Our call to Adopt Lizette and Gage, two siblings from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Warning: it's a long story :)
Our call to adopt was clear to me in March 2012. I had prayed for several years about adoption. One of my best friends adopted through foster care in 2008, my husband himself is adopted, and I had told God that if it was His will, I would absolutely take home another child and love it as my own. After church members took a mission trip to Poland a few years ago, they brought back pictures and videos of orphans they met there, and my heart cried out, "I could do this! I would bring any one of them back here in a second," but it was not God's time. Every time I drove to the mall or the theater in Paducah, the "Adopt" billboard on the side of the road caught my eye and made me pray about it again...but it was not God's time for me yet. In reality, most days I did not think about adoption at all.
Last March, however, I had a conversation with a friend/dance mom at my studio that I ran into at Walmart, of all places, who had just gotten a new job placing foster care children in homes. We talked for a while about it, and I told her how I had prayed so many times about adoption. She encouraged me with the beautiful things she said about our family and our children. When I got home, I immediately started praying more about it and began to look for more information on adoption in Kentucky. The next day, I thought about it all day and felt that God had used this friend to draw me closer to Him and consider adoption again. I really couldn't get it out of my head but still didn't mention it to my husband...I was going to keep praying to see if I was really hearing God telling me it was time to adopt!
Well, Sunday morning at church I got my flashing red sign from God. Two friends of ours who had recently completed a long mission trip to China brought back video from the orphanage there and spoke about adoption. My heart completely broke right there; I could not believe what I was hearing and seeing. It was like, "Erin, this church service is specifically for you, and here is your sign...Yes! Yes! Yes! Of course you should!" With tears in my eyes and maybe running down my cheeks, I looked at Sam and said, "We need to talk!"
Sam was immediately game. He had always wanted a big family, he had a heart for adoption due to the life he had been given as an adoptee, and he "loved my heart" that had been called to adopt. We prayed together and decided as a family that we would move forward.
Initially, we did not pursue international adoption. We also did not think we should adopt a baby domestically. We were interested in adopting "waiting children"...children who were already orphaned and waiting for parents. We pursued adopting through the state of Kentucky's Special Needs Adoption Program (SNAP.) An online picture and profile of a teenage girl captured our hearts, and we thought we could give her the home she needed. While we knew she may be adopted or even age out of the system before we could adopt her, we began the process of becoming certified to adopt through SNAP. We felt like God had equipped us to handle teenagers because of our many experiences hosting foreign exchange students and college baseball players. The social worker assured us that even though most of the teens in the SNAP program had many issues, there were some who were doing well within the foster care system and would be suitable in our family with three young biological children.
We had to wait until mid-June to begin certification classes. This also gave us time to forget about it if it was not really God's plan. But, no, assurance came instead in Proverbs 24:12, "If you say, 'but we knew nothing about this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?" There was no forgetting about our call to adoption. We would wait. In May, I shared our news with one of my best friends and encouragers in a strawberry patch. Tears of joy filled her eyes. More encouragement; more assurance.
The foster care and adoption certification classes were every Monday night for ten weeks during the summer. It became a new kind of "date night" for Sam and I to drive to Mayfield, pick up some Arby's, and attend classes together. We made a few new friends and really bonded together as a couple over our common views and parenting strategies, which were often different from those being taught in the liberal-minded foster care program. We really struggled with the foster care goals of returning children to the kind of parents they were taken away from. The case studies we heard were horrific, and we didn't see how we could "cooperate with the system" and take the children to attend mandatory meetings with their biological parents who abused them, and talk to the kids about how much their parents loved them. We didn't know how we could discipline a child in our home using the state's method, while different rules would apply to our own children. We didn't know how we would handle it (or how our children would) if we loved a foster child as our own but had to release them to child abusers when the courts decided it wasn't "too much of a risk" to send them back. There is a special place in heaven for foster parents. We learned that this was not our call. We would continue the program as an "adopt only" family.
Our classes ended in August, our home study visits took place in September, and it was October before our home study was finalized and our KY certification complete. We could not find out anything more about the kids we were interested in until that time, and so we were very anxious. During the several weeks of classes, my heart began yearning for a little boy, and Brody (my little boy) was backing me up :) However, with the kids in the SNAP program being ten years old at the least, Sam was especially uncertain about bringing a troubled teenage boy into our home with our biological daughters. We had learned so much during our classes about the issues these children face, I was even nervous about the girls at this point. The teachers and social workers were definitely painting a different story about the kids than the website profiles described.
Finally, October 2012 brought certification to adopt. The teen we had originally looked at had aged out of the system, and others we had considered were no longer available. Our case worker said, "give me a whole list of kids you think you might be interested in, because I will probably cross out most of them or all of them because of your family's needs." What? Really? After all those classes, time, and energy? But she was right. Each and every one of the children we inquired about had severe issues in one realm or another and could not be placed in our family with three sweet young children. It would take a while before several new children would be added at the rate it was going. Perhaps this avenue of adoption was not God's plan for us at all. Our pastor/friend encouraged us not to be discouraged about this "time wasted." It was not wasted time, but a baby step.
Two weeks later, on October 30, I saw pictures on Facebook of one of my sorority sisters holding a baby she had just adopted from Ethiopia. I told her we were seeking to adopt as well, and she said her agency and her process (and her baby girl!) were the most unbelievable blessing to her family. I looked at that sweet baby's face and clicked on the agency's website. Sam happened to call me, and I told him I was sneaking a peak at an international adoption agency's website. To my surprise, (due to him having A LOT of concerns about international adoption) he didn't mind. So I spent ALL day looking at it, and I mean ALL DAY. I did not get an ounce of work done or play with my son, but I poured over pictures of children who had come home, stories of families who had adopted, and everything I could read about African orphans. This agency assisted with adoptions in Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I even called them and talked to them. The information on the Congo said we could only have two biological children, and we had three. Ethiopia adoptions seemed reliable, fast, and I read story after story about how beautiful the people were, inside and out. I was so much more excited that day than I had been any day in the several months we were pursuing the Kentucky adoption. I heard God saying, "Yes, Africa. Yes, a child who will look different from you. Yes, a little boy." I was in love. I texted Sam, "Beware. The Ethiopian children are all beautiful and I'm falling in love. May have to talk you into twins."
So it turns out that the long adoption process that began in March was really just beginning again October 30. Sam and I talked and prayed that night, and while he still had many reservations and was certainly not giving an OK yet, it was enough for me to hear him talking about it to his friends while we were Trick-or-Treating. It was enough that I was allowed to mention it to my close college friends when we visited in Alabama that weekend. It was enough that I was able to mention it to my parents and hear their encouraging words. It was everything that Sunday at lunch after church to hear Sam, after much prayer, say, "Yes."
Over the next several weeks, we did a lot- a lot- of paperwork compiling, home study visits, and WAITING. Adoption paperwork was my part-time job, and some days made it hard to do my real job of preparing to teach dance. Word that our agency's license in Ethiopia was up for renewal at the end of the year brought nervousness. I also began to really desire a brother-sister sibling set. I came to understand that Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart" is less about what I desire and more about when I am walking in the Lord, my desires will align with His desires. And I believe that that is why I, a very busy mother of three already, began desiring to adopt not one but two children: a son and a daughter. God had already chosen them for me.
In late November, a boy-girl sibling set appeared on the "waiting children" page of our agency. There was even a video. I cried when I watched it and asked, Lord, is it these two? When I showed it to Sam, he noticed they were in DRC, not Ethiopia. I was saddened; it would not be these two children. However, days later I brought them up with Sam again. What if God led us to this agency not to adopt from Ethiopia but from Congo instead? My questions led to an argument so I decided not to bring it up again. After all, our dossier was not even ready yet. We were not ready for a referral (match with children) anyway. However, in the process, I found out that the rule of having only two biological children to adopt in DRC was an old rule. We were eligible. I began considering Congo as an option, especially with the uncertainty with the Ethiopian license renewal.
Sometime in December, I called the agency director just to talk. I wanted to know what a general timeline would be like for our adoption. I wanted to know if requesting siblings would make our process faster or slower. I wanted to make sure I was totally comfortable with our agency. Our director said it might be a long time before siblings would be referred to us from Ethiopia...that they just don't come up all that often...that it could be a year before referral...that it would be faster just trying to adopt our boy and then to start over and try to adopt a girl. Then, Sam brought up the Kentucky kids from the SNAP program again. He asked me to look over profiles of some new kids that were posted. I didn't want to. I really didn't want to. Out of submission to my husband, I did anyway, but I didn't feel like any of them were right for us. I still saw a sense of entitlement in their profiles. Maybe it was just my negative attitude. I was already in love with my African children. So I continued to pray.
Over Christmas and the vacation time that followed, I continued to pray that we would be in God's will and that we would do exactly as he wished regarding our adoption. I know Sam continued to pray about it too as we waited. Our home study visits were complete, and we were just waiting on the case worker to write it up. As soon as it was written, our dossier would be complete, and we could accept a referral. The write up was supposed to take 2-3 weeks, and it took over 6. So there was a lot of waiting and praying. When I asked for signs that we were doing the right thing, I heard Toto's song "Africa" on the radio. Seriously, the song is from 1982, and I heard it three times between Christmas and New Years! I joke, but I also believe that God was confirming for me, "Yes- Africa."
On January 10, 2013, I got an email from our agency about two new siblings in the Congo that she was posting on the waiting children page. Since she had just read our home study, she thought of us. God's timing? For sure! I looked them up and my heart started pounding. I had already seen their faces on the page a couple of days before...before the agency knew they were siblings and had additional information on them. My heart had already broken just a little for them when I didn't think they were even possibilities. They still weren't possibilities, right? Because we were in the Ethiopia program! Our dossier was complete and ready to go for Ethiopia!
But my heart continued to pound, and once again, I could not do anything else I was supposed to, like choreograph for my dance class that afternoon. So I prayed some more and called my agency director. I asked her to tell me everything she'd already told me before about adopting from the Congo. It was definitely not as rosy as adopting from Ethiopia. More importantly, Sam did not want to adopt from Congo. I cried and prayed some more and then picked up Brody from preschool and drove straight to Sam's office, praying he would be there...knowing that last time I brought up Congo, it led to an argument.
But this time, I was not trying to lead us. I was not saying God was telling us to go to Congo. This time, I was just broken and without answers. I told Sam that I didn't know what to do and asked him if we should consider these two children? If God wanted us to step out of our comfort zone and into something scary and unpredictable for Him? Sam grabbed both of my hands and prayed with me. It was beautiful. My eyes fill with tears just writing this as I remember how much God was in that moment. Sam was the spiritual leader and God was surely listening and such a short time after our prayer, Sam said, "This is what we should do." What? Seriously? God talks to you that fast? I hadn't even decided if this was the right thing myself! (as if it wasn't God's will all along I was seeking!) So I asked all these things of Sam and the beauty of it all was yes- it was a total God thing. God had given Sam the peace to move forward and pursue the adoption of these two children. He hadn't even seen their pictures.
So, how did our adoption go from Kentucky to Ethiopia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Well, as we continue to pray and align ourselves with God's will and not our own, we realize that a Congo adoption has been God's plan all along. The orphan children God has called us to parent are not in Kentucky, nor in Ethiopia, but they are in the Congo. On January 10th, I sat on Sam's lap in his office and we opened the email with more pictures our director had just sent of Lizette and Gage (Marcelo), and saw them together for the first time. I called our director and accepted the referral. Now we will wait for them. Dear Lord, please let us bring these children home.
