A Seed Has Been Planted

"When you adopt it certainly does not change this world. It changes, forever and always, only the world of that one child."

Here I sit on a random Wednesday night rereading this quote over and over again. My daughter, Cate, now 5 1/2 months old, is back asleep having just stirred in her crib while my son, Will, 25 months old, is sound asleep in his toddler bed surrounded by an array of pillows, blankets, loveys, stuffed animals and his beloved paci. I have what most would consider the ideal family--loving husband, a son, a daughter, and a 2 1/2 year old chocolate lab. We live a comfortable life and have been blessed by God in so many ways.

It's not uncommon for me to hear "So, you have your boy and your girl so I guess you're done having kids." Having come from a family with three children and my husband being one of five, we both want to have a bigger family (with bigger in today's terms meaning four). I'm not exactly sure when the idea of adoption entered my brain. Maybe it has always been there. It might have started forming whenever I entered the Big Brothers Big Sisters program during my undergraduate years and mentored a poverty-stricken little girl or maybe it was during law school when I participated in a Children's Rights Clinic and spent a semester serving as an attorney ad litem for children involved in child abuse cases. The formation is less important than the fact that adoption is something I know deep down in the core of my being that I want to do. This leads me into my first query on this long journey: Is it just the idea of adoption that I like so much or is my family truly ready to begin the long, expensive, and sometimes painful journey that might lie ahead?

I have decided to begin recording my thoughts today for no good reason other than I went to a bookstore today and bought my first book on adoption. The time between now and the day we might bring home our adopted child is sure to be quite long. First of all, my husband and I would like to have at least one more biological child, and we would like to do that while I am younger in age. Unless God has other plans for us, we see ourselves having our third biological child before beginning the official adoption journey. In a way this is hard for me. I find myself so eager to begin finding that child, our child, who deserves a family to call his or her own, yet I know that this is not quite the time nor have we completed the adequate reflection and preparation necessary to adopt. This is a lifelong decision and one that I take very seriously. For now, I will read, learn, process, reflect, and pray. For now I will stick to Part I: Thinking About Adopting? and leave the rest of the planning to God.

If you care to join us on our journey please continue to read on, knowing that on this long road there may be periods where I write more or less. I welcome any thoughts, prayers, stories, or words of wisdom you have to offer.