"Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start"

Hi Friends!

Welcome to our new blog.  We are constantly asked about how our adoption is going, so we thought we would start this to keep everyone up to date, (and to hopefully remind you to pray for us and our baby! ) Don’t get me wrong- we never mind people asking about our adoption- like all parents we love to talk about our children!  We just thought this would be helpful!  We also hope that this will document this journey that we will, of course, share with our children one day.  So,  as my favorite movie songstress once sang, "Let's start at the beginning, a very good place to start..."

Billy and I have always felt the Lord wanted us to adopt a child or two, and we planned on doing so after we were done having biological children.  This seemed like a reasonable plan to us.  However, during the summer of 2010, as we sat with our Walnut Street youth in a worship service at Crossings (the camp Dad started 10 years earlier, where Billy and I served for several summers in high school and college), we began to sense that perhaps the Lord might have other plans for us.  Was He maybe calling us to adopt our next child?  At this point I had already been blessed with carrying our precious daughter, Payton, and we were about to start trying to get pregnant again.  A change in the plan was not a thrilling idea to me, as I desperately wanted to carry another child.  We prayed and thought about it some and came to the conclusion that we should stick to the original plan and try to get pregnant.  

After making this decision I had a really uneasy feeling.  I kept telling myself, “Surely we’re following the right path.  I want so badly to be pregnant again- to feel a little life forming inside me… It would be so much cheaper to carry a baby than adopt… I’m not going to get any younger…Payton is so stinkin' cute and funny- wonder what another combination of Billy and Jodi would be like :) ”  My feelings and my logic both told me that pregnancy made more sense than adoption.  I knew that it would be unfair to a child to adopt him or her if I wanted so desperately to carry a child instead.  I was really struggling with feeling any peace with our current plan, though.  One night I sat and prayed simply, “God, if you want us to adopt our next child, please change my heart.  Make adoption my deepest desire.    On the other hand, God, if you want me to give birth to another child, please bless us with that and give me a peace.  I I want whatever you want, God.” 

So, I know God doesn’t always answer quickly, but at this point He did.  Within days, my heart had completely changed.  After reading some friend’s (who were in the adoption process) blogs and googling some adoption agencies, I knew we were supposed to adopt.  I saw a picture of a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl with her arms around a very dark-skinned, dark-haired child and knew that is what my family is going to look like.   I wept with joy as I imagined my Payton with her new brother or sister.   The Lord had indeed changed my heart. 

Adoption is now what I want more than anything in the world.  The desire to carry a child has (at least for the present… only God knows what’s next…) completely dissipated.   Praise God for my dear husband who seeks to follow the Lord with all that he is, because it didn’t take long to get him on board.  He was worried about the money (international adoptions ususally cost upward of $25,000)  but when he started to see the pictures of the children on-line he saw real people and not dollar signs.  We both knew that if God was calling us to do this, He would provide the means. 

Stay tuned… J