Why did we adopt?

In March of 2004 I was commenting to Ginger about how happy I was at this stage of my life. Our girls are old enough to stay home by themselves and I have been enjoying being able to spend more time with her. Sure, the uncertain waters of teenagerdom lay ahead, but ahhh...no more diapers, no late nights, no ear infections, no more emergency room trips due to breathing problems. I could take some comfort in that right?

Little did I know that the Lord had other plans. During my prayer time not long after I was exulting in the stability and serenity of my life, the Lord spoke to my heart about adopting a child. My first response was "Huh?!?!" I felt pretty certain that this was coming from the Lord so my faith-filled response was "Lord...you're going to have to prove this to me." And as always, He did.

Two weeks later when I came home from work, Victoria and London came running up to me asking if we could adopt a child. During their lessons that day they had been reading a biography about George Washington Carver. George, born into slavery, was orphaned at a young age. As the girls were reading this story, the Lord impressed both of their hearts that we should adopt. Ginger's response was "ask your Daddy when he gets home." My response when they asked me was "Huh?!?!"

Needless to say, the next few days and weeks contained lots of discussion, soul-searching, and excitement. As He so often does, the Lord told us where He wanted us to go, but He didn't tell us how to get there. We had so many questions: do we adopt domestically or internationally, boy or girl, how old would the child need to be, etc. God didn't spell it out for us so we started investigating on our own. We quickly found out that to adopt domestically would either mean a very long wait (for a young child) or the child would have to be older (10 or above) than we felt like we could handle at this point in our lives.

It took a while, but at some point we decided that domestic adoption wasn't for us right now. One door was closed, but there were still lots of other doors. After talking with a few international adoption agencies one agency really stood out to Ginger. She told me she just felt the Spirit of Christ when she was talking to the lady. She had made so many calls to different agencies and institutions that we lost track of which one was which. By the way, this was all done from a campground phone during the summer of 2004 which we spent in Boxborough, Massachusetts. (Little did we know that we would visit this campground again the following year, and that the Lord would use the campground owner to help Sydney. Be sure to read the "Update-2005" link for more on that story.)

When we arrived home from the campground in October we started sifting through the information packets. We are big fans of Stephen Curtis Chapman and his website talks about how he and his wife adopted three little girls from China. On his web page there was a link to America World Adoption Agency which happened to be the one agency to which Ginger felt drawn. Watching the DVD that was enclosed in the AWAA info packet was really powerful and moved us greatly. The Lord confirmed through the stories that we saw that we were indeed on God's path and that we were supposed to be adopting a little girl from China.

Now that it was official we began talking to friends and family about our decision. When we told one of our neighbor's that we were adopting from China they told us that they had been thinking about doing that as well. We let them borrow our America World DVD and they signed up with AWAA the day after we did! We were so very excited to know that Sydney would have a little Chinese friend to play with that lived right across the street. As neat as that was, God wasn't finished yet.

Some mutual friends of both our families, that also live on the same street, have never had children. This was obviously a very emotionally charged subject and we weren't sure how to bring up with them that we were adopting. Well, anyone that knows Ginger knows that she's not afraid to charge ahead where Angels fear to tread. We had dinner with this couple and she just blurted it out: "Y'all need to adopt with us!" Of course there were tears all around and lots of emotional discussion. A few weeks later (after lots of soul-searching and sleepless nights on the part of our friends) they called us to let us know that they had decided to adopt a little girl from China as well.

By the end of 2005 we'll have three little Asian girls living on our street...our own Cajun Chinatown! It is just so neat to see how the Lord has worked in our lives. He asked us to move from our comfort zone and when we did, it impacted the lives of our neighbors, as well as the lives of these little girls. Of course we're nervous and even a little scared of what lies ahead, but we know Who holds the future...and we know Who holds our hand.