The Adoption Journey

It was hard. We’d had our boys Chris and Jon-Jon and knew God wanted us to have more kids in our family. But what do you do after three miscarriages? Was it all just a test? Were we to keep trying?

Then I thought maybe God was trying to say, “Enough.” Our ministry load was increasing and our boys were growing up. Wendy, my wife, could soon join me with her wonderful ministry talents—we could serve together and that would be a dream, another desire of our hearts.

I felt conflicted, but not for long. Wendy and I had the distinct impression that God wanted us to keep building our family. This knowledge scared me. I knew that if we searched the Lord’s heart and were unable to have more biological children, then adoption would be the obvious answer to our prayers. I don’t always have those “knowing” thoughts, where you know the Lord’s will and his answer before you even ask. But I did this time. 

When we decided adoption was the path God had for us we thought, China. But that door closed, fast. What now, Lord?

We determined, once the China option closed, to ask God for leading. He said he would give us the desires of our hearts. Our desire was to follow after God’s calling on our lives. After our adoption agency advised us to look into Ethiopia, which had just opened up, we were blessed to find that God was working in Ethiopia, supernaturally bringing our family and Sadie together.

Ten days into her life Sadie was dropped off at the local police station. I learned later that this suggested that her birth parents deeply cared for her well-being though they didn’t, for reasons unknown, have the means to care for the child on their own. That is all I know of my daughter’s birth parents. The police took Sadie to a nearby orphanage.

The process is you get a referral and after a few months of paperwork, you hop on a plane and it all seems like time is going in slow motion. Excitement intermingled with fear. Tears. Scenarios zooming through your mind a thousand miles per second. I’m going to be her dad. This was the next child God had for Wendy and I all along.

If you’re willing and have the capacity and means to adopt, what do you think the Lord’s answer will be? I thought to myself. So I searched, even though I knew the answer. “Do it!” said the Lord. OK, fine. I did. We did. It’s parenting, so we’re not out of the woods on the ups and downs of that, but the experience has been perfect in a broken and beautiful sort of way.