Adopting Joel

We call him baby Joel in our house. Baby Joel is the name for the boy we long to adopt. He may or may not even be born yet, but we’ve been praying and working to bring him home for a long time now. Cathy and I talked about adoption before we were even married, and adoption was one of the dreams we shared. At that point, it was little more than a mutual desire to adopt someday, to consider it when the time was right. Suddenly ten years slipped by. I got two seminary degrees, we moved from coast to coast, we had three children, and we settled into life in Kingsburg.

Without much warning, our previous thoughts of adoption suddenly became very focused. It was a variety of factors, from a desire for more children to some financial reevaluation to a mindset change of “now” instead of “someday.” Deeper than any of those factors, however, was our growing sensitivity to the rightness of adoption. The theological motivation ran deep but simple: God adopted us, and we could imitate that action. God uses adoption as an object lesson, and we could keep that divine object lesson meaning something in our world. The human motivation was right and urgent. Orphans fill our world in troubling numbers, and while we couldn't help the world, we could start with one. There was more than enough room in our family for another. Adoption was becoming less of a distant possibility and more of a committed conviction.

We’ve taken many steps since that decision, like moving out of our house since we couldn’t adopt and be in our two bedroom house. We looked into Ethiopia, found those doors closing, and then looked into Haiti, whose doors were closed when we started looking but then suddenly had a law change at the end of 2013 that made it a possibility. We signed with an agency called All God’s Children and have begun our home study process. We’re currently in the mountains of paperwork stage, and although the timeline isn’t for sure we could be looking at six months of US paperwork, six months of Haiti paperwork, and then six months to bring Joel home.

If you’d like to follow our journey, you can check out our blog atestablishedsteps.blogspot.com. We so value your prayers, your encouragement along what is a very long process, and even your financial help. Adoption is expensive, and if the Lord laid it on your heart we would be so grateful for your help. We thought of a delicious way to thank you for any gifts you’d like to give. Cathy has an order form, and you can order some of her famous, delicious desserts for whatever donation amount you'd like to give. We’re so excited to be on this journey. Our faith is already being stretched, our family is praying and looking forward to Joel’s arrival, and we are so thankful for the support from all of you.

1 John 3:1 “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”