A whilrwind weekend.

For the past seven years that Tricia and I have been married, we have often heard of children who were in need. Sometimes this was a physical need, sometimes spiritual, but what has captured our hearts so often have been children who need a home and a family. About two years ago, Tricia and I decided to start down the path of pursuing Adoption.

At any given time, there are about 150,000 kids in the United States that are in Foster Care waiting for adoptive parents. There is a particular need for parents who are willing and able to adopt older children. For every baby that is available for adoption, there are approximately 50 children over the age of five waiting for families. In light of that need, our desire was to adopt a child between the age of 5 and 10.

We had several interviews with several state agencies, and were fairly far into the process - about to get a home study done. Then, we stopped.

At the time, we realized that we really wanted to adopt a child, but we weren't 100% at the same place with it. There were other factors, but to make a very long story short, we decided to hold off on moving any farther forward. That was about a year ago. There really has been no movement, and very little conversation about it in the past year - though we think it's been in the back of our minds.

Yesterday, we received a call from Tricia's mother in Kansas. (This gets a little complicated, so please bear with me as I attempt to explain). Tricia's brother, Travis, had neighbors who have adopted three children. These neighbors are friends with Trish's mom (Doris), and she told them two years ago that we were moving towards adoption. His name is Ben. Ben is an investment advisor. One of his clients has a grand-daughter who is expecting a baby girl in May, and for various reasons has decided to give the baby up for adoption, but didn't know how to proceed. Ben referred her to an agency in Wichita. When Ben's wife heard about this situation, she said "We need to call Doris right now." So, yesterday, we get a call from Tricia's mother - completely out of the blue - telling us about this baby, and that Ben would like to introduce us to the birth mother, and see if it would be a good fit.

Wow.

Here's the deal. We've decided to move forward in faith, and see if this is something that God would have us do. We have not talked about this in a while, and we have not really ever considered adopting a baby. But, we feel that we need to pay attention. This situation found us - we were not looking for it at all. We don't know what will come out of this, but we want to see if God wants us to be a part of this.

We know of no greater way to display the love of Christ in a tangeable way than to provide a home for a child who may not otherwise have one. We are convinced of this. Hosea tells us that "Assyria shall not save us; we will not ride on horses; and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy.” James says that "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world."

Beyond that, we've been Adopted by God, and Jesus was even adopted by Joseph. Adoption is a part of God's plan, and it is at the core of the Gospel. This is not about us. It's not about a baby. It's not even about adoption - this is about God. This is about the spread of the Gospel to future generations.

I write this e-mail to ask for your prayers. Would you pray for us, that God would give us wisdom. Two months doesn't seem like a whole lot of time, but we know it's plenty of time for the God of the Universe to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. Would you pray that we would discern how we can best serve this situation -- that may or may not be adopting this baby. We don't know. Could you pray that we would come to a quick understanding of the process. At this point, we are also praying for the birth mother. Our prayer is that ultimately through this situation, she would see Christ for who he is. If nothing else, we'd like for a bunch of people to be praying for her.

At this point, there are three other couples that we know of who have been introduced to the birth mother. We'd like to ask you to pray for these couples too. Our prayer is that they would be encouraged through this process.

Please pray! Also, please feel free to ask us any questions you want. We want to be an open book. This is a very exciting, very scary, but faith-building time. This thing could go in any number of directions. We don't know what will happen, but we do have a God who does. We also know that there are several lives that may be forever altered in the next six weeks.

Together for Adoption

There's a fairly new organization out there called "Together For Adoption".

They've got a good post called "God, the Father who Adopts" that's worth a quick read.

They quote the book "Knowing God the Father through the Old Testament". Here's a short quote.

God is Father to those who have lost the natural bonds of human protection, whether because of rejection, or because of natural bereavement.

Back into Blogging

It's been a while since I've posted anything to this blog.

Here's to getting back into it.

Father drops off 9 kids under Neb. safe haven law

18 Seconds

Statistics show that every 18 seconds, a child somewhere in the world becomes an orphan. In a typical day of work, 1,600 children will become orphans. In the United States alone, there are half a million children in the foster care system, and about 120,000 children waiting for adoptive placements. These are staggering numbers. The danger is that they stay "just numbers".

Last night, Tricia and I went to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert in Brookfield. I've blogged about his efforts to promote adoption in the past. He has founded a ministry called "Shaohanna's Hope" which provides grants to families who want to adopt, but can't. During his current concert tour, the ministry collects spare change to provide an on-the-spot grant to a family in the area who is adopting.

At the concert last night, over $5,400 was raised. They typically give a $4,000 grant on a night. There are also donors who do matching contributions (to varying degrees). What that means is that based on the graciousness of the crowd last night, two families will receive the grants.

In the time that you've taken to read this post, another 4 or 5 children have become orphans.

Thanks for reading!

C.J. Mahaney on Adoption

A stirring, compelling message from CJ Mahaney on the Doctrine of Adoption.

Please download this and listen.

This is just plain cool.

You've got to read this article.

Here's an excerpt.

Then, around Christmas, a sister told Captain Southworth that Ala'a was getting too big. He would have to move to a government-run facility within a year.

"Best case scenario was that he would stare at a blank wall for the rest of his life," Captain Southworth said.

To this day, he recalls the moment when he resolved that that would not happen.

"I'll adopt him," he said.

Christmas and Adoption

The good folks over at Carolina Hope Adoption get it. They get the connection between the Gospel and Adoption.

They've written a blog entitled "Don't just celebrate Christmas, celebrate your adoption."

Here's a little excerpt:

If you think about it, what we celebrate during the Christmas season—God sending His Son to redeem us—was for the purpose of giving us adoption as sons. According to Paul, God the Father sent His eternal Son into the world so that we might receive the status of sons and eternally share in the Son’s communion with Him.

I think I might take it one minor step further, saying that all of this was ultimately for God's glory, not our own. But, I doubt that CHA would disagree.

Merry Christmas!

Third Day

Brad Avery (Guitarist for the band Third Day) and his family adopted a child from China this year (2007). Tricia and I went to their concert last night, and they played a song that he wrote about the "experience", called "Merry Christmas." It's on the Christmas Offerings CD. (You can get the CD with the link below. I'd highly recommend the CD anyway. They've written a new verse to "What Child is This." (Unfortunately, I don't have them right in front of me.)

Anyway. Check this stuff out.

The Brotherhood of Sons

Dr. Russell Moore from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has a phenomenal article, entitled The Brotherhood of Sons: What Some Rude Questions About Adoption Taught Me About the Gospel of Christ.  It's a good 15 minute commitment to read, but well worth it.  Here's an excerpt:

“They are now,” I replied. “Yes,” the lady snapped, “I know. But are they really brothers?” Clenching my jaw, I coolly responded, “Yes, now they are both our children so they are now really brothers.” The woman sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, “Well, you know what I mean.”

Of course, we did know what she meant. She meant did these two boys—born three weeks apart—share a common biological ancestry, a common bloodline, some common DNA. It struck me that this question betrayed what most of us tend to view as really important when it comes to sonship: traceable genetic material.

This is the reason people would also ask us, “So do you also have any children of your own?” And it is the reason newspaper obituaries will often refer to the deceased’s “adopted child,” as though this were the equivalent of a stepchild or a protégé, rather than a real offspring.

...

I suppose the root of my annoyance with the question “Are they brothers?” really lay here. It seemed that the good-intentioned conversationalists saw these children as somehow not quite part of our family, as though, if they were “really brothers,” then “at least they’ll have each other.” The same is true of other questions people asked us: “Have you ever seen their mother?” (“Why, yes, and you’ve seen her too. Have you met my wife Maria?”) or “Do you worry that their real parents will ever show up?”

Steven Curtis Chapman on The Gospel and Adoption

Steven Curtis Chapman: Adoption takes the Gospel and it makes it real in a profound way that nothing else does…I mean, every time one of the 3 girls run in the room it’s like there’s the Gospel again. There’s a little girl by no merit of her own, by nothing she could do, nothing she did to earn this, only by the miracle of adoption God placed her in our family. Now she has an inheritance, now she has a name, now she has a future, now she has hope where she didn’t have that before. I think my kids see that, I think they get it…It’s been so amazing to watch especially my sons…watching my boys, have little sisters, who not only are little sisters but are little sisters who they’ve seen go from helplessness…just to watch them relate to them, watch them be big brothers to these little sisters. I’ve watched them blossom and become so much better men as a result of it. It’s so cool to hear them talk about what their families are going to look like one day. “I want to have one from India, one from Africa, one from China”. They’re formulating these rainbow families, of all colors. It’s so exciting for me as a Dad…It’s opened their hearts and it’s opened their eyes to the Gospel, to the Big Story of God…all over the world and not just our little picture we get of it in our culture.

(HT: Rightnow.org)