A Leap of Faith

We have made it official - we are adopting again!!  Most people are usually surprised.  If you asked me anytime in the past couple of years if we intended to have more children, a definitive "yes" would not have been the answer you received.  I would usually respond with something like this:

         "I don't think so.  Three is a lot, and frankly, I'm exhausted!  However, if there is one
          thing I have learned in life, it's that I never know what God has in store.  If we felt
          God was calling us to have more children, then we would do it, but I would need
          to be absolutely positive it was God's calling.  I would need God to write me a letter,
          just so things were perfectly clear!"

The past several months, God has been making the change in our hearts.  One day, the realization hit me that God has in fact already written us a letter - the Bible.  His Word gives us the instruction we need, and the call to care for orphans is prevalent throughout that precious letter!  When I turned to my husband to say, "He HAS written us a letter!", I was halfway crying, somewhere between shock and excitement as I grasped the reality of what that meant.  :) 

It's not that God calls every person to adopt - there are many ways each of us can actively engage in the orphan crisis.  Read Orphanology by Tony Merida and Rick Morton for suggestions.  Prayer alone is a powerful way to fight for the fatherless.  But we feel God has made it clear that adoption is one of the ways our family can advocate for orphans.  (The thought just occurred to me that maybe your prayers are the reason we are adopting!) 

So, I guess the exhaustion will just continue!  :)  But I'm so thankful it will.  We love our kiddos ferociously, and are ecstatic that we will have a fourth!  God has been shaping us and molding us to recognize something - IT IS NOT ABOUT US!  It's not about whether we are tired or worn out from working through temper tantrums or doing endless piles of laundry.  It's not about whether or not we'll have money to take a vacation, or involve our children in every extra-curricular activity that suits their fancy.  It's about family.  It's about sacrifice, which really is so very, very minuscule compared to the sacrifice Jesus made to adopt us into his family.  It's about loving God so much we'll do whatever He calls us to do.  It's about precious children in the world who deserve to have a family.

Recently, I was asked if we wished we could continue having biological children.  My simple answer, "No."  God had a plan for our family, and we are thankful He's allowed us to have children both biologically and through adoption.  This process did not begin for us with just the desire to have more children.  It came from the burden on our hearts for orphans.  All our children are OUR children, no matter how they arrived in our arms, equally precious and fully loved.

I have to say, God is SO cool!  If you sincerely pray for Him to change your heart to desire the things He does, He will do it!  And thankfully, He is patient and takes things slowly with us.  He knows how selfish we are and how long it takes us to come around.  :)

New Little Hudson, we are ON OUR WAY! 

Smiles!