Why not wait?

During the summer of 2006 God placed on our hearts the desire to adopt prior to adding to our family through biological children. We had begun to talk about starting a family when we went to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert. During the concert Chapman shared his family's adoption story. Jeff and I had discussed adoption in the past, and felt it would one day be a part of our family. That night on the way home from the concert, Jeff mentioned to me that he felt God calling us to adopt first.

Occasionally during the long adoption process we would receive well meaning questions that generally asked why not wait until after we had a few birth children first before we adopted? In part, our answer was that we just felt called to adopt. We wanted our future children to know just how much they were wanted and waited for.

While we felt God was calling our family to adopt first, the answer to that question has become so much more clear recently. We received news last week that our adoption agency has closed its doors and is filing for bankruptcy. Several other agencies are closing as well, due to the increased difficulty of maintaining adoption programs in the face of international red tape, politics and corruption that places children needing homes into a position of political pawns. I can only imagine how hard this news is on all of those waiting families that were in the middle of adoptions. We know of several families that are trying to adopt, and it just seems like there are increased roadblocks everywhere! Of course God is great, and He loves the orphans; He has not forgotten them!

This news just makes us breathe a sigh of relief as we fold our two oldest sons into our arms in gratitude that we did not wait! God knew exactly what our family make up needed to be!