this week, we were certified to be foster/adoptive parents. finally!!!
if you know us, you know that this is a process that we have been going through for a while. actually its been almost exactly 9 months since we started, which is kind of funny [i guess that God thinks that this is about the right length of time to prepare for parenthood :) ]. it has felt like a very long, dragged out process, but i guess compared to a pregnancy, its been the same amount of time... however, it has been MUCH more work and [i would guess] more stressful in many ways, though i have never been pregnant yet, so my opinion is biased.
its been a cool process, and God has had his hands all over it. one way we can see that is because it has taken us SOOOO much longer than it "should" have, which means that God was delaying it for some reason. (we were expecting to be certified as early as march or april, which would have been entirely likely if tons of random things didn't come up like they did.)
for those of you unfamiliar with what we are doing, i want to share more about what foster/adoption is and why we are doing it.
why adoption?
the biggest hurdle in this process was our decision to start a family, since i formerly had no interest in being a mother. the decision to adopt first (rather than have biological kids) was pretty easy, and relates to our faith in jesus.
::because alex and i were adopted::
the bible says that formerly, because of our sin, we were powerless before God (romans 5:6) and that we were enemies of Him (romans 5:10) , as we rebelled against his perfection by intentionally doing what we shouldn't, failing to do what we should, and pridefully trying to do "good" things to prove our worth to God.
however, God is perfectly loving, and chooses to be merciful even in our rebellion. while we were stuck in our sin, jesus (who was God) came to earth and died to pay the penalty that we owed for our rebellion.
because of this, the relationship with God that he originally intended for people was able to be re-established. because of jesus, not only can God forgive our sin, and not only can he view us as if we always did good things all the time, but he also chooses to adopt us into His family.
we, who were once considered His enemies, are now fully cared for and lavished with his tender love, and full beneficiaries of His inheritance for his children.
this is what motivates us to adopt: to be a small picture to our children and to the world of God's amazing grace.
::because God tells us to care for orphans, and we obey because we love Him::
last summer, i was studying the book of james in the bible. there is a verse (that is pretty popular in social-justice loving circles these days) which says "religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (1:27). my study of the book lead me to something i had never heard before, despite how many times this verse is repeated: the word care/visit (depending on the translation) in the greek implies being an active part of the life of the orphans and widows. we already had a widow in our life that we were "visiting" and helping to care for, and we were financially supporting an orphan, but we didn't have any orphans whose lives we were actively involved in.
i prayed for God to show us how he would have us be actively involved in the lives of orphans right now while we are still in the US. his answer was simple and clear: adoption.
soon after we researched the different types of options for adoption, and we settled on foster/adoption. tomorrow i will talk more about these different types and how we decided to foster/adopt. for now, i ask you to look away from your computer for a minutes and pray for us, that God would graciously prepare us for this huge life change coming upon us very soon!
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