Why China?

I was talking with someone earlier this week that I just met and the topic of kids came up. He has two boys. I shared that we have one boy and two on the way, and that we are adopting the two from China. He responded, "Have you considered domestic adoption?" .........

...................long pause.................

I said, "Yes." My "fantasy conversation" would have gone very much differently. What a strange and inappropriate thing to ask someone you just met. As if a mega-huge decision like adopting would not be thoroughly researched or well thought out. Which got me thinking about the route we took when we decided on China.

We have always wanted more children. At least two, but three or four kids is kind of where we pictured our family. So we started with one beautiful baby boy in 2005. We decided to start trying for number 2 in May of 2006. Over the next three years, the Lord took our next six babies. So we know about loss. We explored adoption around this time and couldn't afford a traditional adoption, and fost-adopt left such a big door open for potential heartache and more loss. We felt like we were setting ourselves up to be hurt again, so we decided against that. Our wounds were still raw. Our hearts still hurting. We decided that the Lord blessed us with one beautiful baby boy, and we should be happy with that. So we downsized ~ smaller house, smaller car. We mostly healed and felt like we were exactly where we were supposed to be.

Then God decided to stir things up for us again. He opened the door. He presented us with just enough money for an adoption... so we prayed... and we know that He provided the financial means ~ what we perceived as our biggest obstacle ~ so we knew what we were called to do.

We started by ruling out options that wouldn't work for us. First we decided against domestic adoption. We have known several families who have been matched and traveled to pick up their baby, only for the birth parents to decide to keep the baby. That had too much potential for more loss and heartache. We still felt we were not supposed to do fost-adopt for the same reasons. That left international adoption. We looked at different countries' programs and ruled out a bunch of countries for things like travel time (some require multiple trips and/or extended stays), or we didn't meet certain criteria for adoptive parents, or some countries adoption programs are very new or not stable. Through this process we kept being directed to China adoption and specifically to CCAI (our adoption agency). Our good friends had applied with CCAI to adopt from China. We kept running into people we know in random places who had adopted from China and had great experiences with our specific adoption agency. A few had used CCAI for two separate adoptions. We had narrowed ourselves down to China and South Korea, but God kept directing us toward CCAI and China. So we listened. And the Lord has given us peace throughout this process.

He was answering our prayers, in His time, and we were supposed to have more children His way. Why China? Because that's where God put our boys.


Luke 2:14   "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests."