Our Adoption Story

I don't think that I will ever forget the circumstances and the influences that brought us to adopt Drew. But then again there seem to be a lot of things that I do not write down thinking that I will never forget, only to find that I forgot. Even though I have shared the story many times and this is definitely more significant than most of the other things that I thought I would always remember but don't now, I am going to write it down even though I don't think that I will forget what brought Jathan and I to the decision to adopt.

When Jathan and I were engaged to be married, we filled out a questionnaire separately for our pastor asking all sorts of things about our thoughts and desires regarding our marriage. One question asked how many kids we thought we would like to have. I put down 3 or 4. Jathan wrote 2 or 3. Well seeing that, I figured 3 would be the number then.

We got married, Jathan started seminary, I started working, children were on the back burner. Not that I didn't want them, but practically it worked better for me to work full time, Jathan to be in school full time, then we could finish seminary quicker and get on with our lives. It just made sense. As Jathan was in school, we had several friends get pregnant and have babies. And our dear friends, the Garcias, adopted a little girl, Eva. That was our first up close experience with adoption. What a joy it was to watch that miracle!

Finally, we were in the home stretch of seminary so we decided it was time to start thinking about kids. We weren't getting any younger, ya know. God blessed us right away with our daughter, Paige, and then 18 months later with our son, Clay. During this time, adoption never occurred to me for our family. Although I thought about adoption often as I watched others in our church adopt and our friends, the Garcias, grow their family through adoption. I have to be honest in my mind I thought of it mostly for families that were not able to have children.

After Clay was close to a year old I started to talk to Jathan about planning for our 3rd child. Remember that was the middle ground that we fell on way back when we were engaged. He was dragging his feet though. He thought two was quite enough at that time and he wasn't sure if he was ready for a 3rd quite yet. Trying to be understanding, I did remind him that it does take 9 months (or closer to 8 months for me, mine seem to come a bit early) before the baby would be born and we needed to start planning. Eventually, he said he would be ready in a few months. I was happy with that. As long as we had a plan, I am happy.

But one day I was standing at the kitchen sink doing the dishes. I thought about some families in our church who had adopted. They already had kids when they adopted, I started thinking about the children around the world and in our own country who have no one to call mommy or daddy. They didn't have a mother that they knew would be there when they cried, or to kiss them goodnight, or hug them and just say "I love you". I thought about all of the children already in the world that were without families. That are already living here, in the world, right now, that will grow up with no one unless someone chooses to adopt them. Could we adopt? No, there is no way that Jathan would go for this. He is having a hard time thinking about having a third child, let alone pay a large amount of money to adopt one. So I remained quiet about it and really tried to push it out of my mind.

During this time our senior pastor was involved in orphan ministry in South Africa. He began teaching on God's care and love of orphans. One Sunday, in late November, we were driving out to the tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree. As we were driving, Jathan asked in an odd, uncomfortable, nervous sort of way "What did you think about Pastor Whipple's sermon?" I don't remember what I said, but I remember saying a few things that really stuck out to me, totally not what had stuck out to him though. He said a few things about the sermon, then said "It has made me think, what do you think about us adopting?" What? He has been thinking about it too!

So our journey began.

We began to gather information, talking to people to find out all that they knew about adoption. Then the decision had to be made: Domestic or International. We chose International. At that point in time, I didn't think that I could risk domestic. To have birth parents change their minds, or the fear I had about the birthparents finding us. I was too fearful for that. International, to me, didn't seem to have all of those risks.

Now, which country? I researched many countries and their adoption policies. We talked to more people. We prayed. There were so many factors to consider. Cost? How many times do you need to travel to the country? Do we fit the criteria of the country? We looked at our church family. Our church had a large ministry to International students, which was mostly made up of Asian students. So we narrowed it down to the continent of Asia. We were too young for China and we didn't make enough money to meet their criteria. We crossed that off our list. After looking at the other possibilities we were left with Korea to be what we thought was our best option. For several reasons. #1 We fit the criteria #2 Korea has been doing adoptions with the US for years, it was a smooth process #3 I hate to say it as a reason, but it wasn't as expensive as some of the others #4 We have a good Christian friend that had been adopted from Korea, I wanted our child to have someone to look to and could relate to. After all of these questions were answered along with what agency we were to go through. Our first application was submitted and it was official. We were adopting!

To be continue