Thank you to everyone who voted on my "Would You Ever Adopt A Child?" poll. I am encouraged by the results:
♥ 32 out of 50 voters (64%) said maybe someday, so I hope perhaps that our story might encourage some of those maybes to become yes.
♥ 7 voters (14&) said they have adopted! Hurray!
♥ 3 voters (6%) are in the process of adopting now!
♥ 8 voters (16%) said no, that's not for their family, but I say, you never know what God has planned, so you might just change your mind later. I've done a whole lot of things I never thought I'd do, and I think most of the time when the Lord calls us to do something, it's out of our comfort zone--sometimes WAY out of our comfort zone!
As I said before, we've met some wonderful kids -- a sister and brother -- who are in foster care right now, and will likely have parental rights terminated very soon, which means they'll be available for adoption. We'll be seeing them again this week, and I am surprised to find that they have already worked their way into my heart. That scares me a little, but I know that the Lord knows what He's doing, and we only need to trust Him. If these are not the kids He's chosen for us, He still has a very good reason for putting them in our lives.
I haven't gone into all the details of how we met these kids, but it is a very cool story, with plenty of God-orchestrated details, and I am keeping a record of it all in my journal. Depending upon what happens, I'll probably share more of the details here eventually. I want to go ahead and share a little snippit from yesterday.
At least two families at church also know these kids, and they've known them much longer than we have. We're becoming friends because of our similar passions for foster and adopted kids, and that (plus some nifty details) is how Ken and I met these kids. One of these ladies, who I'm only just starting to know, called me yesterday to tell me that the Lord put me on her heart during her quiet time, and she felt that she had to call and tell me a few things. She read me her journal entry from almost a year and a half ago, when she distinctly felt the Lord telling her to pray specifically for these two children. She prays daily for her own children, and knows that most kids in Christian families have parents praying for them, but these two children did not have that blessing. She said if she was adopting an older chld, she'd want to know the child had been prayed for, which is why she was telling me this. She told me she knows that God has a beautiful plan for these two kids, and for us, and she doesn't know if those plans intersect, but she is praying for us all. And she wanted to give me this verse: "Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." (Philippians 4:6)
I told her that we don't know yet what direction this is going, or if these are the children God will add to our family. I told her that I am, by nature, a planner, and I like to have all the answers, but the Lord has given me a peace about not knowing how all this is going to turn out. I know without a doubt that's from God because it is completely unlike me.
After our conversation, I looked up Philippians 4:6 just to re-read it and let it soak in a little more deeply, and then I read the verse right after that: "And the peace of God, which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." That verse restated what I had just said in that phone conversation. I still don't know if these are our children, but I know that God does have a beautiful plan, and it blows me away that He is so deeply into all the details.
♥ 32 out of 50 voters (64%) said maybe someday, so I hope perhaps that our story might encourage some of those maybes to become yes.
♥ 7 voters (14&) said they have adopted! Hurray!
♥ 3 voters (6%) are in the process of adopting now!
♥ 8 voters (16%) said no, that's not for their family, but I say, you never know what God has planned, so you might just change your mind later. I've done a whole lot of things I never thought I'd do, and I think most of the time when the Lord calls us to do something, it's out of our comfort zone--sometimes WAY out of our comfort zone!
As I said before, we've met some wonderful kids -- a sister and brother -- who are in foster care right now, and will likely have parental rights terminated very soon, which means they'll be available for adoption. We'll be seeing them again this week, and I am surprised to find that they have already worked their way into my heart. That scares me a little, but I know that the Lord knows what He's doing, and we only need to trust Him. If these are not the kids He's chosen for us, He still has a very good reason for putting them in our lives.
I haven't gone into all the details of how we met these kids, but it is a very cool story, with plenty of God-orchestrated details, and I am keeping a record of it all in my journal. Depending upon what happens, I'll probably share more of the details here eventually. I want to go ahead and share a little snippit from yesterday.
At least two families at church also know these kids, and they've known them much longer than we have. We're becoming friends because of our similar passions for foster and adopted kids, and that (plus some nifty details) is how Ken and I met these kids. One of these ladies, who I'm only just starting to know, called me yesterday to tell me that the Lord put me on her heart during her quiet time, and she felt that she had to call and tell me a few things. She read me her journal entry from almost a year and a half ago, when she distinctly felt the Lord telling her to pray specifically for these two children. She prays daily for her own children, and knows that most kids in Christian families have parents praying for them, but these two children did not have that blessing. She said if she was adopting an older chld, she'd want to know the child had been prayed for, which is why she was telling me this. She told me she knows that God has a beautiful plan for these two kids, and for us, and she doesn't know if those plans intersect, but she is praying for us all. And she wanted to give me this verse: "Don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God." (Philippians 4:6)
I told her that we don't know yet what direction this is going, or if these are the children God will add to our family. I told her that I am, by nature, a planner, and I like to have all the answers, but the Lord has given me a peace about not knowing how all this is going to turn out. I know without a doubt that's from God because it is completely unlike me.
After our conversation, I looked up Philippians 4:6 just to re-read it and let it soak in a little more deeply, and then I read the verse right after that: "And the peace of God, which surpasses every thought, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." That verse restated what I had just said in that phone conversation. I still don't know if these are our children, but I know that God does have a beautiful plan, and it blows me away that He is so deeply into all the details.
