Our local adoption agency asked us again to speak on transracial adoption at their adoption training weekend for prospective couples. This morning, we had the great privilege to share our story and advice with 12 prospective adoptive couples.
It's still so surreal to think of myself speaking on transracial adoption! I mean, when I was sitting in their place as a trainee just 2 1/2 years ago, I never dreamed I'd be the mother of a half-Haitian, half-African American son.
It's incredible to look back at the journey, both in adopting Jameson and Caroline.
To see how powerfully God has moved in our family.
And how ultimately, it was His plan that was better than ours.
It's in remembering our stories our faith is strengthened. We need to share them again and again. It's in hearing the stories of others who have gone before us and seen God's hand at work that give us hope for the future, too.
And signing up to adopt is certainly NO cake walk, either.
Do these couples know they're perhaps getting on a bigger rollercoaster than the infertility one? With higher highs and plunging lows, more twists and turns? Who knows what lies ahead for them, and what child God might bring to their family. The waiting and the uncertainty is undeniably difficult and emotionally draining.
We began to share our own rollercoaster story with adoption this morning, and I saw tears fall upon the cheeks of several women.
They know. They've been there, too.
But their "happy ending" hasn't yet happened.
Their Caroline and Jameson have not yet come, and they cry out to God Himself and plead with Him for a child. All weekend they listen to others' stories, wondering if He has a happily-ever-after in store for them someday, too.
I hope for them. Though their journeys have already included pain, many of their lives are about to be rocked in a beautiful way. They are on their way to experiencing one of life's greatest joys and simultaneously one of life's greatest hardships. Many of them are childless, and they have NO idea what they're signing up for! Oh, if only adoption was the hardest part of the process! But alas... a lifetime of PARENTING will be waiting for them around the corner. :)
I can't help but look at them and think about how meanwhile, there will be another group of young ladies who will find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy situation. They won't be experiencing their own plan "A's" for their lives, either. They, too, will cry out to the Lord for wisdom, for strength, for mercy. They will wonder what God is doing in these dark chapters of their own story.
And then, in some crazy miracle of providence, these lives will intersect. Birthmother and adoptive couple will unite around a child. Redemption will be brought forth from tragedy. Hope will be born from despair. Family will become more about love, about commitment, than about shared blood or DNA.
One day, these couples in training will hold another's baby as their own. They'll forever be thankful to the woman who chose life so they could receive the honor of being called Mom and Dad.
I hope for these couples, and I'm eager for the day they'll soon be telling their own stories of God's amazing hand.
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