught me so much about Himself during their days in Uganda and so much about staying alert in prayer for our brothers and sisters in Christ and how He answers those prayers! To that point, I had never connected so deeply with the Lord in prayer or with the need of other believers. The shelved burden for orphans was quickly placed at the forefront of my heart, mind, and soul as Samuel (now Ezra) was welcomed home months after the first court date.
During Ezra's adoption process, Daniel and I started feeling nearly certain that orphan care (likely adoption) would be in our future. The question became not "if" but rather "when" and "how." We made this a matter of prayer but soon found out we were expecting and welcomed our son Nathan in March 2011. I made the transition from working at World Gospel Mission to staying at home to care for Nathan, and in doing so, felt completely lost in what I should be "doing with my life" outside of being a mom. Thanks to an amazing MOMS group at Brookhaven, I was encouraged that being a mom is a mission of its own, and a very important one at that! But the Lord did indeed have extra plans for me as He kept tugging at my heart to seek Him!
For several months I pulled back from some volunteer responsibilities I'd held at Brookhaven so I could more diligently seek the Lord's desire for my family. After months of seeking the Lord, God burned in my heart yet again a deep passion for children needing families, this time resonating so strongly I knew I had to do something NOW. Just a week after being sure He was leading me to pursue orphan care, Brookhaven announced a brand-new ministry called Embrace: Arms Wide Open to Receive a Child. We jumped on-board right away.
To be continued...
We would love to tell you our whole story up to now, so we'll break it into two sections so you just might read the whole thing. Grab a quick cup of coffee and read how our story has unfolded, as told by Mae:
From the day we were married, though children were not in "our" immediate plans, God wasted no time in weaving others' stories into our own to bring about His plans for our family. While I was teaching the 3-4 year Sunday School class at Brookhaven in the early days of our marriage, a couple families from our church followed the Lord's leading into foster care. Week after week, I would stare into the eyes of these beautiful children thinking, "Wow, I'm so glad the [insert family names] are being the hands and feet of Christ and loving these kids!"
During the few years I taught, I had about six different foster children come through my class. I absolutely LOVED each one of these kids, and through one little blonde-haired boy who gripped my heart from his first week with his foster family, God began not-so-gently tugging on my heart to do "something" for the fatherless "someday." At this same time, He began burdening Daniel's heart as well. After a stirring sermon on caring for orphans, we came home and sat in our bedroom for hours, talking about how the Lord had stirred our hearts for children that morning. We even tossed around the idea of becoming foster parents ourselves right away but just didn't think the timing was right. For over a year though, the burden just simply laid on a shelf in the closet in our hearts as we went on with life as usual.
The following year, a couple in our church, Nathan and Jade, whom we barely knew at the time, were called to adopt a boy from Uganda. This was the first international adoption we'd ever known of personally, so we were intrigued by this endeavor. The Lord, however, was more than "intrigued" with their obedience to His call and had amazing plans in store for them. Their journey was marked with difficulty yet amazing, powerful displays of God's faithfulness, even including the salvation of Jade's dad while in Uganda! Through each step of faith they took, the Lord kept tugging on my heart especially to get involved with their efforts. Financial support seemed obvious to us, so we began with responding in that way. But God had so much more for me to learn.
Prayer was no new thing to me growing up in a Christian home. But this time God taught me to pray in a way I'd never known before. Each time there was a court date for their adoption, God woke me at just the right time (usually around 2 or 3 a.m.) to pray for their need. For the first time in my life, I even fasted several times for this family. The Lord taught me so much about Himself during their days in Uganda and so much about staying alert in prayer for our brothers and sisters in Christ and how He answers those prayers! To that point, I had never connected so deeply with the Lord in prayer or with the need of other believers. The shelved burden for orphans was quickly placed at the forefront of my heart, mind, and soul as Samuel (now Ezra) was welcomed home months after the first court date.
During Ezra's adoption process, Daniel and I started feeling nearly certain that orphan care (likely adoption) would be in our future. The question became not "if" but rather "when" and "how." We made this a matter of prayer but soon found out we were expecting and welcomed our son Nathan in March 2011. I made the transition from working at World Gospel Mission to staying at home to care for Nathan, and in doing so, felt completely lost in what I should be "doing with my life" outside of being a mom. Thanks to an amazing MOMS group at Brookhaven, I was encouraged that being a mom is a mission of its own, and a very important one at that! But the Lord did indeed have extra plans for me as He kept tugging at my heart to seek Him!
For several months I pulled back from some volunteer responsibilities I'd held at Brookhaven so I could more diligently seek the Lord's desire for my family. After months of seeking the Lord, God burned in my heart yet again a deep passion for children needing families, this time resonating so strongly I knew I had to do something NOW. Just a week after being sure He was leading me to pursue orphan care, Brookhaven announced a brand-new ministry called Embrace: Arms Wide Open to Receive a Child. We jumped on-board right away.
To be continued...
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