Some Other God Stuff

In the last post, I mentioned how we felt that we saw God orchestrate the events that led to our being allowed to re-apply for the I-600A when all previous indications were that we would have to wait until June to do so. I would like to document some of the other things that have happened to us along the way that we feel have clearly indicated that God is directing us in this effort.

The first thing is that we even had this idea in the first place. We currently have the perfect, All-American, family. Two healthy and happy children and secure enough finacially to the point that Stacey can work part-time, more for the interaction than for the money. So the day in January 2005, on the way home from church, I surprised myself when I asked Stacey if she had ever thought about adopting. I don't know why I asked, I guess it had been in my head and I guess I was expecting her reply to be "No, why?". But that wasn't her reply. She said that she had, so God must have been planting the seed.

We casually talked about it and prayed about it the next couple of months and decided that the least we should do is investigate it and see if it really was God leading us or if we really were just crazy. For some reason, it worked out that only I was available to go to an adoption seminar put on by a very reputable international adoption group out of Evansville. As I sat there and listened to their "commercial", it didn't seem right to me. They made the comment that "If you are wanting to adopt just to save these children from their fate as orphans, then don't do it because after you get them home, then they are your children." I just felt like that was the whole reason that we wanted to adopt. So I went home thinking, we are off the hook. This obviously wasn't for us. But Stacey and I continued to pray about it and we decided to go to one more of these kinds of meetings together, just to make sure.

One of the ladies that is helping us started that meeting with a prayer. She followed it up by saying that this process wasn't easy and then she gave her testimony about how she had tried to adopt twins but one had died from pneamonia before she was able to complete the process. We were ready to start the process that afternoon. That was in March or April of 2005.

Not all of my questions had been answered at this point. I still prayed and asked God whether or not I could love adopted children the same as my own. It is probably a question that some other perspective adoptive parents have asked and I was definitely asking. The experience of watching our children being born formed an immediate bond that is unbreakable. I asked this question repeatedly of God over the next month or so. It just so happened that I was to spend 2 weeks in Madison Wisconsin for work. From my hotel to where my meetings were being held, it was a 10 minute drive, tops. As I made that drive throughout the 2 weeks that I was there, I found a Christian station to listen to on my "commute." On the last morning that I was there, when I turned on the radio, the announcer said, today's devotion will be on Adoption. I guess I woke up and turned the radio up louder. The very next words out of the announcer's mouth were this:"I would like to thank God for showing me the grace to love my adopted children the same as my own." Now, you can make of that what you will, but as for me, I felt like it was the audible voice of God speaking to me.

So we began working on all of the paperwork hurdles despite knowing that some things were going on in Ukraine that may temporarily shut the country down to international adoptions. We have come to learn that the unexpected is typically expected, so that really didn't worry us because we knew things could change at any moment. However, as we waited on parts of our paperwork to be completed and we took our time completing other parts since Ukraine was effectively shut down anyway, a little bit of doubt began to slip into our minds.

At about this time, our church was doing a sermon series on the fruits of the Spirit. They had been taking them in order but for some reason they decided to swap gentleness with self-control and were going to tie the gentleness sermon into an adoption weekend. The fact that the sermon was going to focus on adoption seemed to lift our spirits. But God was not done. That same weekend, Stacey was scheduled to go on a Friday night retreat with the other CBS (Community Bible Study) leaders. Stacey teaches about 12 three and four year olds once a week. Furthermore, we usually go to church on Sunday morning, even though our church does have Saturday night services. That weekend, it was a relatively nice weather weekend in November and the kids and I were out raking leaves around 2 PM when Stacey got home from her retreat. For some strange reason, we diddle-daddled around trying to decide about whether or not to attend the Saturday night service. We decided, at the last minute, to attend the Saturday night service.

On the way to church, Stacey told me how she had learned during the Saturday morning of her retreat how a little girl in her class had been adopted from Ukraine. As we sat down for the Adoption service, in our church of about 4,000 attenders, spread over 4 weekend services, Stacey noticed the little girl's mother just a few pews down. (CBS is non-denominational so Stacey was unaware that this family attended the same church as we did.) After a very moving service on adoption, we went to pick up our children. We usually will divide and conquer and one parent will get one child and the other parent will get the other child. This weekend, for some reason, we both went to get our daughter first. When we walked up to the door of our daughter's class, the little girl that is in Stacey's CBS class, that was adopted from Ukraine, was the first one that we saw and she quickly greeted us with a very warm "Hello Mrs. Stacey." It was definitely a moment where we both felt the very strong presence of God.

This post has taken all weekend. On the next post, we will try to list some of the expenses that we have incurred during this nearly 2 year process.