Many already know what has led up to this adoption, but I thought I would share this here for those that would like to hear our story.
We first approached adoption about three years ago when we found out about a sibling group of three little girls that were going to be removed from their mom (kind of a friend of a friend of a family member kind of situation). We knew that they were with a relative and that the relative was going to decide to not keep them. We contacted a social worker and she was very optimistic about us being able to adopt them. Apparently it happens a lot that groups like this never even make it into the system because people find out about the situation first. Our social worker was rushing us quickly through all of the training, but unfortunately the girls' social worker did not want to wait a couple more weeks and put the girls' info out there and they were chosen that day by another couple. We were heartbroken. We really felt that God was calling us to adoption and didn't understand why it hadn't worked out. A couple of weeks later I found out I was pregnant with my son.
Over the last couple of years we have had a lot of conversations about why God called us to that adoption. Maybe someday we would look into it again. But, we had 4 little ones and then 5 little ones 5 and under! We would be crazy to adopt. Life is so busy. We have a house that really could use some cosmetic work. We always said once the kids were a little older and could help more around the house maybe it would be a good time then to look into it.
Then I read Susanna's "Unsearchable Understanding" blog post last September and it hit me hard! (Thank you so much Susanna for always showing your heart in your posts.) That was us, always saying, "someday we will do it, but the timing isn't right." I was really convicted about how many times God has placed things on our hearts and we would sit and make excuses as to why it wouldn't work or why it wasn't the right time.
I opened up the Reece's Rainbow page one day and started looking around. The children there just melted my heart. I kept getting drawn back to those photos over and over again and Graham would jump out at me every time. After weeks of staring at his photo every day my husband finally said to go ahead and contact them and get more information. We really felt God telling us that this is where he wanted us, but we were hesitant after the last time when we felt he was saying the same thing. Around that time I read something to the effect that God is the rudder on your ship, but a rudder can not steer a ship if it isn't moving forward. So forward we went!
We have really seen God's hand in this whole thing. There are so many doors that have been opened already that we thought might stop everything. We have a wonderful social worker that is working on writing our homestudy right now so we can get that sent out to our agency and they can send it to USCIS for approval. Please pray for this if you can, there is a mountain to move here! This is one of the biggest steps of faith we have taken and we know that God can do it if he wants Graham home with us.
We are not able to work with Reece's Rainbow for raising funds for the adoption right now, but we have some other fundraising ideas in the works!
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