Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Update

We will not be adopting the baby boy we requested prayer for. His birthmother decided to raise him because it was just too hard to give him up for adoption. We understand why she felt that way, and pray that God will give her the physical, spiritual and emotional strength she needs to raise her two small children. It sounds as if she is in a pretty tough situation.

We still haven't finished our home study. We were supposed to have our two meetings with the social worker last week, but they got cancelled due to weather and sickness. She is supposed to come this Thursday night and Friday afternoon. We are looking forward to getting that done.

Our nursery is almost ready! It has been really fun getting all the baby stuff back out again. We are so excited to meet the baby God has picked out for our family!

Thanks for all your prayers!

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Prayer request

On Friday we were alerted to a situation involving a birthmother that we would like to ask everyone to pray about. Our agency got a call from a hospital where a birthmother had given birth to a healthy baby boy that she wants to put up for adoption. Our agency wanted to know if we would be willing to put in our profile for the mother to choose from. We said we did, so the birthmother will be looking at it this week.

She only has one other possible family to pick from, so there's about a 50% possibility we may be adopting this little guy. We know this little baby boy's life is in God's hands and we know God already has the family picked out to raise him. Would you pray for God's protection over him while he waits for his family, and that God will give the birthmother wisdom, strength, and discernment as she makes this decision?

We'll keep you posted on what happens!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The end is near!

We are nearing the end of the paper chase and getting closer to what we are very excited about--adopting our child! We have completed our end of the paperwork and will begin our homestudy next Thursday. The social worker, Tiffany, will be coming to our home Thursday and Friday. After she completes her paperwork the agency will begin showing our profile to birthmothers. I'll be working on the profile tonight. We have to type up a few pages about our family and include pictures of our family and our home. Once that's done all we have to do is wait! I've been learning a lot about waiting lately. Maybe I'll share some thoughts on that in the next post...

This has been a very emotional and busy time for us, but we know God is guiding us and orchestrating this whole process. If it wasn't for our faith in Him, I think we would be completely stressed out! The Sovereignty of God is a beautiful thing. It makes situations like this so much easier because we know He is control, not us. Thanks for all your prayers!

Stacie

Sunday, February 3, 2008

The Love of a Birthmother

Our adoption agency requires us to read at least two books from their recommended reading list as part of our preparation for adoption. When I first heard about this I was not excited. My initial thoughts were, "Just what we need-one more thing to do." That was a really poor attitude, but I just didn't think the books would be that interesting or helpful. But we have been trying to complete our requirements as timely as possible, so we quickly picked two from the list and ordered them on Amazon. The titles we picked are The Whole Life Adoption Book by Jayne E. Schooler and Because I Loved You: A Birthmother's View of Open Adoption by Patricia Dischler.

I decided to read the one by Patricia Dischler first since it was a personal story and looked a lot more interesting. I was not disappointed. It was one of the most eye-opening, tear-jerking books I have read in a long time. It completely changed the way I view birthmothers, opened my eyes to how much we should respect birthmothers, and made me realize how Luke and I should be faithfully praying for the birthmother of our future adopted child. This woman's story is amazing, and it shattered every stereotype or judgmental attitude I have ever had about women who give their babies up for adoption.

Often times we wrongly assume bad things about women who are giving their babies up for adoption. We assume they are sexually promiscuous, or that they have a bad family life with unsupportive families. We wonder "How could any woman give up her baby?" as if she somehow cares less about her child than those of us who keep our babies. One thing I learned from this book is that birthmothers love their babies as much as any mother, and that is exactly why they are putting their children up for adoption. If the birthmothers cared nothing for their child, they could have taken the easy way out and had an abortion. But they chose the difficult way, and it is all because they love their child enough to give him/her life and give it to them the best way they know how.

The author Patricia Dischler was 20 years old when she got pregnant, and she made a very selfless decision to put her son up for adoption because of situations in her life that would have made it virtually impossible for her to raise him. She desperately wanted to keep him, but she knew he would have a better life if she gave him to a family that was better suited to be parents. I won't get into her whole story for the sake of brevity, but I wanted to share one excerpt from her book. This is from the section after she had given birth to her son and was able to spend 2-3 days with him in the hospital before she had to give him up to the adoptive family.

"I spent hours holding Joe. I memorized his eyebrows. His toenails. Every wrinkle of skin. I found each part of his body that resembled mine or that of someone in my family. I mimicked his yawn, his cry. I was awed by his every move. The way he sucked on the knuckle of his thumb. The way his fist curled around the hem of my nightgown when he slept. The way his knees fell to the outside when he was asleep. I cherished everything about him, his crying when he was hungry, his soft snore when he slept, even the yellow streaks he made in his diaper. To this day I have a towel he spit up on in a box in my closet."

Reading about how much she loved her son and how hard it was for her to walk away from him in the hospital gave me such a burden for women that make this difficult decision. We are still very excited to be adopting a child, but have realized that with our joy of welcoming a child into our family there will be a woman mourning the loss of a child she has loved for nine months. Will you please join us in praying for this courageous woman who will be giving us this gift of her child? Pray for God to give her the emotional and physical strength to endure this trial, and that through this she might come to know Christ. And please keep praying for us, that God will give us wisdom and sensitivity in all issues surrounding this adoption.

Stacie