The Spirit of Adoption

For over five years, we've been living out the verse, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But fortunately, there is another half to the verse--"BUT when a desire comes it is a tree of life."

In light of starting a family, infertility caused our hope to be deferred. But that began to change in early June of '07 when I had a dream about a lady bringing us a baby to adopt.

I woke up the next morning scratching my head, thinking how weird that was, especially since adoption wasn't on our radar. We were still trying to determine why we weren't getting pregnant. And after seeing some of the best infertility doctors in Atlanta, there was no clear answer. Soon after waking up, I went to read a book about Rees Howell, who was an intercessor during World War II and was someone who I truly admired. After finishing up the chapter from my reading the day before, I turned the page to the next chapter and it was titled "A Father to the Orphans." This chapter discussed how the Lord changed Howell's heart towards adoption because he only wanted children who were his flesh and blood. I have to admit, I had some of the same thoughts and feelings in the past. The Lord convicted me that morning and I started to ask the Lord to give me the Spirit of Adoption--not just for orphans but all people. He started answering the orphan portion of my prayer almost immediately.

Where did Bryan fit in with all of this? First, I shared my dream that morning with Bryan and had him read the chapter about the Spirit of Adoption. Then I waited for a couple of months to get a response from him about adoption. God took care of this part while we were at The Call (http://www.thecall.com/) in Nashville on 7/7/07. During this all-day prayer meeting, there were a few sessions devoted to repenting for the abortions in our nation. But we missed one of the important sessions that focused on calling the church to adopt children as a practical way to help end abortion. Fortunately, someone told us about this session after we arrived home and Bryan listened to it one day while he was working. This message really moved him! In fact, he actually cried. For those of you who know him well, he does not cry unless it's something related to football--especially Georgia football. He sometimes gets teary-eyed when Coach Mark Richt gives his testimony or when Larry Munson makes a great call (GO DAWGS!) .

With Bryan's ears now perked up to adoption, we started praying about it during our morning times of prayer. And the answers flooded in after that. One morning we prayed, and then immediately after our prayer time, I went to check my email and a dear friend from college was sharing an article she wrote called "The Spirit of Adoption." There were other emails like this.

A week or so after listening to The Call message, we were on our way to the airport to pick up a pastor from Israel who would be staying with us for a few days. While en route, we had some prayer time about our adopting, and right after getting out of the car, we saw another confirmation. Once in the airport, we realized the pastors' flight was delayed so we stayed in the arrival area watching for him. We love people watching at the airport so we had our chance then. Well, minutes later a mom and dad came through the gate with their newly adopted baby from China. Coming to greet them was a MOB of other parents with their adopted kids in tow. In all our travels, we had never seen anything like this. Could God have answered our prayers so quickly that night?

But the best confirmation came from a little prayer lifted up after hearing a message at The Call drawn from Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who book. If you are not familiar with this book, Horton, the elephant, has the ability to hear the tiny little Whos from Whoville. He is determined to protect them down to the smallest one like the tiny babies in the womb. So my little prayer was that the Lord would clearly confirm if we were to adopt by bringing the Horton book to me. (This was all before the Horton movie came out and was publicized.) He amazingly confirmed my marriage to Bryan with a cross pendant so why not something like this for adoption?

Several months later on a Friday afternoon, I found myself stir-crazy after working continually from our home office for couple of days and not even running errands to get out of the house. Not to mention, it was one of those hard, blue days where I was depressed about not being pregnant yet again. I had to get out of the house and decided to make a quick run to an antique market a few miles away before the Friday traffic started. When I walked in the door of the antique market, there was a morbid country music song playing about a dad killing his wife in a drunken rage in front of their daughter. After hearing this, I thought, "This is why I don't listen to country music." But fortunately the song transitioned with the little girl being adopted by a family in another state. One Sunday at Sunday school, her teacher pointed to a picture of Jesus and asked if she knew Him. She responded, "That was the man that held me the night my parents died." At that point I lost it. How embarrassing to start balling in a big antique market! Trying to regain my composure without being noticed, I dodged into the closest booth, and there in front of me, was the most adorable book of sketches of a basset hound. You know how much I love dogs so this helped put a smile on my face.

While flipping through the book, I began dialoging with the Lord in my mind, asking Him to not let me see the Horton Hears a Who book--especially after just hearing a song of someone that seemed like a Who. I knew that I would really lose it if I saw this book. After scanning through my happy, doggie book, I went to put it back on the shelf. And guess what book was the one right behind it. You guessed it. It was the Horton book and it wasn't just any new Horton book but the original addition. Too shocking. I left the store immediately and called Bryan.

Wow, God had given us confirmation once again! Why would we doubt it? He confirmed so clearly that we were supposed to adopt. To add to the story, Bryan encouraged me to go back and get the book. When I walked in, guess which song was playing. That's right, the same song that was playing before.

Soon after that we started talking with our parents and some family members. All were thrilled. In fact, before we brought up the subject to them, both sets of parents had been praying along the lines of adoption. They were asking the Lord to show us what we were supposed to do. Wow, He confirmed adoption again!

This is not the entire list of our confirmations but just highlights of them all! We actually have over 15 typed pages of confirmations.







On January 19, 2008 our adoption paperwork began. We are now officially "paper pregnant."