This is Our “Yes.” (An Adoption Update).

Hey guys! It’s time for an adoption update on here. So much has happened in our hearts and in our process since I last shared about it and it’s high time to let y’all know what’s going on.

So, here goes.

Earlier this year we were having technical difficulties with the adoption situation in Nicaragua and felt like maybe we needed to look elsewhere. Maybe we were supposed to look at another country or perhaps even be open to domestic adoption, and yet none of it really felt right at the time.

In all honesty, it was hard for me let it go. I had already seen too many faces of too many Nicaraguan children and I had already felt too strongly about it and invested too much of my heart into that country and specifically, its orphans.

Yeah I know. I probably needed to get it together, as this was only the beginning and there were going to be many more disappointments and setbacks and I knew that.

And yet…there went my heart.

There went all my logical reasoning when I heard that the adoption program in Nicaragua was closing and hard as I tried not to be, I was devastated.

The wind was still out of my sails when we got the email from our agency a few months later. It was about Denise. I hadn’t even looked at the email much less opened it, when John called me in the middle of the day and said “Hey, did you read the email about the girl from Colombia? I mean, I know she’s 10 and not really in our age bracket, but…I…she is so sweet and beautiful and I don’t know…just read the email.”

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So I read the first sentence and accidentally looked at her pictures and then I started weeping. I think I cried the rest of that day, I felt so utterly humbled and broken by this girl who I hadn’t even met and who in one millisecond, my heart had completely opened up to.

But that is the miracle, my friends, the miracle of love.

Love hopes and believes even when it doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t follow the plan. It goes ahead anyway. Love goes ahead and goes all in, even when the mind says “don’t, it might hurt and what if this doesn’t work out, and what then?”

It makes space and it makes a way.

So there I was sitting on my couch completely incapacitated by this girl and the email I hadn’t even read and this “thing” I hadn’t even prepared for and yet I was saying “yes” to. There I was, heart in my hands and universe in my throat, making space for something I couldn’t even begin to explain or rationalize.

And somehow I didn’t need to. I didn’t need to read or rationalize any further. I already knew what I felt and so I quickly called and told my husband before I could change my mind and he did too and we would let fear speak and convince us not to go through with it.

You see, we had been told and we had decided not to adopt a child that is older than our oldest because it messes up the birth order, and there can be issues and all kinds of problems with that…

and that’s why we had applied for a child between the ages of 4-7.

But…THIS.

So here we are hosting and possibly adopting a 10 year old from a completely different country than we had planned to. Here we are opening our hearts and our home to “the girl from Colombia…”

Because, God.

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And because well…this.

This face and this soul and this unexplainable calling that calls to us in spite of our fears and what we were told and when we least expect it.

It comes to us again and again.

And again.

So this is our “yes”. Yes to three weeks of having this girl come live with us and opening our hearts to more. Yes to a new year and a new plan and learning to speak a new language. Yes to whatever is good and whatever is in store for us. Yes to faith restored and hope renewed that there is a plan greater than ours and that maybe, just maybe it’s even better than the one we can dream up.

This is our “yes”…

to Denise, the girl from Colombia, and to doing something crazy in spite of our previously thought-out way and our own human reasoning.

Yes to knowing and to lots of grace…

and yes to love.

Yes TO LOVE.

 

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