I have had this blog post swirling
around in my head for three months and I have gone back and forth with whether
or not to even post it, but I feel like it is worth saying. So here goes...
It has been a year and four months
since our sweet babies came home and I am now fifteen weeks pregnant. We are
over the moon and we know that God’s timing is always perfect. We have just
recently started to share our exciting news and Eric and I continue to hear
time and time again, “that’s what happens, you adopt and then you get pregnant.”
Let me just say I know that everyone who has said this to us means well, I
know that. But I can’t help but let it get to me a little.
People adopt for many reasons and
honestly, I am for the orphan so whatever the reason may be doesn’t really
matter to me. I don’t think anyone’s reason to adopt is better or more valid
than anyone else’s. Our decision to adopt had nothing to do with fertility or
lack of it. Adoption was also not a second choice or last resort for us. We
feel that God called us to adopt. He began stirring in my heart first and
worked on us for several years before we finally listened. As you can imagine
we had many conversations in those few years about if we should do this, if so,
when, and of course how do we do this. In the beginning conversations, we
thought we would try to get pregnant first and see what happened. Well to
be perfectly honest I really wanted to adopt and Eric wasn’t quite sure yet so
I really wasn’t all that serious about “trying to get pregnant.”
We ultimately decided to adopt
first because I felt that if we had biological children first we would end up
not adopting or waiting a really long time before we did. God already knew the
children he had for us to adopt and knowing our kids, the best thing for them
was to come into a home where they were the only children. The
transition has not been easy by any means but I believe it would have been a
completely different ballgame if they would have come into a family where they
felt they needed to compete for our love and attention. Our family is now in a place where everyone
knows where they belong, they know they are loved and as our girl says, “they
are stuck like Chuck.” Having a baby gives them another sibling, promotes
little man to big brother, and multiplies our love. We do not ever want them to
feel that they are loved less or less important to us because they were
adopted, we also don’t want them to feel that they were our back up plan,
because they weren’t.
This is the way everything has
worked out for our family. Every family is different and every adoption story
is different. Children are orphaned for so many different reasons in so many different
places around the world. Like all of us, their pasts are all different and they
cope with what they have been through in a million different ways. We are so
thankful that God knows all of their stories and puts them in the families that
are just right for their individual needs. He has blessed us so abundantly
already and we could not be any happier for the new addition that will join us
in June.
Merry Christmas from the 5 of us!
