Our Adoption Testimony

Steve and I are applying like mad right now for adoption grants and many of the grants ask for an "adoption testimony" - our personal story of why we chose to adopt. I'm kind of proud of our answer and thought I'd share it here :)

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Our family journey of faith has been a series of decisions made in quiet and ever-growing certainty of the next adventure that God is calling us to. That was true when we were two crazy kids who got married in their late teens, true of two crazy twenty-somethings who decided to move 2,000 miles away from everyone they knew to follow God's plan in Utah.

And it was true of us 4 years ago when we were ready to have a third child and slowly realized that God had a miracle in store for us through the adoption of our daughter Sasha.

We do not believe that Christians are commanded to adopt. We do firmly believe that Christians are called to live lives of love and to care for all those in the margins - including orphans. For us, caring for “the least of these” did lead us to adoption. We were ready for another child, and we knew that there were 140 million children in the world who are desperate for families. So, through prayer and study and a whole heck of a lot of research we finally said yes to the adoption adventure God purposed for us.

When we started on Sasha’s adoption journey, we didn’t originally purpose to complete a “special needs” adoption, but there were plenty of special needs that we were open to and felt that we had the faith, the fortitude, and the family dynamic to take in stride. To our surprise, our first “referral” from Kazakhstan was for a two-year-old girl with a wide, unrepaired cleft palate. Gratefully we accepted Sasha’s referral and then the real adventure began.

Sasha has been home from Kazakhstan for almost two years and although our journey with her hasn’t been easy, it has been amazing. And so when we were ready to consider having another child, there was no doubt that we would bring our fourth child into our family through adoption. We were also immediately convinced that we would specifically pursue waiting child adoption. And now we simply cannot wait to bring our daughter, WanYing, home from China in the spring of 2011.

We believe that the most important things that our children can learn from us is that they are:
1. loved irrevocably and unconditionally and
2. not in charge

We purpose to teach our children these truths through word and action every day, just as our God teaches us the very same things. Adoption has taught us in new, astounding, painful, and stretching ways that we are not in charge and that we are passionately and perfectly loved by the God of the Universe simply for who we are. It is our prayer that we can impart to our children a glimmer of these truths as we have learned throughout our lives and especially through adoption.