Ornaments for Adoption: Adoption is LOVE

We are close to reaching $100 raised for the Thigpen family. Keep those orders coming! Did you know that November is Adoption Awareness month. So, why don't you help me in my goal of educating others about adoption and orphan care by sharing this and other OFA posts. It is very much appreciated!

If you've been keeping up with Ornaments for Adoption, you know that there's a new prize introduced each week. This week's prize is courtesy of Kera from Nugget on a Budget. She is donating hair bows (See them below-they're adorable!). She's also recently started selling these and other items on her Instagram. Be sure to head over to one of those places and thank her for her support of OFA. 

 

Today, I'm excited to have a guest post from Kristen who blogs at Adoption Love. Kristen and her husband, Josh, are in the waiting stage of their domestic infant adoption. I'll let her share more about her family and their adoption story.

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We are Josh and Kristen and we want to adopt a baby. 

Such a simple sentence with so much emotion behind it. We decided to start our family five years ago. Decided...as if we had any control. We tried for quite a while on our own and then sought medical help. We did two years of IUIs and assorted cocktails of fertility medications and tests. Then at the end of 2010 we tried for the big one. IVF. As it turned out though my eggs weren't up to snuff and after our IVF failed, I was diagnosed with diminished ovarian reserve. In other words, I produce eggs like a woman close to menopause (I was 26 at the time). I got off the phone with the doctor and collected everything in the house related to our fertility treatments. I piled it all on the kitchen island, took a picture, and threw it away. That was a hard day, I cried and prayed a lot. It was clear to us that God had closed the door on pregnancy. He had closed it, locked it, and wedged a chair under the knob. Adoption it was, and as we proceeded, we became more and more at peace knowing that this was the path God wanted us on.

I am far from being an authority on adoption. Even though my husband and I have been in the process for over a year and a half now, I still feel like we're very much at the beginning. The majority of this time has been consumed by waiting. I could describe our experience so far, all the paperwork, inspections, fingerprinting, and more paperwork, but that really has nothing to do with adoption. Adoption is so much more than all those things. Even so, it's easy to get sucked in to the business of adoption. To scrutinize your profile, to worry about the cost, to scrub your house from top to bottom before the social worker comes to inspect (only to have her barely stick her head into each room). It was easy to get short sighted in the beginning. Don't get me wrong, these are all part of the process. They are all necessary to move forward (except the worrying and scrubbing). But none of this is adoption.

Like I said, we've been waiting a long time. Sometimes it feels like we will never be picked by an expectant mom. This isn't the point though. It doesn't matter how long we wait, how much we squirm with impatience, how much the butterflies in our stomachs flutter with anticipation. What matters is that God loves us. He has called us and prepared our hearts for adoption. We want His will to be done in our family. We will wait as long as He wants us to. He has a child and a birth family picked specifically for us, and when we meet them, we will praise Him. Adoption isn't what it used to be. Open adoption gives mothers peace of mind and hope that their child (who will never stop being their child) will know they were placed for adoption with love. Because of this call, this drive God has given us to be parents through adoption, we open our hearts to not just a child, but a mother as well, and possibly a whole family. We want our child to know their beginning. We want our child to be proud to be adopted! After all, as Christians, we are proud to be adopted children of God! We are all adopted in love! That's what adoption is. Love.

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The Thigpens' adoption and Josh and Kristen's adoption isn't possible without the help of others like you. Would you consider buying an ornament to help the Thigpens? Would you consider heading over to Josh and Kristen's blog to see how you can help them? If nothing else, would you share this post? I would love to see my "recent favorites" section over on the left sidebar to be showing only Ornaments for Adoption posts because they are my most read posts this year. Not for my benefit, but for the benefit of families adopting and the children waiting to be adopted.