How our story begins...

It's hard to say when the desire to adopt began in our hearts. Several years ago I guess. We knew that we wanted to wait to pursue it until our youngest was five years old. This past year when Pumpkin was about to turn five, Stand-Up Dad and I went to the Lord to see what He said on the matter. After prayer we believed it was something that God wanted us to pursue. In January 2008, I began to research International adoption. We had always thought of adopting from China, as we have two nieces from China and several friends as well. My research showed me that there is now a very long wait for China, up to 3-4 years for a referral. We knew that a long wait probably would not work as we are not getting any younger.

More prayer and research. Then God began to talk to me about two children. After visiting with a friend who had adopted siblings of another race she shared that having a sibling helped with the adjustment early on and also as the children got older. She felt that going through the middle and teen years with a relative that looked like you was a blessing.

I introduced this idea to Stand-Up Dad. More prayer and research.

You are beginning to see the process. The decision to adopt siblings led us to the beautiful country of Ethiopia. This is where our hearts settled. There are 4-6 million orphans in Ethiopia alone. If you have seen the news this past year, the crops were not good and starvation has grown. We were excited to hear that a large population of Ethiopians are Christian.

Now that the country decision was made I was ready to get the ball rolling. Stand-Up Dad was still in prayer. The next months were hard for me as I continued to pray and wait on the Lord. God is so faithful in the process. His word has been so precious to me and has shown me His plan every step of the way. One verse that I clung to was Psalm 37:7. " Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him."

Through over a year of prayer God showed me that my desires, even if I believe the desire is from God, is not more important than obedience. That obedience played out in my life daily as I held my tongue in talking about adoption and prayed that God's will would be done. God brought me to a place where I realized that respect for my husband and lining up under his authority was more important than this adoption. I realized that if at the end of this process, we didn't end up adopting, it would be OK. I knew that God had a big plan and I couldn't wait to see what it was.

While I went through my process, Stand-Up Dad was going through one too. I hope He will share about that at a later date. From my point of view he went through what I would expect an awesome man of God to do. He wanted to be sure he could provide for a larger family. Would we have time for more children and so on. When we got down to it, we couldn't completely answer all these questions. This is where the FAITH word came in. We have to take as much information as possible to make as mature decision as we can and then step out in faith and pray that God will bless it.

This is just the beginning of the story.

Sweet Momma