I know you all have many questions and I will attempt to address them as quickly as possible. How did we come to take such a big leap of faith to adopt? Adoption has been on my heart since I was a teenager .My great grandmother actually lived in an orphanage in West Virginia before she was adopted. Before Wade and I married we discussed how I believed it was God's will for me to adopt. I gave him the "out" over 15 years ago. I never imagined it would take all those years or we would be adopting more than 1 child.
When Sam turned 1, we started talking about adoption seriously. We started collecting the necessary documentation, but we were detoured on our journey to care for my grandmother who had dementia. In June 2009, I found out I was pregnant, but then I miscarried. We prayed and felt God leading us more toward adoption. The question we most wrestled with was what country? We originally thought it would be Guatemala. We both knew some Spanish, we both loved Mexican style food, and we thought Wade looked a little Mexican with his dark features. Unfortunately, Guatemala's government shut down adoptions. We then turned to China, but due to some medicines I took for my PPD we were declined.
January 12, 2010--heartbreaking, devestating earthquake hits Haiti and all of us sit and cry in front of the computer and T.V. over the amount of loss. The children without families wondering the streets.Who would take care of them? We learned so much about the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere that we immediately felt called to adopt from Haiti. This was it!! But the laws of Haiti would not permit a family with more than 2 biological children to adopt. The government also halted adoptions. Even though we could not adopt from Haiti, we started following the God's Littlest Angels blog because we saw them on the news trying to get 81 children home to the United States. We were hooked and started donating to their orphanage.
The earthquake really shook us into action adoption wise. When you see so much loss of life, it propels you to start doing things that maybe you have procrastinated doing. We also had a sense that if something in Haitian law changed, we wanted to be ready. So in February 2010 we started our home study. We knew it would take a little longer and we would need more documentation since Grandma was living with us. The fingerprints for a then 91 year old woman were next to impossible to get even though we had her printed 3 times. She finally got an exemption due to her age and all her criminal records came back negative. We completed our domestic home study in May 2010. We realized that if Haitian laws changed we could easily convert over to an international home study. In the meantime, we thought if God wants us to adopt a child it would have to happen domestically. Sometimes you just have to step out of that comfort zone and trust Him.
So the waiting began. We had a preference for a girl and we wanted her to be between 3-5 years old. Can you believe that we were active on a list for more than a year? We were never considered, not even once. So what do you do during this time of waiting? You pray , you live,you celebrate, you love, and in our case, we lost. March 26, 2011 we lost the matriarch of the family--Grandma. Shock, denial, and grief can keep you really busy.
And then just when you think you have God's plan all figured out-God opens the door that you thought was shut. On May 17, 2011, my college roommate's 40th birthday, Haiti changes it's requirements and the orphanage director posts on her blog that she will now take families with more than 2 biological children.
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