Why China? Why Special Needs?

Inevitably people will be interested in why we are adopting from China and not another country or even foster care here in America.  There are a lot of different reasons and answers to this question but it really just boils down to this is where God has led us.  We are open to and appreciate all avenues for adoption and orphan care, both globally and locally.  There are over 100,000 adoptable children in US foster care and millions of orphaned children throughout the world.  Each country and program has its positives and negatives, but China is where God has led us for now.

China is a very stable program with a long standing history.  Because of various rules and stigmas in China, there are many children waiting for families.  The overwhelming number of children waiting have special needs.  Josh and I decided that we wanted a child who has been waiting for family awhile.  The truth about adoption is that most healthy, young, girl infants have a line of potential adoptive parents waiting for them.   In China, the children who need families are the ones who might be a little bit older, the ones with medical needs, and sometimes even just the boys.

When Josh and I first started seriously discussing adoption it was 4 years after we had been married.  I was struggling with PCOS and not having success getting pregnant.  We knew that adoption was something God had put on our hearts, but we were naive as to what the state of adoption is truly like.  We wanted a young baby were willing to wait years to get one.  We decided to try one more cycle of infertility treatments and then start the adoption process.  I got pregnant with Asher!

A few years later, when Asher was two years old, we felt the tug on our hearts to become parents again.  It didn't even occur to me that we could get pregnant naturally, and Josh and I decided it didn't matter how we became parents, we wanted to adopt to grow our family.  We did our research this time and had gotten pretty involved in orphan care by supporting and advocating for various organizations.  Josh visited an orphanage in Haiti and felt a real desire to adopt from there, but we didn't meet the age requirements.  We had just launched the first official Orphan Sunday at Ephesus Baptist Church.  Our worldview had grown a little...we had begun to understand what the children who were waiting for families were really like.  We were open to children of different races and read up on transracial families and how to adopt cross-culturally.   But we weren't ready to break birth order to adopt an older child.  We weren't ready to take on any extra medical or developmental needs.  A week before we were planning to send our application in I got pregnant with Laurel!

Now some might say at this point that it just looks like God does not want us to adopt...and I can honestly say that we've asked ourselves that very thing at times.  But looking back at it now we can see such a perfect and divine plan in how this has all played out.  In the five years since we first seriously began considering adoption God has changed our hearts so very much about the age and needs of a child we would be willing to adopt.

Adopting out of birth order and adopting a child with medical needs is not something we enter into lightly.  We know that in some people's eyes this is not the "wisest" decision.  In our own eyes it doesn't make sense in many ways!  But sometimes living like Christ calls us to looks like foolishness to the world.  We are confident that God will carry us through this and trust him to redeem the brokenness we are inviting into our family through adoption.

And there will be brokenness.

An abandoned child has a world of tragedy and hurt in their past that they bring with them into our family.  We are taking them from everything they have ever known and no matter how inadequate an orphanage is compared to the love of a family, it is still all the home this child has ever known.  It is their home, their culture, their heritage, and we are asking them to leave it all.  To trust that we will love them and meet their needs and introduce them to a heavenly heritage in Christ.  We are asking them to look beyond their tragedy and to love.

There is a world full of children who are desperately aching for families but are passed over because they are too hard, too sick, too old, too broken to love.

Jesus has asked us to love these children.  So here we are, stepping out again, but this time following the call our Savior has put before us.  He has opened our eyes to a real need and for some reason, He has equipped us with the desire to go meet that need.  It is only because of and through God that we could ever find the strength to do this.  But He is already supplying for us so richly and extravagantly that I can not contain my joy!

I do not think there is one type of adoption that is best.  If you are adopting the young, healthy child from a birth mother who is desperate- Praise God!

If you are adopting one of the waiting children from foster care who need families- Praise God!

If you are reaching out culturally and adopting from China or Ethiopia or Ukraine or Bulgaria- Praise God!

If you are supporting someone who is in the throes of adoption through encouragement, money, meals, childcare, cleaning, prayers- Praise God!

If you are helping support initiatives to keep children with their birth families and cultures, as it should always be the first line of defense to preserve families- Praise God!

Wherever you are and however you are following God's call to care for the orphan, it is a beautiful thing.  China special needs adoption is where our heart is...I praise God for opening our eyes and preparing our hearts for this journey.