A little bit of our story

As many of you may know, we are in the process of adopting a little girl from China. In the next few weeks, I'm going to be sharing snippets of our story. Our process, how we got here, and where this dream started are all integral parts of who we are as a family. And as I've been praying over the message of Genesis 22 and what it started brewing in my heart, I'm realizing more and more how tied together all this is. I thought there were loose ends, that the brew had more percolating to do. And indeed, there is much to brew over. But I'm seeing that there are no loose ends to this, that it's all tied up in HIS hands and that He's making me up a cup of the good stuff! So, here's a first installment of our adoption story!

I have been nurturing and praying for many years over a particular dream that the Lord planted in my heart in my junior high years. When I was in 7^th or 8^th grade (1980 or 1981), I purchased a used book at a “Bookmobile” sale in our town. The book was The Family Nobody Wanted, by Helen Doss. It told the story of a young Methodist pastor’s wife, unable to bear her own biological children, who desired to be a mother more than anything. I connected with this young woman on many levels: I was a brand-new pastor’s kid, I loved children, and I wanted to be a mother someday. When told that biological motherhood was not in her future, Helen Doss refused to take that as the final word: she KNEW she was born to be a mother.

I became fully engaged in the story of her journey to adopt children from all over the United States, and was profoundly impacted by the trials she overcame to become the mother to these children. You see, she and her husband chose to adopt children that were considered “undesirable” by the 1940’s-era foster and adoptive systems. Many of these children were “un-adoptable” because they were of foreign, unknown, or mixed ethnicity. Looking back on it now, I believe that the Lord used that book to plant the seed of a dream in my heart to pursue international adoption. I still have my tattered, dog-eared copy of that book and have re-read it many times over the years.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in the story of our adoption!