Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Adoption

If you didn’t grow up around people who have adopted or people who were adopted, it’s not something you really think about. I didn’t know one person from my elementary, middle or high school that was adopted. To my knowledge, none of my parents’ friends or family had adopted. Until my senior year of college, I had only known of one adoption.

After two years of trying to have a baby with no results, we were faced with the question, what if we never get pregnant? We felt strongly that God wanted us to be parents. So, we began discussing adoption. It was a foreign concept to my family and me, so when I mentioned it to them their response was usually something like, “Oh, you won’t have to do that.” Nobody else we knew had problems getting pregnant. Shouldn’t everybody be able to have a biological child? It’s just natural, right?

As we began to mention adoption to others, they would say things like, “Do you plan to adopt an infant or an older child?” At that point we hadn’t thought or prayed a lot about it, so typically I’d say we were hoping to adopt an infant. The most common response was, “well, you know there’s a lot of older kids out there that need a home.” While this was a legitimate point, admittedly it annoyed me. I wanted to ask, “Do you plan to adopt one of them?” I’m not saying that was a good attitude to have, I’m just being honest.

If we had learned anything from being infertile, we learned that we’re not in control and that God already has a plan. We wanted to know what our next step should be. We had a lot of praying to do.

Next Post: 5/31/2007

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shell,
Mama was adopted. Thank God for adoption or I may not even be here. Stephanie Yancey's sister just adopted a little boy and I had a dear friend when I was working that adopted a little boy-looked just like him. I was floored when he told me the baby was adopted. There's sooo many children out there that need someone to love them. If you've ever doubted it, I pray that you will look at the fairy tale life I've had because of my precious grandparents-someone who through misfortune had 2 babies to die, but still wanted a child so bad they got Mama. I feel like adoption is a God-given priviledge. One day your precious child will say Thank You-just as I've tried so many times to tell PawPaw. I really didn't understand it while MawMaw was still alive, but as I've gotten older I appreciate it so much more.
I Love You,
Emilee

Danielle said...

whomever God sends to be yours and andys child is one special and lucky little one! yay for the switch from infertility to adoption!

Anonymous said...

I'm sure the choice can't be easy to go from wishing you could have your own to adopting a child somebody else gave away. I know God will/has led you two in the right direction. I can't wait to read more about what's going on. When we come back to the states, we are definately going to have to get together.
God bless,
Emily Fiore :)