Africa: The Prequel

I wanted to write about Africa, really I did, but all of this needed to come out first evidently. :-) 

Our trip to Africa just ended, but the journey truly began many, many years ago. From the time I was a child, about 10 years old, a passion for adoption began to grow in my heart, a passion to be a mother to those who needed one. 

Hearing about these children far away who were orphaned broke my heart, but at the same time, the issue was so distant from the reality of my life. I was surrounded by family and friends and others who would do anything for me. It was a reality that I had no way of grasping until I was much older.

So, life went on, Dave and I got married, bought a house, had 3 biological kids and though we always felt like we were struggling, we were living a comfortable American life. My goal was to give my children things that I felt I missed out on as a child. We had piles of presents under the tree every Christmas, we took that family trip to Disney, and we spent money like we deserved every bit of it. I was slightly convicted with the level of comfort that we were living in, but you know, compared to “everyone else” we were still living so modestly.

God introduced us to 3 wonderful children who happened to be in the foster care system, and for the first time, the issue of the orphan was literally at our front door. I was caring for these children in my daycare, and it was just so obvious to me that God was calling us to adoption through foster care. We happily took the classes, got our license and thought, “This is it! This is what God is calling us to. We have arrived at the pinnacle of our lives.”

Then, foster care was HARD. Our hearts were broken on more than one occasion…and not the nice kind of “broken for what breaks the heart of God” that we always talk about…it was the miserable, screaming, swearing, ugly-crying, hitting-the-walls, “God, what are you doing?!?!” kind of heart broken.

Even in all of my anger and resentment, God picked up each and every piece of my broken heart, and He put it back together. The difference with each heartbreak though, was that when the healing began, there was so much more of God holding my heart together.  I drew closer to Him and longed so much more to understand His plan for my life. I wanted, I needed to know Him better in order to know where He was leading me. I had to get off of committees and get out of groups that were not life-giving, we had to stop running around to activities, we had to let go of some really good things that we did, in order to find God’s BEST for us. We spent the 10 months from September 2009- July 2010 focusing our energy on God, not making any crazy life choices to distract us from knowing Him better. We had committed to a YEAR of “no crazy”, but in July of 2010, we met Brice, Halie and Jasmine.

After agreeing just to watch these kids while their foster parents were on vacation, Dave said to me, “I think Halie is our daughter.” For the very first time, Dave was feeling called and leading us towards adoption.  At the time it felt like it took forever, but by the end of August Halie and Brice were in our home with the goal of adoption, and by October, Jasmine was with us as well.

Again, I really was feeling like, “Okay, God. I see what you did there. You used our pain to mold us and change us. You drew us closer to You. I’ve sung songs about that before. Cool. NOW we have it figured out…NOW we have arrived at our life calling.”

And wouldn’t you know, He just wasn’t done with us yet.