I don't think I've ever shared on here the story of how our two boys became brothers.
As you might know, we started this adoption intending to adopt one little boy. Then, the opportunity arose to adopt boy/girl twins - seemingly a specific answer to our daughter Eva's prayers for over two years. When sadly that referral fell through, we were confronted with the decision: Would we still adopt two?
Pedro's answer was no. The Lord had obviously closed the door to the twins because He only wanted us to adopt a single child, was his reasoning. My reasoning was more along the lines of, God used the twins to open and prepare our hearts to be ready to adopt two rather than one ... Obviously we were at an impasse. We agreed to pray about it and shortly thereafter Pedro surprised me by agreeing to two children as long as both were boys. Since we had always heard that more families requested girls than boys and that boys were often in greater need of homes, it wasn't hard for me to agree. After all, Owen would have a ball with two brothers!
What was hard was being faced with the reality of choosing our children. How do you choose a child? This was something we had never faced in our adoption experiences before. We were presented with a list of children currently in our agency's care and waiting for families. Ironically, the majority of them were girls! I was immediately drawn to a 4-month old baby boy who had arrived on the brink of starvation, weighing merely 6.5 lbs at that age. We knew that the adoption process might take awhile (little did we know how long!) so we preferred to start the process with a younger child/ren. Soon we received an unusual suggestion.
Lori, our adoption coordinator stateside who had been helping us wade through the adoption paperwork via e-mail and phone calls between Chile and Indiana, was herself an adoptive mom to three beautiful Haitian girls. Her best friend Angela, also in Indiana, had adopted three Haitian children as well. It turned out that the little 4-month old boy was a biological sibling to Angela's youngest daughter, and that Lori's youngest daughter had a biological sister in Haiti with a baby about to be born. Both Lori and Angela desired to be able to adopt these new babies but being unable to do so themselves, had the idea of our adopting them both and raising them together! The only catch was that the newborn was expected to be a little girl, not a boy.
Like I said, an unusual suggestion. We agreed to consider it as we talked and prayed about the list we'd be given. On April 8, the day before Pedro's birthday, the new baby was born. Guess what? "She" was a little boy! Our answer had been provided. We committed to adopt the newest arrival as well as the 4-month old, forever binding our hearts to two precious little people and also binding them to one another ... two boys who became brothers, our Ian and our Alec.
As you might know, we started this adoption intending to adopt one little boy. Then, the opportunity arose to adopt boy/girl twins - seemingly a specific answer to our daughter Eva's prayers for over two years. When sadly that referral fell through, we were confronted with the decision: Would we still adopt two?
Pedro's answer was no. The Lord had obviously closed the door to the twins because He only wanted us to adopt a single child, was his reasoning. My reasoning was more along the lines of, God used the twins to open and prepare our hearts to be ready to adopt two rather than one ... Obviously we were at an impasse. We agreed to pray about it and shortly thereafter Pedro surprised me by agreeing to two children as long as both were boys. Since we had always heard that more families requested girls than boys and that boys were often in greater need of homes, it wasn't hard for me to agree. After all, Owen would have a ball with two brothers!
What was hard was being faced with the reality of choosing our children. How do you choose a child? This was something we had never faced in our adoption experiences before. We were presented with a list of children currently in our agency's care and waiting for families. Ironically, the majority of them were girls! I was immediately drawn to a 4-month old baby boy who had arrived on the brink of starvation, weighing merely 6.5 lbs at that age. We knew that the adoption process might take awhile (little did we know how long!) so we preferred to start the process with a younger child/ren. Soon we received an unusual suggestion.
Lori, our adoption coordinator stateside who had been helping us wade through the adoption paperwork via e-mail and phone calls between Chile and Indiana, was herself an adoptive mom to three beautiful Haitian girls. Her best friend Angela, also in Indiana, had adopted three Haitian children as well. It turned out that the little 4-month old boy was a biological sibling to Angela's youngest daughter, and that Lori's youngest daughter had a biological sister in Haiti with a baby about to be born. Both Lori and Angela desired to be able to adopt these new babies but being unable to do so themselves, had the idea of our adopting them both and raising them together! The only catch was that the newborn was expected to be a little girl, not a boy.
Like I said, an unusual suggestion. We agreed to consider it as we talked and prayed about the list we'd be given. On April 8, the day before Pedro's birthday, the new baby was born. Guess what? "She" was a little boy! Our answer had been provided. We committed to adopt the newest arrival as well as the 4-month old, forever binding our hearts to two precious little people and also binding them to one another ... two boys who became brothers, our Ian and our Alec.
4 comments:
how beautiful and how awesome is God!
Christina
That's awesome, I don't know if you ever shared that, but I know I never heard that. So sweet, it gets me all choked up hearing how God works things out. It was told to us that Amelia was going to be a boy. At the time we had just been through the "failed" adoption and had been prepared for a girl, talking about a little sister to Isabella, so in a way I was kind of hoping for another girl. We prayed and agreed that we should proceed and then found out a couple hours later that the adoption lady had "somehow" misinformed us, but that this was actually going to be a little girl. For us, it was like God saying "Are you REALLY wanting what I want?" So sweet to see how God works. Praying for you! I can't imagine how hard waiting must be.
Very cool and such a "God Thing"!! I love hearing stories like that when you know the impossible is possible only through our Heavenly Father. God bless!
~ Cari
God is so good... it is those "wilderness" times that are not so good, but those are the times that can prepare us for more of His goodness... IF we have the patience to wait it out!
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