National Adoption Month!

Yay for adoption! November, as I just found out, is national adoption month. AWESOME! I'm so excited that they dedicated a month to this amazing event. I don't know that I'll post every day (like some adoption bloggers) but I thought I'd start out by talking a bit more about our adoption story and my feelings on it. If I'm lucky Jared will post his feelings too. I will try to dedicate my postings this month to adoption though... just FYI.

Anyway~ I grew up knowing I'd have to adopt. Let me back track... growing up, as a little kid, I thought I would HAVE to adopt. I don't really want to go into the whole story... you can go to our adoption section if you want the detail on why I grew up thinking this way. Sorry, back on track. So... adoption has always been a fact of life... or so I thought... growing up. During my teenage years my wonderful sisters all started telling me that they would be willing to donate their eggs to me. Yeah... I don't think so. As great of an offer that really is... I think I would struggle knowing that I was biologically the child's aunt. I don't know. We've had several siblings ask us to be the guardians of their kids in an event of both them and their spouse dying... and I'm totally honored to do that. I just think I would struggle raising a kid from birth like that. Hope that makes sense. HOWEVER, my sisters did get my thinking about invetro ... getting an egg donor, or something like that... just never seemed right. There are so many great birth families out there... looking for an adoptive couple to parent their child. Like I've posted before... what a special and sacred experience to be a part of too. I can't remember where exactly I heard this but someone was trying to give their "condolences" to an adoptive mother. This someone said "I'm so sorry you have to adopt". What really touched me was the adoptive mother's response "I'm sorry you can't"! LOVE IT. And obviously, even if you have biological children you can still adopt. It got me thinking about how incredible an opportunity I have in this life to have my family through adoption. It's little things like that, that have really helped me gain a testimony of adoption.

Now, adoption is HARD! and we haven't even been placed yet. The hardest part (so far, and from speaking to other adoptive couples) seems to be the uncertainty. Will I wake up tomorrow to a phone call telling me that I have a kid? Will I be waiting for another couple of years? Will the birth mom decide to parent the child after all? I won't lie... I've shed many, many tears over all this. Like I've said before though... I know without a shadow of a doubt that Heavenly Father has a plan for us, He's aware of us, and loves us. Placement will happen when it's right.