Maybe different

I've logged on to China adopter's blogs every day for two years. I've read the rumor queen's blog several times a week during that same time period. I think about China all the time. I wish that we qualified to adopt right now. It really does involve a lot of my life.

Since adoption is so heavy on my heart, I also look at other countries, waiting children (international and U.S.), etc. Last week when I was looking through the U.S. waiting children photolisting, I found a sibling group of three children. I was completely drawn to them. NEVER did I think I would want to adopt more than one child at a time...NEVER did I think I'd want to adopt a child older than the age of about two years. But, for some reason, these kids were different. Addyson's only six and I definitely would never consider someone older than her, but the oldest in this group is seven. It's crazy!

I can't stop thinking about them, though. I talked to Michael that night about every detail of adoption. We have always known we would adopt from China once we met the age and marriage requirements, so we have never really discussed, in detail, other adoptions. So, I asked him his preference on everything....age, how many at a time, race, diseases, disabilities, countries, financial amount, open vs. closed, etc. We were almost identical on all of our thoughts (I've thought about the details every day for 6 or 7 years, but I knew a lot of these issues were new to his mind.) He, like me, said he would rather only adopt one child at a time...and he definitely wanted younger than 3 or 4.

Then, I told him why I was asking and showed him the photolisting of the three siblings. The next day, he's hooked like me. We haven't stopped talking about them. He actually used words like, "I really want them." and he's been looking at kids' bedrooms online, wondering what we should do for our kids. It's insane...seriously!

A home study takes 3-6 months to complete through OK DHS and, by law, you must have an approved home study before inquiring about waiting children. So, we could totally not be approved (I don't know why we wouldn't be)...we could be approved after they've already been adopted by someone else...we could meet them and for some reason it won't work out. I have no idea. Maybe our interest in them is only meant to draw us to the waiting children in America and God has someone else planned for us. I don't know.

We are starting our process now, though, so I'm just ecstatic!

The Purpose

We are hoping and praying to adopt a baby girl from China. We have almost four years before we're even old enough (by China's requirements), so we're using this time to pray for China.

We're praying that God will lead us through this journey.
We're praying that China will continue to look favorably upon the U.S. (as far as adoptions are concerned)
We're praying that we will ready ourselves for the journey--financially, emotionally, physically, relationally, etc.
We're praying that we stay on track to become debt-free (we're allowing ourselves to be in debt only for our house and ONE car) by the time we both turn 30 (January of '11).
We're praying that we get into (and stay in) shape...eating healthy, exercising, and exhibiting a healthy, appropriate weight.
We're praying that above our "get-out-of-debt" plan, we will save $20,000. This will be our starting fund for our adoption.
We're praying for the birth mother of our baby...we pray she is living a healthy life during these years leading up to pregnancy and childbirth...we pray God gives her peace during her loss.
We're praying for the orphanage and/or foster family that will take care of our little girl before we are able to adopt her.
We're praying for our baby.