Thinking About Adopting?

But not sure that you are “ready” for it?

Not sure that your family is “right” for adopting?  Read what Jen Hatmaker wrote (go to her blog and read the whole thing) and take a good hard look at the “real family” that you are and then ask God to make it clear whether He’s calling you to care for the orphans by adopting one or more into your family or care for them in some other way.

Adoptive parents are not perfect parents, trust me on that one.   We just believe that God has led us to our kids this way……

Jen Hatmaker – Fake Family

So for those of you trying to dodge the idea of adoption because your marriage is not perfect and you don’t have your crap entirely together, please let me dispel the notion of “necessary impeccability.” I’m learning this: Orphaned kids don’t need a perfect family…they just need a loving one. You needn’t be fit for display and ready for the adoption speakers’ circuit.

Can you enter into the grief of a child and stay there until God heals? Do you have room on your lap for another daughter who would delight in the same “Carl Books” you read the rest of your kids? Could you direct your diligence toward becoming a healing parent, even if that just means listening and affirming and acknowledging and holding a child through the storm? Can you be miraculously, fantastically present for a child that is positive you too will disappear one day? Do you have the gumption to be oh-so-very consistent with boundaries and discipline, understanding that requiring their respect supplies them with the very security they crave in a parent who is actually in charge, freeing them up to be a kid instead of a survivor?

Then Kelly Ripa or not (“Be even more amazing!”), you can throw your hat in this ring.

I suspect one day our kids will not recall the laundry piled on our couches or every little time we blew it, but I hope they carry into adulthood the security that they were wanted, they were adored, they were cherished, and they were loved. So very loved. Parents, we might not get it all right even seven out of ten times, but failure is not a deal breaker inside the safety of a family. I pray one day we launch our kids into this world whole and healed, redeemed by the touch of their Savior and transformed simply because we loved and we stayed…imperfectly and beautifully.

Haiti, God’s Littlest Angels, Orphans

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