While You Wait

So often the wait for our children to come home seems so long, but the Lord never wastes time! Here are some ideas to make the time fruitful by building up your family even before your adoption. You will enjoy reading the accounts of adoption from Birth Children's Perspectives HERE. If your children are old enough, read some of these accounts aloud and talk about them together.

Interrupted
God had already rocked our world in a big way that night when we heard Him say, "You need to do this." Stephen and I were in a meeting at our children's school and were not anticipating that we'd hear from God at all! Yet when Susan Hillis began to speak of the opportunity to have Russian orphans come spend their summer in our homes, and when I was minding my own business filling out a form for one of our girls and not really paying her any attention, God interrupted me -- interrupted my thoughts, interrupted our family, interrupted our life! It was a Glorious Interruption! As if I had a marionette string attached to the crown of my head, I looked up from the form I was filling out and heard, in the most clear voice as if with my ears, but in my spirit, "You need to do this." I turned to Stephen and said, softening the words a bit because I couldn't quite say it so commandingly yet, "I really think we are supposed to do this." His reply was a simple, "I know." 

I won't tell the rest of the story here, but that same night, as we reeled with the increasing clarity of what had just occurred and with the many, "well, that will mean...." trying to engage our minds with the consequences, I found myself asking the Lord, "But what about our girls? Will they be ok? I don't ever want to do anything that will harm them!" We didn't feel we could move forward until we heard what God had to say about this concern. It was our gravest concern actually. Maybe some of you reading this know exactly what I am talking about. I'll never forget the time Stephen and I were praying about this in the following weeks when he turned to me and said, "I feel like God is saying that it will be hard on our girls, but not the kind of "hard" that will tear them down or bring damage to them. It will be the kind of hard that will strengthen them as people." Once we heard that, we were ready to jump in the deep end!

So, now we were in full preparation mode. I'd love to share with you some ideas to help prepare your family for the huge changes that adoption brings. Preparing your children to receive a new sibling can have a significant impact on the kind of relationships the siblings will have later on in life. And for many of us, there is LOTS of waiting time until our children come home, time used by God to make us ready....

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