Active

This morning I got a call from our adoption organization letting me know that they have received and processed our information. Our file is now considered active which means we will be shown to prospective birth mothers.

My heart may have skipped a beat. My chest tightened the way it does when I'm hovering on the brink of something extremely life altering. My mind started screaming through scenarios that involve a child coming to live with us before Christmas even though I know this thought is as improbable as it is optimistic. But that's what this adoption process has started doing to me. I have to remind myself to be cautiously optimistic. In my normal, every day existence, I try to curb the intense level of pessimism draining from my pores. But, in the here and now of this process, I have dared to let myself really hope.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that Troy and I had a heart for adoption before we ever knew that biological children would be, well, difficult for us. I think we both recognized the biblical call to adopt. I don't think that it's God's plan for everyone to adopt but I do believe it's extremely important to him. In Ephesians 1 it says, In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.


Genesis 15:3 says And Abram said, "You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir."

Romans 8:23 says that we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons.

James 1:27- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Romans 8:15- For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father."

John 14:18- I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you.

This is how I know that I will love a child born not of my own body just as much as I love Garrett. The way he stares at me now, with those deep oddly colored eyes, the same way he stared at me in the delivery room, my heart feels like it's going to burst with love. But it's my heart that feels that joy. It isn't my uterus or my ovaries that leap with adoration. I can't wait to stare deep into the eyes of my next child and feel that same depth of love.

And now our file is active. Praise God!