Family

We are really wrestling with what comes next and being faithful to listening to the next step God is inviting us to. What does IUI mean for us? What about IVF? How far down this path of medical intervention are we going to go? I think God has been stirring in my heart for the past decade a desire to adopt, before I even had any idea of this journey and we need discernment in whether that desire becomes our reality. Is it because I just really want a kid? Or because I don't think I can handle the heartbreak that failed intervention after failed intervention can bring? Am I scared to reopen wounds that haven't even fully healed? Or am I just impatient? How can we justify spending the money and emotions on the possibility of a child when there are so many waiting for forever homes already born? Isn't justifying a price on having children a ridiculous notion? 

Does our path look like other peoples? Absolutely not. I have zero judgement for someone who chooses to do anything necessary to have a biological child. There are some things that there is never a price for and family is the second most important thing to me in this life. But I just don't know if that is our story. 

I do want to be clear that adoption is on the table not only because of reasons that surround infertility. It could never be a "second-best option" and if it EVER comes across like that, please call me out. If I am serious about being a follower of Jesus, how often does he remind the disciples to love our neighbors and care for the ones the world places less value on? Obviously there are many ways to do this and no one is better or more worthy or holy than another. But I'm feeling more nudging and whispers and a real sense of peace that our "body part" of the body of Christ in this matter is in the opening of our family in a very tangible and permanent way to those who have no family to rest their head with. Adoption is not giving a family to someone who has none. Children who join a family through adoption have a family already-their birth mother will always be their mom. And her parents and brothers and sisters and cousins are no less family than my parents and brothers and sisters and cousins.  But what a privilege to be the home in which that child will grow up in and learn to laugh and cry and take adventures and live. It is a lifetime of adjustments and questions and reliving losses for all parties. But also of opportunities to share the wideness of God's love and invitation to relationship in the new reality of the Good News of Jesus. 

Adoption is not a journey to enter lightly, so we ask for your continued prayers for discernment and support in our processing. Prayers that God would give us direction and confirmation in our next steps in growing our family. May we be faithful to the God who continues to give us immeasurably more than we could ask for or imagine. The one whose mercies renew Every. Single. Morning.