For us, the decision to adopt was a fairly easy one. Before we were even married, we both knew that God wanted to use adoption as a means to grow our future family. In essence, for Nicole and me, adoption was a prerequisite for marriage. While we didn’t know how or when God would do this, it has been something we’ve prayed about throughout our marriage, and more intensely over the past few years.
Growing up, we both always saw images our “future family” to reflect the makeup of heaven: “A great multitude from every nation” as the book of Revelation puts it. We knew that God was calling us to international adoption. As for the “great multitude” – we’re taking it one child at a time.
Called to China
Through a lot of prayers, God led us to China.
There is actually a pretty funny story here. Entering our senior year of college, Nicole and I had a few elective courses that we needed to fill to meet our graduation requirements. Looking back, now, we laugh – because the first semester of our senior year, we both showed up to the same class. And what do you think that course was called? Asian American Family Studies.
China not only has a great need but also has a reputable and strong adoption program. China’s requirements (age, the number of kids already in the home, etc.) is also fitting for us, where other countries currently have greater restrictions and more challenging hoops and costs to jump through.
In November of 2015, we started the adoption process for our daughter. It has been incredibly time-consuming. Between home studies, background checks, paperwork, physicals, education and training – and the balancing act with two kids under 4 – Nicole and I finally completed our paperwork in August of 2016 and submitted it to China.
And then we waited. And prayed. And waited some more. Until March of 2017, when we received a referral for our precious little girl.
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