Thursday, April 3, 2008

Why are we adopting a 4th time?

I was doing my blog run - if I am lucky I get a quick check on some adoption blogs that I connect with - either the families are traveling, are waiting or have returned - it is touching to see how adoption touches us all so differently - yet esp. in the special needs adoption community - there is a "Red Thread" that really connects us. Tonight I read from one family who is close to leaving soon. She wrote about the question WHY?
We have in many ways experienced the WHY question - esp. this time adopting our 4th child in 4 years! WOW - there is a side where we do wonder what we are doing? But it is not about US...it is about them - these precious gifts from God who were crafted in His image - in Exodus we are called to Adopt. I don't believe it is for everyone and it truly is a life changing process. It did not happen over night for us and we are still on this journey.
It means less of US and more of Them... less eating out, more doing with less, less free time, more patience... and the list goes on -
** I welcome you to read about Sophie and her family - I also challenge you to help them raffle their Wii to help raise funds to bring their girl home.
http://www.familyforsophie.blogspot.com/

Here is a snipet of their blog from a book that speaks volumes about how adoption touches your life and changes it:

I recently read an amazing book called "China Ghosts" by Jeff Gammage, an adoptive father. He describes very eloquently exactly WHY we feel the pull to go back to China for our daughter.

"In China, I learned that although American adoption agencies will readily mail you reams of colorful brochures and expertly shot DVDs and videotapes, they will never tell you what you need to know.
They never tell you what it might be like to venture inside an orphanage. To confront the life that your child, the person you love most, would have been left to lead in China. To see the life that children just like her - every bit as bright and beautiful, every bit as deserving - are living now.
They don't tell you that children of the orphanage are all coming home with you. That these kids with their wan smiles and growling stomachs are going to follow you across the ocean, move into your house, inhabit your dreams.
...don't think you are going to walk into an overcrowded orphanage, take one child out, leave ninety-nine behind, and be the same person when you sit down to breakfast the next morning. You won't be. It's too cruel a lottery. And your participation in it will mark you.
...when you travel to China, you think you're bringing home one little girl. Only later do you realize that a host of specters have moved in. You think you are tying your fate to the life of a single child. You find out that you have been inextricably bound to the lives of dozens of others. And that there is little you can offer those children besides prayers."

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