Okay folks, here we go!
My last post was on August 9th, announcing our SURPRISE pregnancy and updating you all that our doors toward adoption were all still closed.
If you read carefully through all the dates in our last post you would see a humorous sequence of events that led up to a shocking surprise when my pregnancy test read "positive". Quick recap - We found out 3 weeks after we booked our trip to Ghana, days after our approved travel visa's arrived, and days before our scheduled vasectomy that we were pregnant (among a few other little details that are pretty awesome too). Every time I tell the story I say "Only God!" It truly was only God that could have snuck a surprise child that so obviously belongs with us into that tiny little window.
Well, He has proven Himself faithful and surprising and humorous and amazing once again! On August 11th, TWO DAYS after we announced our pregnancy to the world (the Instagram/Blog world that is), we got an email from our Adoption Agency..... They are opening up their Ghana program. What!?! This is crazy right? I'm 4 months pregnant. I have 3 little kids. I'm homeschooling. Our house is 1000 square feet and our car BARELY fits 4 carseats. Now we are able to work on bringing our FIFTH child home? From all logical perspectives we would be insane to move forward.
"Only God."
Only God could have called us to the beautiful journey of adoption. Only God could have planted the seed in our hearts of a child that belongs with us who is currently orphaned. Only God could give us the excitement, eagerness, and energy to move forward right now with bringing this precious little (or big) one home. In my heart, adoption and pregnancy are the same. As my tummy grows and I eagerly await the arrival of our newborn, my heart also grows and I share the same anticipation to hold our adopted child in my arms. Our life, our family, our journey - they are incomplete until that child is here with us.
We spent a week talking and praying about exactly how God would have us proceed. We also had to focus on my very sick grandma during that week so we had little time to think or talk about adoption.... a distraction I truly needed to keep me from getting overwhelmed. I didn't hear a clear voice saying "keep going" and nothing told me to "just wait", but we both feel ready to see what God has for us next. So, our application fee got sent and our application is being reviewed right now. I trust that ONLY God can make this adoption happen in our lives, which means I can trust that He will also stop us if His timing is not now.
I'm hopeful that we can get all the major paperwork (namely our Home Study) complete before our newborn arrives and I'm bogged down with sleepless nights, non-stop diaper changes and round the clock feedings (and all those baby snuggles that are totally necessary for survival in the first few months)... who will have time for paperwork then?
We are still under the assumption this adoption is going to be a long process. Anywhere from 2-5 years in our minds, but our agency has given us no indication on their timeline ideas. I don't have expectations on when our family will be complete with adopted Mouw, except that it will be humorous and amazing and beautiful and "Only God."
This week we Face-timed with our favorite "Grandma Judy" who is a missionary in Ghana (her website here). She's the one we would be with at this very moment, had we been able to go to Africa. She was visiting a village in Ghana where the people have no more than the clothes on their back and a straw roof over their heads. The children were SO beautiful and so skinny I started to cry. I just wanted all of them to have more. To have food, to have clean water, to have a bed, to have parents who aren't dying of malnutrition slowly and painfully. One young girl had just been bitten by a dog during our conversation. Grandma Judy offered to take her to the hospital to get checked for rabies. I do not know how many hours away the hospital is, or what the facility even looks like compared to our "Hospitals". I do know one dog bite could kill this young girl and very little can help it.
Why God chose my precious 4 to be born into privilege I will never know. Why do we get hot meals, hot baths, warm beds, and clean medical facilities. Why do we get to live under the protection of welfare, food stamps, unemployment, homeless shelters, food banks, and free medical care even as the lowest-class citizens all live empty handed there? I want all of them to come here. I want more for each of them. It just breaks me to see the need and to sleep in my warm bed without a mosquito net around me saving my life.
I am so eager to meet the one child God has chosen for us, the one beautiful orphan who will come into America and instantly be fed, cared for, loved, and protected. I know that saving one is better than saving none. But somehow I pray that there is a way to save them all. God bless Grandma Judy who is there caring for them. Maybe our trip being cancelled was God's way of protecting me from adopting the whole country, I want each of them. Not a single one is more or less worthy of adoption than another.
If your heart is softened at all to adoption, please read the book Fields of the Fatherless by Tom Davis. It encapsulates so much of my heart. Once you are aware of the need, it's hard to turn your head and find peace. Please hear me, I'm not trying to convince anyone to adopt. I genuinely just want to explain why we are proceeding with adoption in a season that makes almost no sense to anyone else, because my heart is burning with a passion that makes it impossible not to.
Stay tuned for more adoption and pregnancy news, it's never dull around here.
Grace and peace be yours in abundance,
Mandi
My last post was on August 9th, announcing our SURPRISE pregnancy and updating you all that our doors toward adoption were all still closed.
If you read carefully through all the dates in our last post you would see a humorous sequence of events that led up to a shocking surprise when my pregnancy test read "positive". Quick recap - We found out 3 weeks after we booked our trip to Ghana, days after our approved travel visa's arrived, and days before our scheduled vasectomy that we were pregnant (among a few other little details that are pretty awesome too). Every time I tell the story I say "Only God!" It truly was only God that could have snuck a surprise child that so obviously belongs with us into that tiny little window.
Well, He has proven Himself faithful and surprising and humorous and amazing once again! On August 11th, TWO DAYS after we announced our pregnancy to the world (the Instagram/Blog world that is), we got an email from our Adoption Agency..... They are opening up their Ghana program. What!?! This is crazy right? I'm 4 months pregnant. I have 3 little kids. I'm homeschooling. Our house is 1000 square feet and our car BARELY fits 4 carseats. Now we are able to work on bringing our FIFTH child home? From all logical perspectives we would be insane to move forward.
Only God could have called us to the beautiful journey of adoption. Only God could have planted the seed in our hearts of a child that belongs with us who is currently orphaned. Only God could give us the excitement, eagerness, and energy to move forward right now with bringing this precious little (or big) one home. In my heart, adoption and pregnancy are the same. As my tummy grows and I eagerly await the arrival of our newborn, my heart also grows and I share the same anticipation to hold our adopted child in my arms. Our life, our family, our journey - they are incomplete until that child is here with us.
We spent a week talking and praying about exactly how God would have us proceed. We also had to focus on my very sick grandma during that week so we had little time to think or talk about adoption.... a distraction I truly needed to keep me from getting overwhelmed. I didn't hear a clear voice saying "keep going" and nothing told me to "just wait", but we both feel ready to see what God has for us next. So, our application fee got sent and our application is being reviewed right now. I trust that ONLY God can make this adoption happen in our lives, which means I can trust that He will also stop us if His timing is not now.
I'm hopeful that we can get all the major paperwork (namely our Home Study) complete before our newborn arrives and I'm bogged down with sleepless nights, non-stop diaper changes and round the clock feedings (and all those baby snuggles that are totally necessary for survival in the first few months)... who will have time for paperwork then?
We are still under the assumption this adoption is going to be a long process. Anywhere from 2-5 years in our minds, but our agency has given us no indication on their timeline ideas. I don't have expectations on when our family will be complete with adopted Mouw, except that it will be humorous and amazing and beautiful and "Only God."
This week we Face-timed with our favorite "Grandma Judy" who is a missionary in Ghana (her website here). She's the one we would be with at this very moment, had we been able to go to Africa. She was visiting a village in Ghana where the people have no more than the clothes on their back and a straw roof over their heads. The children were SO beautiful and so skinny I started to cry. I just wanted all of them to have more. To have food, to have clean water, to have a bed, to have parents who aren't dying of malnutrition slowly and painfully. One young girl had just been bitten by a dog during our conversation. Grandma Judy offered to take her to the hospital to get checked for rabies. I do not know how many hours away the hospital is, or what the facility even looks like compared to our "Hospitals". I do know one dog bite could kill this young girl and very little can help it.
Why God chose my precious 4 to be born into privilege I will never know. Why do we get hot meals, hot baths, warm beds, and clean medical facilities. Why do we get to live under the protection of welfare, food stamps, unemployment, homeless shelters, food banks, and free medical care even as the lowest-class citizens all live empty handed there? I want all of them to come here. I want more for each of them. It just breaks me to see the need and to sleep in my warm bed without a mosquito net around me saving my life.
I am so eager to meet the one child God has chosen for us, the one beautiful orphan who will come into America and instantly be fed, cared for, loved, and protected. I know that saving one is better than saving none. But somehow I pray that there is a way to save them all. God bless Grandma Judy who is there caring for them. Maybe our trip being cancelled was God's way of protecting me from adopting the whole country, I want each of them. Not a single one is more or less worthy of adoption than another.
If your heart is softened at all to adoption, please read the book Fields of the Fatherless by Tom Davis. It encapsulates so much of my heart. Once you are aware of the need, it's hard to turn your head and find peace. Please hear me, I'm not trying to convince anyone to adopt. I genuinely just want to explain why we are proceeding with adoption in a season that makes almost no sense to anyone else, because my heart is burning with a passion that makes it impossible not to.
Stay tuned for more adoption and pregnancy news, it's never dull around here.
Grace and peace be yours in abundance,
Mandi
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