OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Flashback Friday

OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Flashback Friday - Faith

I was thinking about the faith that is required to adopt. If you think that pure chance dictates what child becomes yours, adoption is a frightening process. If you know that God picks the correct family for each orphan he cares for, the process is reassuring. When we claimed little Tori, we only knew that she was a baby girl from the Bush. We didn't know her name, age or see a picture for about a month. In that long month of waiting, I herniated three disks in my neck and was on complete bed rest. JD and the children were forced to take over the daily chores of running the house. The kids had never done much laundry or cooking until this point and were forced to really carry their load. Just when I was starting to get better, I suffered a major relapse and really had to consider surgery and physical therapy. At the end of the month, I decided that it was really absurd to proceed with the adoption. I was afraid I would not be better to travel to Liberia or even be able to lift a baby. I decided that the only reasonable option was to let someone else adopt our assigned baby and have them hold our adoption funds until I was better; then we could proceed with an adoption. I told JD my thoughts and wanted to release her to someone else before we got her information or picture. I knew it would be too heart-breaking if I saw her picture. We discussed it one evening and JD was positive that he didn't want to end the current adoption. He took over the paperwork load for me and told me that he'd go alone to Liberia for the baby if I wasn't better! He repeated that it was all a step of faith and he wanted to proceed in faith. Wouldn't you know, the very next morning an email came with Tori's information and her Liberian name was FAITH! It might seem like a coincidence, but I knew from her name alone that the whole process of adopting her was an act of faith and no matter my condition, she was meant to be our daughter. I have not doubted from that moment on that Tori was divinely chosen to be our daughter and we couldn't love her more!

Here's Tori at the orphanage the first morning with her new Daddy.

Here's Tori and I shoe shopping the day after we got her out of the hospital. That may be another post for another day, but Tori had very serious malaria when we arrived. We hospitalized her and had her IV treated, but found out that it had not been effective when we re-tested her in America. I don't believe she would have lived another month if she had remained in Liberia.