Learn more about the move by visiting www.likedandeliondust.com or search for it on Google.  Below is the YouTube trailer.

Adoption always raises questions in people’s minds.  Sometimes it’s curiosity about how the process works.  Sometimes it’s about the relationship between biological and non-biological parenthood.  For the rest of the summer, I’m going to spend time answering some of these questions.  Some are personal, so, we’ll do our best to present the answers in ways that help others understand that everyone should consider adoption.

This week’s question is a big one – “Why did we adopt?”  Whenever an adoptive parent hears this question, there’s two ways to answer – the idealogical answer or the practical answer.

THE PRACTICAL ANSWER

First, the practical.  We adopted because we were unable to give birth to children ourselves.  My wife was born with a genetic condition called Turner Syndrome.  The story of the discovery of this condition and the events that followed are her story to tell – but let’s just say that it is a miracle she is here.  Only 1% of Turner Syndrome children are ultimately born into the world (nearly every one is miscarried).  But, God allowed my darling to be born, and her life has been a testimony to his goodness.

We knew from the start we were an infertile couple and didn’t have to spend heart-wrenching months and years trying to conceive a child like so many of our friends.  We knew without a doubt that our children would come through adoption.

THE IDEALOGICAL ANSWER

The idealogical answer for why we adopted wasn’t always apparent to us.  We knew that God calls everyone who says they follow Christ to take care of widows and orphans (James 1:27).  We all see many lonely, unloved children in the world and most of us want to be able to do something to help.  In truth, there are few of us who take that next step to consider adoption.

But adoption stretches our understanding of family, parenting and genetics in ways that clarifies and enhances each.  We didn’t have this as a reason for our first adoption, but it certainly played a part in our second adoption.

My family is originally from the mountains of western North Carolina, in an area far removed from the hint of city life.  My wife’s family is mostly from the Pacific Northwest.  Our children won’t be carrying on the genetics of these two families, but they certainly will carry on our morals, values, and faith stories.  They will also carry on the stories and advice of their grandparents and great-grandparents – although their genetics will be different.  Family, therefore, isn’t just based on DNA, but on relationships.  My wife and I have only been married for 5 years, but we are very much family.  My daughters have known their grandmothers for just a couple of years, but they are very much family.  We have friends who have been involved in our lives, supporting us for years, and our daughters are being taught to call them aunts and uncles – because they truly are part of our family.

The idea of parenting is also stretched and expanded because of adoption.  When you know every moment of every day that the children you have are a blessing from God, your perspective changes.  I can only imagine (although I haven’t experienced it) that many parent can feel a bit of ownership in a biological child (just remember the court battles you have heard about concerning paternity, or the times you’ve heard a parent reinforce their authority because they ‘brought the child into this world.’).  Adoptive parents don’t have any claim of this ownership, except that the state has recognized them as parents.  More importantly though, they are reminded that God has given them this child to raise.

Emily and I chose adoption first to grow our family and then discovered its value in further defining God, family and parenting in our lives.  What’s your reasons for either choosing adoption or for considering it?  Post a comment below to let us know.

This post (like many others) has been rolling around in my head for a while now so on this quiet morning, I am finally able to put keyboard and computer to work (my penmanship is atrocious, so pen to paper is out of the question) and get it out there in the blogosphere.  As I continue my quest to read through the bible this year with my hubby I love how familiar passages that I have breezed over will suddenly have new or renewed meaning in my life (thank you HOLY SPIRIT!!).

So that brings me to Matthew 26!  A familiar passage of Christ with the disciples in His last day at the garden of Gethsemane.  This time, though, I am humbled by the lengths that Christ goes to in order to obey His Father!  It is amazing how far He went to show His love for God the Father that then poured out overflowing onto a fallen, depraved, spiteful humanity.

Often I have heard the phrase “if you were the only person left on this earth, Christ would have died still!”.  YES!  He would have, without doubt, yet not because of us but because of his obedience to his God!  You see it’s often easy to think that Christ’s life was all about saving humanity, which was His purpose no question but in a broader picture it was to honor God.

What a blow to my ego, what a humbling thought that while Christ loved me and loved humanity, he love God more!  What a challenge we are then given, to love God more than all this world has to offer.  I don’t know about you, but I often fall short of obedience to God at that level.  But, I am refreshed knowing that his example is one that we are simply called to follow, and our obedience is his heart’s desire for us.

We had noticed the dark clouds as we came in to the store but didn’t think much of it.  But, on our way to check-out God showed off His power over nature and let loose a HUGE thunderstorm.  As our cashier was scanning our items we were discussing the pros and cons of hanging out in the store a little longer, just to see if the storm would pass.

Then the lights began to flicker and, long story longer, the power goes out with only 3 of our items left un-scanned!  After a few moments of uncertainty and slight chaos we were shuffled to another register to start ALL over scanning our items.  Then, the power goes out again rendering our new cash register inactive, too.

By this time every other customer had discovered the remaining two working cash registers on battery backup (of which we were not in line for).  We were standing there wondering what to do and waiting for our cashier to help us figure it out.  Our girls’ patience was beginning to wear a little thin, so we start talking to the manager asking what we should do, politely saying that our girls are getting antsy and we really need to get home.  We hoped she’d let us go first in one of the check-out lines, but she realized that doing so would cause “mutiny” as she put it.  After a few moments, she just looked at us and said “you can just go, I’ll make it right” What? She was telling us as quietly as possible to just take our groceries and go home, that she would take care of everything!  We protested a little, but she was insistent.  So we walked out of the store – dumbfounded at what had just happened.  We had a FULL cart of groceries, and we were amazed at God’s provision.  Hours later, we still kept looking at each other, saying “God is SO good!”

Did I mention that we had just moved to a new city, and as moves go, we were still in financial recovery from moving expenses and the wait of new paychecks to start coming in?

This was a pretty obvious display of God’s provision, so I want to encourage you to ask God to open your eyes to the big and little ways that HE provides every day!  I would love to hear some stories of God’s provision in your life so PLEASE feel free to post a comment, sharing how you have seen Him work in your life!

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/july/10.18.html

As my wife and I have been reading through the Bible this year, our reading plan brought us to Deuteronomy over the last month, and there’s a wonderful passage that I came across that really drives home this reality.  In Deuteronomy 9:4-6, it says:

After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.

Now, this passage is not about adoption nor is it about parenting – it is about God blessing a people for reasons other than their own actions.  God is certainly blessing us through the gift of our children, but we have to be careful not to read into it – more often than not, blessings from God are not based on our actions.  If they were, then the whole idea behind Christianity would be wrong.  As followers of Christ, we understand that it is God’s grace, his offer, his willingness that saves us and not our works.  Our children may be blessed to have us as parents, but as we struggle daily with understanding what it means to parent, what it means to serve others, and what it means to demonstrate Christ to our children, we are indeed the ones that should feel blessed.  God could have chosen a different family for our little girls.  God could have done many things. But, he chose to allow us the privilege to become parents.  We, then, are the lucky ones!

And, since we already have two girls, my lovely wife has asked if we wanted to ask for a boy this time around.  I decided to be all spiritual and say, “Let’s let God decide – boy or girl it’ll be up to him.”  Yes, a statement like that does indeed halt most open communication, so I’ve had to retract it so we could truly discuss the matter.

Now, most couples discuss having boys or girls.  Lots of guys want the little boy to carry on the family name and his love of <insert sport name here>.  But, I’m not like that right now.  And, most couples don’t discuss it with any real expectation that their child will be one gender or the other – but adoption does have that complication.  As adoptive parents, we can indeed ask for a boy or girl.  It may extend the wait for their new child, but for many, that’s ok.

The reason my wife and I have thought about having adopting a little boy has centered around the desire to raise a godly young man to impact his culture.  We’ve seen how God has brought children of different ethnicities into our lives, so we expect it’ll happen like that again.  We know that especially in some african-american communities, there’s a great need for strong male leadership in the families (see the recent issue of Ebony and their article about Fathers), so we want to play a role in helping that growing problem.

But ultimately, we’ll probably leave the decision up to God, because we know that whatever he wants for us – whether a boy or girl – will be his best.  We just pray that whatever gender our next child is, they will grow in their understanding of our amazing God everyday.  And that they will truly impact this world for God’s good!