Why We Are Adopting

A question that has already come up multiple times in the last couple of days since we announced beginning the adoption process is, “Why are you adopting?” The tone has ranged from “why would you ever do that?” to “this is awesome! Is there a particular reason you’re doing it though?”

I hope to adequately explain why we are taking this journey.

1. We’re adopting because He first adopted us.

1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” (NIV) Being loved by God produces love.

Ephesians 1:4-6 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – to be the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” (NIV)

I’m not going to give a deep theological lesson, as there are plenty more capable who have already written on this topic, but the basic idea is this: we sinned, Jesus came, Jesus died, Jesus rose again, we were bought at a price (Jesus’ blood), and we now considered part of God’s family.

We are adopted into God’s family through Jesus.

We feel led to adopt out of an understanding of how we were adopted by God. We want to love someone in the way that God has loved us.

Adoption is a beautiful reflection of God’s love for humanity.

2. It’s a step of faith.

Adoption is expensive. Raising a child is expensive.

We desire to follow God no matter the cost. This is not to say that all people need to adopt (as not everyone needs to be a missionary, a pastor, or fill whatever other role you may hope God doesn’t call you to), but we feel called to doing this.

My personal perspective (on the finance piece) is that if we have a very hard time financially through this all, we will need to lean on God all the more and grow closer to Him and to each other; if God shows up in a huge way and the finances do not become a burden, it will be impossible to look at it without recognizing that He has done it. Our faith will grow and we will grow no matter how God brings us through this.

Christ paid the ultimate price (His life). We do not anticipate that being the case for this, but we know that this will be expensive, and not just fiscally. This could be a very long and emotionally-draining process, but the end result is worth it.

3. The timing is hard, but the timing seems right.

The timing of starting this process does not fit anything that either of us have ever understood about the way life works. We always thought you adopt if you can’t have kids or you adopt after you’ve already had kids.

Hearing about friends of ours who intentionally adopted before even attempting to have kids, we wondered if we were trying to control our lives instead of just doing what we were called to do.

I love the idea of adopting a child before we have biological children so that he or she does not feel like an addition to a previously existing family unit, but instead feels like a part of the core. If we have any kids after this adoption, they will not know a life without this sibling.

We don’t actually know whether we can or cannot have kids, but that doesn’t matter to us at this point.

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Hopefully this gives you a bit of an understanding of our thought process behind adopting.

Since we’ve also been asked a few other questions, here are some other answers:

• We are adopting a newborn
• We are adopting domestic (from the U.S.)
• We do not care about gender or race
• We are using Christian Adoption Consultants

We could definitely use some help if you would like to support us. Visit the support section of this blog to get a better idea of the different ways to do that.

Any other questions? Go ahead and ask in the comments or through some other form of communication.

– Carl