It's Not What You Think.

We have friends who are adopting. 2 families actually. Everytime we seem to expect a lull in adoption at our church, someone steps forward. People's hearts are changed. The Lord moves. It has just been so wonderfully overwhelming to me.

All of the recent buzz about adoption in our world has brought back memories of our journey... I tell this story over and over and over again. I write about it every chance I get because I never want to forget. I want to remember every detail. I want for Will to feel like he knows his story inside and out.

In 2003 Blake and I went on our first date. Somehow the conversation went to children. I shared my dream to adopt. He agreed, mainly I think because he wanted to marry me and wasn't going to ruin it on our first date. :) I held on to that conversation. I treasured it in my heart. Blake tucked it so far away that he forgot about it.

We married in 2005 and despite having every intention that Blake would finish his PhD before we added to our family, it was only a matter of months before I was begging for a child. We began trying to get pregnant rather quickly. I knew that it might come slowly. I knew that it might be hard. I knew right away that I wanted to pray about adoption being a way that we expanded.

I was searching the internet immediately. I spent hours and hours on adoption agency websites. And then the mail came. About 10 info packets on domestic and international adoption. Blake laid them on my side of the bed and had little to do with them. I poured over them, memorizing every detail. I was still not pregnant.

I don't know what happened, other then to say that it was just God. I had been praying and working on Blake and the topic of adoption for probably 6 months. He had been telling me to give the pregnancy time. But to me, this wasn't about whether or not I was pregnant. I didn't just want to be pregnant. I wanted to me a mom and I didn't care how that happened. From March 2006 to October 2006 God changed Blake's heart and one day I heard him say "I want to adopt."...

We hit the ground running and by the next month we began the process of the homestudies. Our dossier reached Guatemala in January 2007... The same month our precious son entered the world.

Because we adopted Will before I became pregnant with Riley people almost always assume that it is because of the infertility. It's not what you think, though. There was infertility. Almost 2 years of it. There were tears and hurt and disappointment. But adopting Will was not about that. Adopting Will was about what Christ did for Blake and I. It was our totally flawed attempt to mirror... mimic his adoption of us and the way in which he picked us up and pulled us out of a terrible life.

When the Lord changes your heart towards adoption - When your heart becomes sympathetic towards it, amazing things happen. You see pictures of a little girl in Asia and wonder what dress you might help her pick out for her senior prom. You study a photo of a little boy in Africa and imagine teaching him to ride a bike or throw a ball. In our case, it was the photos of young boys in Guatemala. We studied those photos daily for weeks... wondering which one we would soon be kissing. Imagining rocking that small bundle to sleep. January 26 was the day we put a face on those dreams...

It's not what you think. Things seldom are. Will was not just a body to fill our empty crib. Will is here by an act of God. A desire to fulfill our Lord's instruction to care for the orphans... A desire we could never have on our own. We want him to know.