The Decision to Adopt

I have blogged about this decision before, so you may already know some of this story. For those of you who don't know our story, here it is.

So...you know how it goes for most women, you have your whole life planned out...married by 25, 3.5 kids, a dog and a cottage house with a white picket fence!

I didn't have that much of a detailed plan, but I have for as long as I can remember, wanted to adopt a baby. I remember seeing the plight of the Romanian orphans on 20/20 and begging my parents to adopt a baby. I promised to take care of it. My heart couldn't bear to see those children suffer and not act. My parents, in their wisdom beyond mine, knew that at the age of 15, I was not ready to take care of a baby and further more, they were finished having babies in their house. Mom says that this was not the first time I had mentioned to her that I wanted to adopt, but this is the first time I remember my heart aching for children who didn't have a home of their own.

Life went on for me and I find myself in my late 20's dating Nathan. We talked about how many children we each wanted. I would love to have three, he only wants two and I am o.k. with two. I mentioned to him that I had always wanted to adopt and that frankly I had little desire to carry a child in my womb. I explained to him that I had always envisioned myself raising a child that I did not give birth to. He said he was totally fine with that. So here is where "our plan" comes into play. Our plan was to have a homegrown child and a child through adoption. Sounds like a great plan, right? That would be a great plan, but it was not God's plan.

After about two and a half to three years of being married, we noticed that our arms and laps were lonely. We were ready to start to build our family. Without going into a lot of details, we were not successful. I went to my doctor who did all sorts of tests on both of us, only to say that it was possible, but not probable for us to conceive. We didn't get a lot of definitive answers, but we were told that we could being to go down the path of fertility treatments. I think that in general fertility treatments are a great thing for a lot of people, we just didn't have a high tolerance for such. As you know, these treatments can be very expensive and you have no guarantees. To be quite honest, we didn't have time to waste. I was at least 35 or 36 years old at this point. We tried a couple of rounds of fertility medication with no success and that was it for us, we were ready to pursue adoption.

We talked and prayed things over and we decided that International Adoption from Korea was the best choice for us. You can read more about that decision here. After making that decision, I became ill. That is another blog for another day. After recovering from the illness, we found out that I have a condition that would make it dangerous for me to carry a child. Does God know what He is doing or what? It is no coincidence that God placed the desire in my heart to adopt! It is exactly the plan He had for me for my whole life.

We are thrilled with our decision and we know that God is in our plan. All along our path, we have seen God at work. It is our pleasure to be a part of what He has in store for our sweet baby. On days that I feel discouraged (kind of like today) that we will never get a referral, I try to remember that God is in control of this plan, not me. He knows what He is doing. I know He is working behind the scenes on my behalf.

It has been so much fun for me to write "Our Story." Thanks to all of you who have read along. I can't wait to add to this story as life goes on for us.