We are excited to announce that we are "expecting"... however, this pregnancy is going to look a little different than the first two. Instead of my tummy growing, another woman's will. And this birth mother carries a gift that God is seeing fit to bestow to our family. We are thankful for this woman, we are praying for her heart to know the love of God and to be redeemed by the power of Jesus through the midst of the pain involving pregnancy, childbirth, and relinquishing her daughter. And as she loves this child by carrying her for many months in her womb, our hearts will continue to grow in love for her and the daughter God is giving us. For reasons unknown to Ben and I, these beloved birth parents are unable to provide the home that this little girl needs. God is growing in us a heart to provide her this home, and to be her family. Her parents made the loving choice of adoption, and we are blessed to have been chosen to be a part of God's plan of redemption in the midst of this broken family.
So many of you are probably thinking, "Let's back up a minute. Tell us how you arrived here. Share how God has brought you to a place that seems, well, so different." We can't wait to share. It has taken everything within us to patiently wait for God's timing to express the incredible work of the heart He has done in our family to bring us into His plan for adoption. We are honored to get to process this journey with you all through what may seem at times as ramblings and jumbled thoughts on a screen. We know this will be such a huge part of us working through the joys and the sufferings involved in this calling as well.The call to adopt. We didn't go seeking it out. We didn't know how, when, where... We knew in our hearts that God was calling us to a life of redeeming those who are lost, alone, and in hard places. Those who haven't experienced love in a practical, tangible way. Those who do not have a family. He was calling us to the orphan. And yet He calls everyone so differently. In His Word, He tells us that "religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction." (James 1:27a) And so we have known that He is calling us, and what that looks like has remained a mystery for many years. Until now.
At the beginning of April 2013, God began to water the seeds He had planted many years ago in our hearts. For many months, we were holding tightly to the desire to have more biological children. And yet a still small voice spoke a deeper desire into our hearts within a few weeks of each other. Through prayer, time in God's Word, counsel, worship, and intense times of solitude and silence...we knew. His plan was unfolding before our very eyes, whether we were comfortable with it or not. His plan for a child, a fatherless soul who He longs to redeem out of tragedy and loss. He spoke to us and shared His will for the next step He has for our family to take. To adopt a waiting child from China in need of a loving place to call home. He wrote this into the plan for our family before one of our days came to be. In Psalm 139:13-16, we read, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." This scripture brings incredible peace into the heart of the adoptive parent as well as the one being adopted. The days that we have on this earth were formed for us by God. His storyline of redemption in all of our lives includes the loss and suffering involved with adoption. This is His cup for our daughter and this is also His cup for us. Our story collectively.
As we begin to share this incredible journey after tackling mountains of paperwork and nearing the completion of our home study, we rest in the truth that this is His plan for our family. We couldn't have chosen a better life if we had tried. "Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well"... Wonderful are His works of bringing together a family from broken places, creating a family from different origins. This is how He rescued us, and He will continue to do a wonderful work rescuing our daughter as well as our entire family through His adoptive love that is the foundation beneath our adoptive love.
