Yesterday we did a photo session for a sweet little girl's first birthday! She was very recently adopted from Guatemala, and she is SO precious. I have a few photos and some details about her session on my photography blog.
I have had the honor of meeting quite a few adopted children in the past couple of years, and every time I meet them, it has such a profound effect on me. All my life, I have known people who were adopted, but it didn't really make much of an impression on me because I had already known them for a while before I ever knew they had been adopted. But now, I've been able to meet these children when they first join their new families. I remember the first time this hit me: I went to take a welcome-baby gift to a neighbor who had just brought their sweet newborn girl home from another state. They were so very excited because they'd been trying to adopt for a long time. I held her and admired how beautiful she was - the typical stuff we do when we meet a newborn for the first time - but then it hit me that she almost wasn't. God took the time to knit this little person together, but she could so easily have been aborted, and her new family would not have had this precious gift. What a brave woman it was who chose to do the difficult thing of carrying this child and giving her life! For that, I so admire her and am in awe of what she did for this child and the family who adopted her. I don't even know how to process those thoughts. But I do know that adoption is a complex and wonderful thing.
And we're going to be blessed by this wonderful thing, too. Yesterday the adoption agency packaged up our completed home study and sent it off to the state for approval. That means it'll be at least another month before we're "officially" approved. I have a feeling that once that happens, things will probably move more quickly. There are just so many kids needing homes. Yes, they've had troubled pasts, in some way or another, and there may even be some question marks in their history. But they deserve love just as every child does.
I have had the honor of meeting quite a few adopted children in the past couple of years, and every time I meet them, it has such a profound effect on me. All my life, I have known people who were adopted, but it didn't really make much of an impression on me because I had already known them for a while before I ever knew they had been adopted. But now, I've been able to meet these children when they first join their new families. I remember the first time this hit me: I went to take a welcome-baby gift to a neighbor who had just brought their sweet newborn girl home from another state. They were so very excited because they'd been trying to adopt for a long time. I held her and admired how beautiful she was - the typical stuff we do when we meet a newborn for the first time - but then it hit me that she almost wasn't. God took the time to knit this little person together, but she could so easily have been aborted, and her new family would not have had this precious gift. What a brave woman it was who chose to do the difficult thing of carrying this child and giving her life! For that, I so admire her and am in awe of what she did for this child and the family who adopted her. I don't even know how to process those thoughts. But I do know that adoption is a complex and wonderful thing.
And we're going to be blessed by this wonderful thing, too. Yesterday the adoption agency packaged up our completed home study and sent it off to the state for approval. That means it'll be at least another month before we're "officially" approved. I have a feeling that once that happens, things will probably move more quickly. There are just so many kids needing homes. Yes, they've had troubled pasts, in some way or another, and there may even be some question marks in their history. But they deserve love just as every child does.
