Adoption found us. When it did, a boatload of really difficult and confusing and overwhelming decisions were made for us.  They just fell into place.  Our story is pretty unusual, and is an example of how God chose to use a 2×4 upside of our heads to get our attention and change our lives… For most families, it goes a little differently.  A million paths as unique as the families following them lead to the decision to adopt.  A million equally unique paths follow after that critical decision. I’m not an expert in every family’s journey into the decision to […]

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Waiting sucks. I’m impatient.  Mark is even more impatient.  Neither of us stand in line well.  He continues to shop.  I read random things on my phone.  We don’t like waiting. One of of top three questions when people begin to think about adoption is “How long will it take?”  Clearly, Mark and I are not the only ones who aren’t fond of long waits. Why the wait? When we decided to adopt, we assumed that an international adoption would be quick, especially for an older child.  Quicker than domestic.  Certainly quicker than waiting to be chosen by a birth […]

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Panic and pain engulf her.  She feels warm fluid stream down her thigh.  She doubles over in pain.  Yet the corners of her mouth rise into the biggest smile she’s ever felt. “Get the bag!  It’s time!” she screams to her husband. The adoption call is differently similar. It’s a turning point.  It’s the moment when all the paperwork and notaries and training classes and impatient uncertainty fade away into the reality of finally going to meet my child and bring her home. Waiting becomes action. Every country (including the US) is unique.  But there are also some commonalities that […]

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We’ve been blessed. Through our two adoption journeys, we’ve been fortunate enough (or oblivious enough) to not have been subjected to many of the odd things that random strangers seem compelled to say. Is she yours? What happened to her real family? Ukraine?  Is that in Africa? Yes, people say things like that.  Many of our friends have heard far worse. People seem to want to focus on the differences.  People struggle with things they don’t understand. We claim to want unity and profess to accept everyone…but only if they are just like us. People think of family as the people that […]

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Last night, our church’s adoption ministry launched a new support group for adoptive parents. We’ve been thinking about this and praying over it for quite a while, and we finally decided that we would just get a room at the church and start meeting and whoever showed up, great.  We were ready for 5 or 50. We got four. Including two leaders. But as we sat together and shared experiences and talked about challenges and things that were hard and things that were joyful, I realized that God brought the people into that room that needed to be in that […]

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