The Orphan Encounter..

On the heels of orphan Sunday and with all the adoption stories/pictures/blogs floating around the internet during this month...Adoption Awareness Month...and all the questions that have been asked from friends and teachers and church members and random people that we run into at the grocery store that have encountered my kids...a blog post was birthed.  I have had numerous  people asking questions about adoption and orphan care but one question I keep hearing asked in a multitude of ways is this..."I feel great compassion toward the orphan and have a great burden to do something...I just don't know what that something looks like.   How did you know God was calling you to adopt?  What else can we do besides adoption to love orphans and answer the call of God to care for them?"

Our call to adoption began early in our marriage.  We always knew in the backs of our minds that we would adopt someday.  we always thought that would be a baby girl from China.  We didn't know about the orphan crisis or the condition of orphanages back then.  I'm not sure we knew anyone even adopting from China then, it was just on our hearts.  As we began having biological kids, the idea of adoption was further and further from our minds.   We thought we were done after Shelton.  We had our boy and girl.  About a year after getting a 99.9% proof IUD, i found out I was pregnant with Caleb.  It was then that we realized we weren't in control of our family size.  Briena came along four years later and then we were really done....but God wasn't done.  We moved a few times and ended up in Cochran Georgia with Tracey working as a campus minister for the Ga Baptist convention.    I remember clear as day Christmas shopping for our sweet kiddos after celebrating Thanksgiving with Traceys family in 2008.  Tracey and I were walking into Target and we walked past a little boy with down syndrome walking out of target with his mom.  Tracey and I looked at each other and simultaneously said...when are we going to look into adoption?

 God used that moment to bring to the surface a burden he'd placed on our hearts years before.  Soon after that, Tracey was attending a campus ministers retreat and learned of an opportunity to go to China leading a team of college students.  he texted me to ask if id mind him going to China for a month in the summer of 2009.  I knew this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and said, 'GO".  Before Tracey left, wed started talking more about adoption and specifically special needs adoption.  We didn't know what that looked like but knew God had given us 4 beautiful, healthy kids.  Tracey met Mei in China while volunteering at an orphanage and fell madly in love.  He saw the horrific conditions in which Mei was living....the conditions many orphans around the world face daily.  He was burdened, he was wrecked, he was changed.  once you go, once you see, once you put a face to and a name on the "orphan", its never the same.  Tracey came home and began talking about Mei and his desire to make him ours.  (you can read back through our blog to see all the mountains God moved to make that happen!)  This was where we had to answer Gods call or miss out on His blessing.  Tracey had an easier time saying, 'lets roll" than I did.  We weren't adopting because we couldn't have kids of own, we obviously had no problems with that.  God wasn't leading us because we had a bunch of money laying around to use...we had precious little extra but what little we had was being saved for a kitchen remodel project.  (That money went instead toward Meis adoption and that remodel never happened.)  God wasn't urging us because we were great parents or because we were super organized or because we had it all together.  He wasn't calling us because we knew all about Meis special need.  When Tracey came home from China he couldn't even remember what Meis special needs were...he thought he was missing a couple fingers and toes:).  He fell in love with Meis heart!  These were all my excuses as we fleshed out Gods calling to adopt, we had 4 kids already, how could we possibly handle another, especially one with special needs.  Adoption is expensive and I selfishly wanted my new kitchen!  We were just normal people trying to balance four kids...why would God be asking us to adopt?  It was at the Catalyst conference in 2009 that God finally squashed all my excuses and that i said "yes" without hesitation.  God then began to provide financially for us to bring Mei home.

Thats what our calling looked like but its different for everyone.  I don't think everyone is called to adopt but I do think that God has pressed adoption on the hearts of many that like me, have many excuses and are afraid to say "yes."  Your family may not understand. your friends may think you are crazy.  It probably won't make sense in the worlds eyes when your money is going to adoption costs and medical bills, therapy, groceries, food, clothes, ext rather than living out the American dream...but let me tell you, you will never be more blessed, more changed,  have your lives and hearts more wrecked in every good way!

stay tuned for the next blog post....Loving The Fatherless Without Adopting