Why Did We ADOPT???

WHY DID WE ADOPT?? This is probably one of my top questions I get all the time!! I know I answered this in the beginning of our journey a couple of years ago...but that old blog is now retired and private...so I thought I'd take this next month leading up to our 1 Year Home with LL to answer some of the MANY questions I get each day....Some of you already know all these answers...but some of you are newer and may not have known us back when we started our Adoption Journey....AND..since these are commonly asked questions still....I'm hoping to link to some of them on my side bar for future newbies that stop by Blog Land!!! :) So HERE GOES:

I NEVER dreamed of adoption a day in my life!! Seriously....never even considered it...I was VERY focused on "getting pregnant" and having a BIG family the old fashioned way..plain and simple!! I don't know if I "IGNORED" the fact that there were so many orphans in the world or what...but I do believe God's plan was perfect for us....birthing 4 children in a row WAS FABULOUS..and my doctor called it "QUITS" for us since I had 4 c-sections!! That was it...we got "fixed" and story was over!! (or so I thought :)

We were seriously BUSY!! We had a new 5 yr. old, a 3 yr. old, a 2 yr. old and a new born....2 girls then 2 boys...what more could anyone ask for, right?? Well...when our baby George was 10 months old....I was busy praying to God to let me know "WHAT WAS NEXT"!! I STILL never dreamed of adoption....I thought I'd make a difference in the world by helping the homeless (like my sister Kelly was busy doing) and my hobbies consisted of surfing Realtracs... a website announcing the latest homes for sale in our area (really meaningful hobby, i know :) I had never even heard of the word "blog" before!! :)

When one fateful day...I received an email....it was like any other email...it was sent from my friend Nicole in my Sunday School Class..and it said, "Kristi, forward this on to your sister Kelly..I think she'd like it" The title of the forward was "Gotcha Day Video" !!! I didn't even know "what" that meant...and ALMOST sent it straight on to my sister...but I decided to open it first instead....and well....God was there at that very moment as I watched that Gotcha Day video...I had never seen anything like it in my life...I didn't know you could even adopt from Ethiopia...Here is the video:


God changed our lives at that VERY moment!! It was a fateful MOMENT in my life where God used someone else's journey to let us know that our FAMILY WASN'T FINISHED!!! We had a daughter waiting for us in Ethiopia....

Then began the next few days of RESEARCH!! I had to find out ALL I COULD about this orphan crisis Tracy M. talked about in her video...I traced back emails until I got in touch with Tracy (who I had never heard of until that video was sent to me) and I found out she was actually local!! I emailed, invited her over..and asked her a million questions (those are to come in a future post in this next month). I couldn't believe what I was hearing...children needed a home...and we had one...simple as that!!! Oh, but I then had to let my hubby IN on my new found passion...and well...let him know too...that well...I felt certain God was telling us WE WERE TO ADOPT!! So, I prayed about it...and I asked God, "How you sure you meant for US to get this message? I mean, we already have our hands full...did you really mean WE WERE TO ADOPT???" And, I knew in my heart God was telling me YES!!!





So, what did my hubby say? Well...he certainly was never against it..but he gave me the old, "sure honey..maybe in a few years" comment....BUT I knew in my heart we weren't to wait...so yes, there were many late night discussions over timing, money..all that stuff....but in the end of it all...he trusted what God was telling me...and he jumped on board too...and got excited...and well, then took over ALL the paper work and did the entire dossier himself since he said I wasn't doing any of it right!!! :)








So, that was it....we started the paper work application and all that fun stuff on George's 1st bday....and a year and 2 months later....Lucy Lane was in my arms!!! What a miracle!!! Oh, and we can't imagine our lives without her!! She's dreamy, yummy, and amazingly wonderful!! :) And, we truly could have missed out on all of it!! In a blink of an eye the Lord presented me with a fork in the road...WHICH ONE WOULD I TAKE?? HIS ROAD...OR MY ROAD??? I will forever be grateful for taking HIS ROAD....PRAISE GOD!!! Our family picture is now God's Family Picture....I had to just QUIT thinking about HOW I envisioned our family and turn to the Lord and ask HOW HE envisioned our family....I would never have been able to see ALL the wonderful things that HE had planned...I just had to trust (which wasn't always easy :) But in the end..the reward is sweet:

That's it folks...We adopted because there are 147 Million Orphans in this world...and God let us know that ONE of them was our daughter!!! So, that's WHY we adopted, we've been home almost a year, it has been a year filled with many blessings...and well....we'll just have to wait to see what God has in store for us next!! :)


***I ran across this AGCI family's "waiting" video the other day....I think it is just adorable...Again...this is a family with ONE girl and ONE boy...they could have "stopped" with the "perfect" family in the eyes of the rest of the world....BUT...they listened as God laid Adoption on their hearts....check out their cuteness and be inspired:

Waiting from G Miller on Vimeo.

**Happy Monday to you all, kj