Why are you adopting?

**Disclaimer: I have been working on this post for about the last week. These are all thoughts I have been having but I am really struggling to make them accurately describe my thoughts and feelings. So if it is extra "rambly", I apologize. Don't judge me :).**

Jayson and I get this question regularly from people when they find out we are adopting. People find it unusual that we can still biologically have children, but we are choosing adoption. In all honesty, I can say I don't know. I don't know why God has asked us to take this journey. But that is exactly what has happened. God has asked, and we have obeyed, JOYOUSLY!! I have found through life experience, both mine and watching others, that life goes better when one does what God is asking.

Sometimes life would be "easier" to take the path of least resistance. For example, sometimes it would be so much easier to give in to Ryan's repetitive "pwitty pweeze" (i.e. pretty please) for a 3rd or 4th cookie, but I know that it is not good for him. It's not the easier route, but I know it is the better route.

Life would have certainly been easier for Mary had she not done what God asked of her. But she did it, and risked her very life. When I was pregnant with Ava and Ryan, I thought about Mary all of the time. About what it felt like to feel the Savior move inside of her, what an awkward relationship she must have had with Joseph in the beginning, and how she knew that she was doing what God wanted her to do even though she had no clue how this was all going to end up! And then, because I guess how this is how my mind works, imagine how stinkin' strange it would have been to have just given birth (for the first time), in a cave with animals (yuck), with a man that you really didn't know that well (again with the awkward relationship), and a bunch of smelly (my assumption) shepherds show up and begin worshiping your son along with angels!! She must have had some amazing faith!!

In no way am I comparing myself, or our journey, with that of Mary and her Joseph. I am just trying to express how blessed I feel to be on this journey! I am excited to meet this baby that we have been longing to hold. I am so anxious to finally meet the birth mom/family that chooses us. I am so ready to begin that relationship and share the love that I already feel for them. I am anticipating living life with them as we all share in our love for this one little person. What a beautiful thing.

I feel blessed that God has even asked us to adopt. In many ways I feel completely inadequate. We are asking for an enormous gift from someone we don't even know yet. The weight of the decision that the birth mom/family is making is not lost on me. I may be a horrible bit of a Pinterest junkie, and while I was binging browsing through one day, I came across this picture. Really, these things are just the way we are supposed to treat all people, but I believe that they are especially needed in a relationship as important as one with a birth family.

http://attemptingagape.blogspot.com/2013/05/respect-for-birth-families-please.html#.UxynTvldVUM

Trusting the Process

Christmas time is here! As of the day of this posting, only 16 days remain until Christmas day. For me, Christmas is all about celebrating the Birth of Jesus, and spending time with family. This is the first year we have faithfully used an Advent Calendar with the kids to countdown the days until we celebrate the coming of the Savior. The month of December also marks a special time for me, for just one year ago in this very month we began to figure out how we were going to embark on this adoption journey.

One thing that has always stuck with me is a quote that the executive director of our adoption agency shared with us at a training meeting: "Trust The Process". I have had to remind myself of that more and more as each day has gone by. Our family has encountered a variety of Birth Moms, each of whom have declined to pick our family to become a part of their family. Its at those times when you find out that you weren't picked that you begin to doubt, or think, "what's wrong with our family that we aren't getting picked?" During a season that is full of Christmas wishes and gifts, the one thing I would want more than anything is to have the gift of a Birth Mom, to have my family be matched with a wonderful woman making a very personal and great sacrifice. That is my Christmas wish, yet I know that is not how it works. So as I wish for that beautiful moment when a birth mom chooses us, I will continue to trust the process, to know that the waiting that our family is experiencing is not in vain.