Adoption is an interesting road. First comes the thought to adopt. You share that thought with your spouse and both agree it sounds like a great idea and then you forget about it for awhile...
My husband Leon and I have known each other since December 2003. Married March 2005. First thought to adopt came to me soon after we married. I was working as a public health nurse in North Minneapolis (poor crime-ridden area of the city) to case manage personal care services in high risk homes for children with disabilities. One of my families that I would visit was a single black woman and her sweet toddler nephew. This kind older woman happened to have dwarfism and her nephew was born addicted to drugs and abandoned by his mother. Beautiful little boy. Sadly, his custodial aunt tearfully confined in me one day that she is afraid she will no longer be able to care for her nephew much longer due to her own struggles and health concerns. Her fear was that if she gave him up to the foster care system that no one would love this boy as much as she did. This broke my heart and I cried with this gentle soul whose number one priority in her life was her nephew. This maternal chapter in her life, however, appeared to be ending. It was this experience that made me realize that Leon and I could be that loving and committed family that took in a child desperately needing a family...
January 12, 2010, a devastating earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck Haiti, killing more than 160,000 and displacing close to 1.5 million people. This tragedy broke many hearts all over the world. The devastation was endless. Leon and I could not deny adoption as an option for us after learning about this tragedy. It was then that we contacted an adoption agency to inquire. Unfortunately, Haiti had temporarily suspended adoption at this time indefinitely..
October 2011: It became more and more evident that pregnancy did not come easy for us. We were blessed with the birth of our daughter who was 4.5 years old at this time. Trying for a second child, however, was a big question mark. I met with a fertility OB MD specialist who confirmed a list of reasons why achieving pregnancy would be very difficult for me due to my age and medical history. Leon and I declined the idea of infertility treatment as an option for us. Our interest in adopting, however, was growing more strongly. We then attended our first foster-to-adopt meeting in Minneapolis. We strongly believed we were finally taking the adoption step that we have been talking about for so long. God, however, had an amazing surprise in store for us ... One month later, on Thanksgiving weekend, we found out we were finally pregnant with child number #2. Our adoption journey was then permanently shelved. Or so we thought ...
After the birth of our son, it appeared that having two children certainly seemed like plenty of children for us. After all, we had one of each, a boy and a girl. Our time, energy and our finances were strapped and we felt like out hands were full. However, as our children grew, it dawned on us that there is a 5 year age gap between our two children. Our daughter was becoming more and more independent from her brother. We slowly realize that an additional child would actually benefit us more than hinder us. We then determined that our family was still incomplete after all and another sibling was needed.
I discovered Reece's Rainbow, a nonprofit charitable organization that supports and advocates the adoption of special needs children, about 18 months ago. I also discovered several online groups of experienced adoptive families at this time that warmly welcomed me into their intimate but candid lives of adoption. They refer to themselves as Adoption Advocates and Prayer Warriors of orphans. I was absolutely amazed at their adoption stories. They had so much endless courage and self-less compassion. These families took amazing leaps of faith into so many unknowns of the adoption world. Most surprisingly, many of these families were not wealthy. Far from it! Many were stay-at-home moms while their husbands were employed as school teachers or construction workers or pastors of churches, etc. Like us, these families had the average American debt to go along with it. It was these families that shared their intimate lives of how they made adoption possible.
I admit, it took Leon and I a full year before we took this leap of faith ourselves. The adoption journey is full of so many questions. Sometimes, the orphan child's confidential adoption file is generously filled with pictures and medical history and social history, etc. Other times, their file is quite sparse with no past history mentioned. Maybe only a handful of pictures and a medical exam report that is 3 years old and little else. Often you are left with more questions then answers. There are days when you feel very confident about the idea of adopting and other days you convince yourself you are in over your head.
If you happen to be a person that has thought about adoption for you and your family then I encourage you to follow an adoption blog or two like I have done. What I discovered is that families started out feeling exactly the same way we did. However, more often then not, these families amazingly found themselves with unexpected God blessings along the way that actually made the impossible possible! Outstanding amazing turn of events that was truly the work of God Himself.
The purpose for this adoption blog is to shed some light on the adoption journey for those who are sincerely interested. Please feel welcomed to follow.. I will be posting often, educating, sharing resources, etc. ..
My hope is that this blog will shed some light on what I have come to learn about the adoption journey and to make what appears impossible, possible!
I will soon be posting pictures (and videos!) I have of our son in China! :)
Next blog entry ... I will share an outline of the China adoption paperwork timeline from the beginning ... where we are at now ... where we need to be!
