It was one year ago this month that we were in China adopting our precious, then 5 year old, little boy. It is so hard to believe that it has been a whole year since our experience. What a wild year we have had! Our 10 year old biological son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes and it literally has rocked our world! It was not something we expected, nor planned, but God has been faithful to walk us through it and we are now on the side that is less scary when dealing with shots, and blood sugars, and finger pricks, and treating high and low blood sugar. Our world has totally changed. As if learning to adjust to having a new little boy from the other side of the world wasn't enough to adjust to! ;) But God is good and faithful.
You see...something we realized a long time ago when God called us to adopt our middle daughter in 2007, is that God may call us to do things that aren't easy. He may call us to step out into the unknown, and take a leap of faith. He may ask us to walk out of our comfort zone into and area where we have NO answers or explanations...just to trust Him. That is where we have spent the last several years.
While adoption is not an easy journey....it is a journey that I would not have wanted to miss. We will forever be ruined for the ordinary. We can no longer see things in life through the same eyes. Adoption does seem scary and there are a great number of risks. It is a faith walk. We are so grateful to have had an amazing adoption agency, Lifeline Children's Services, to walk us through both of our adoptions from beginning to end. We were so loved and cared for and they literally took care of every detail for us. While we were overseas...we felt incredibly safe, contrary to other adoption stories you hear on the news. We were nervous about traveling overseas to adopt...but because of the care Lifeline took with us...our nerves were eased both experiences and we overcame our fear and stepped out in faith. We are so grateful we did!! Our lives will never be the same!! We love the two precious children that came to us through adoption.
We have had so many people ask us why in the world would we adopt from China with there being so many children here in the U.S. that need families. We would agree with them that there are so many children here who need families. We even considered domestic adoption both times through foster care...but our hearts were tugged toward China. When people continued to ask us why China...we knew it was because our daughter was there, and our son was there. Every child has a destiny and our two children from China were destined to be in our family. That's all it is.
Reflecting back on our year....our adoption of our youngest son, and our oldest son being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes are definitely the top two experiences on our list. Being faced with Type 1 diabetes in our child is definitely unknown to us...and very scary. But we are so grateful we have our son with us still and that we can walk it out together.
Just like with our older son living with the challenges of diabetes...so it is with our younger son and daughter from China. While we chose International Adoption based on a call we felt in our heart....It was not easy, it was not financially convenient, and it was and is not without challenges that are out of our control....BUT...we have our son and daughter now and it was so worth every minute of challenge we walked through, and still walk through to have them in our family. I'm learning in a real estate class right now that the greater the risk, the greater the reward. I can definitely say that adopting internationally was not without risk. We knew going into it there would be risk. But our trust is in our God who leads us, and the reward has far outweighed the risks. We are so grateful that we stepped into the unknown journey of adoption and would not have changed a thing!
