Thursday, July 16, 2009

Moving On

Another struggle we faced in our decision making progress was the unknown factor of how this would affect our children. We worried that they would resent another child. We wondered if it would take important time away from them. We feared they would end up resenting us. Four children were already a big responsibility. Were we being irresponsible to take on another child?

As a result, we openly discussed the things we learned in our MAPP classes with the children. We told them that we would not proceed if they were unsure. Time and again they surprised us with the way they embraced the idea of a sister despite the difficulties we tried to explain to them. The only opposition we faced was that our youngest, Cory, at age five thought a brother would be a better idea.

Our oldest two, Ryan and Kaytlin, often would remind us that this was the right thing to do. When we would try to discourage them about it one of them would ask, "But isn't that what Jesus would want us to do?" There really was no way for us to get around the verses in the Bible that instruct Christians to look after the fatherless. James 1:27 says, "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."

There were times I would be so burdened for the little girl God had placed in my heart that I would just pray to God to protect her and hold her in His arms. I increasingly felt that she was my little girl, and we were just waiting for her to come home. Since our children so freely embraced adopting a needy child, we proceeded on down the path towards getting our license to be adoptive resource parents for the foster care system.

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