Photo by Meredith Black
When God was calling us to adopt the first time (and again, the second time so quickly after the first time), the title of this blog post was my initial question back to Him:
“But how in the world will we be able to afford this adoption?”
From some initial research, I became a little mind blown that some adoption fees cost more than some people make in a year, and I just couldn’t wrap my brain around:
- WHY it costs so much
- HOW people could afford it.
But I knew so many people DID find ways to make it happen and instead of wondering how all the pieces would fall into place, I simply decided to walk in faith when the Lord responded:
“Trust me.”
Like Mary, who would never quite be able to wrap her brain around the whole Immaculate Conception thing, I tried to be willing enough to respond similarly with “Ok, Lord, I may not be able to understand all the how and why, but I am a servant of the Lord, so if this is the path You have been waiting for me to say yes to to become a mother, then I trust You.”
I had heard most people had to wait two years on a waiting list to get matched with a birthmom, so I figured, at least we had plenty of time to start saving. But then, a quick two months later, our birth parents chose us, and a quicker 7 months later our baby was due (which got cut short by another month when our daughter arrived early.)
Instead of panicking at the short amount of time ahead of us to raise this money (and you can imagine the same panic that wanted to arise when we heard baby brother was on the way before my first was even a year old), I kept choosing to walk by faith, because after all, that was the very meaning of the name I had been praying for 5 years. And I reached out to so many others who had adopted who spoke life into our journey by saying “God has a special place in His heart for adoption. He will provide.” And that… He did.
In a previous blog entry, I went into depth about some of the resources we tapped into to cover our adoption fees, but today I wanted to share about something new I discovered that I wish I had known about prior during our adoption journey.
Think crowdfunding meets adoption! There is now a website called AdoptTogether to help families raise money for adoptions where the crowdfunded donations are are also a tax write off (something I got asked a lot during our own fundraising process that people would have liked the option to have but a different site I used back then did not provide unfortunately)! What a brilliant idea to help it be win win on both sides! When I discovered this site, I just had to share because I’m passionate about helping others who want to adopt after how grateful I am to all those who helped us adopt, not once, but twice! And even better about AdoptTogether, I further discovered, one of my favorite movie companies, PureFlix, who provides wholesome and Christian movie entertainment options that my kids now watch, have contributed to AdoptTogether to help make adoptions happen! PureFlix also has some great movies about adoption (if you haven’t seen October Baby yet, oh my gosh, grab the tissues!)
I always heard parenthood takes a village… And through our journey, I learned adoption truly takes a village too! Our village so beautifully came together to pray for us, to donate financial resources, to donate baby supplies, to come over and give us meals, other mothers donating breast milk, and so much more. And I’ve seen the same happen for friends of mine as well as they took their own steps of faith to adopt, and God providing the means to every.single.time. If you feel God is placing it on your heart to adopt, yet worried how the pieces will fall into place, choose faith over fear. My babies are living proof that faith wins every time!
