Adoption :: Resolve

For several years Mendy and I have talked about (and around) the idea of adopting a child. But most of these conversations had the tone of “one day” or “some day” or “we’ll see what happens.” This tone began to change two years ago when I spent the night on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a few orphaned street kids. When one of these boys told me that his mom died when he was five and he just walked to the city where he knew he could survive, something happened deep inside me. It was a resolve to quit talking and start doing.

In January 2007, I led a series of talks at church titled The Monday After Pill, in which I simply focused on taking action on the things we all know God has asked us to do. One of these messages was from James 1 where James tells every Christ follower to DO what the Word says instead of just listening to the Word. He follows that teaching by telling us to care for widows and orphans in their distress. One month after giving this message to our spiritual community, I am face to face all night long with these orphans in Ethiopia. There was a resolve to ACT!

I have always HATED when I hear other pastors say something like, “I just love to preach the Word!” I didn’t know why this phrase bothered me so much until recently I was thinking, “I don’t think I like preaching the Word near as much as I like trying to live the Word.” What good is being more excited about telling others to follow Christ than actually following Christ myself! From this point on there was a resolution in my soul to get active about the pursuit of adoption.

For the next two years, Mendy and I prayed, planned and prepared. January 1, 2009 was our start date. We began the paperwork process, fund-raising process and intensified our search for the kids we would bring into our family.