I did not know that this month is National Adoption Month until just a few days ago. I will be chronicling some things here this month. I will try to keep these posts short and interesting, so as not to take up too much of anyone's time.
When I was a little girl, I loved God very much. I had, (looking back) quite a few selfless dreams then. I'm sure I had more than my fair share of selfish dreams, too, but in my healing I've come to realize that every single selfless prayer I prayed as a child has come to fruition, save 2. One is in the works and the other will probably come to be much later.
1. I wanted a husband exactly like Allan. Funny, I forgot that as I got older and dated guys exactly his opposite, but now here he is...even though I might not have really been seeking him at the time, God sent him to me anyway.
2. I wanted 3 "bio" kids. I even wanted 2 girls and then a boy, so the girls would teach him to be gentle and sweet. Of course, I got an extra-special bonus daughter and our road to live births has been a bit curvy, but I got what I asked for as a child...even though I had changed my mind as I got older and decided I didn't want any girls.
3. I wanted to "farm." Raise my own animals and our own food. Of course we don't do this on a large scale, but we have been getting closer to being self-sufficient every season.
4. I wanted to adopt. I don't know WHY or where that dream came from, but I wanted it. I put it out of my head as an adult because when I asked Allan if he ever thought about adopting, (after we had GraceAnne, I was just rather traumatized by lots of things and wasn't sure I wanted to go through the whole pregnancy/childbirth/nursing/changing a girl diaper thing again. HA! I did come around, obviously) and he pretty much said "no. Why would I when I can have my own?"
5. I wanted to own a homeless shelter/soup kitchen/coffee shop to help the homeless.
I'm here this month to talk about #4. Prior to getting pregnant with Josiah last year, we pretty much felt done with kids. We just knew we didn't have room in our hearts for another child. We had 4 beautiful children between the 2 of us and we felt completely OVER IT. Our son was 5 months old and had a lot of health issues that taxed us. (Thankfully, he is fine, healthy and strong today, but his first 18 months were akin to hell) Allan was scheduled for his vasectomy and all was well, until they sent us away despite our having everything together. We knew then that God was taking us somewhere new, and we submitted as best we could.
If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know what happened next. We rescheduled the vasectomy, but got pregnant prior to the appt. We were excited and prayed fervently for our unborn child. That pregnancy stretched us-our whole family-in ways we would not have fathomed. Allan had his vasectomy on August 4th and on August 5th we found out the baby was gone.
The next year was rough, but I knew almost right away that God had helped me to realize I *could* love more children and that was what He intended for me to do. I tried hard not to think about it much because I was grieving and didn't want to make a mess. When we move in our own time, we have a tendency to make a mess. So I waited. In the meantime I would mention casually to Allan that we could adopt. He would agree with me and I would take that glimmer of hope and run. Then the devil would remind me of that one conversation, so far in our past and I would beat myself up. I prayed that God would do one of two things:
1. Change our hearts...take away this desire for more children
2. Change my husband's heart toward adoption.
I don't know when, but He changed Allan's heart about adoption. My husband has fully accepted whatever God has for us in this journey despite his previous fears. Praise God! This is no small task. To change a person's heart about things that have been ingrained in them from childhood is no easy feat, but nothing is too big for our God.
Matthew 19:26 Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible"
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