It was early spring of 2011, my husband and I were taking a walk with both our girls in the double stroller. We occasionally take walks after dinner together as a family, and we stopped by my sister-in-law's house just to say hi. They came back from an adoption conference earlier that weekend and told us all about it. Honestly, I can't remember all the facts that they shared with us, but that conversation changed us. As we walked home talking about all the things that we had just learned about, we were mad.. with a righteous anger in an unjust world. What could we do?
We talked about "The Starfish Story."
A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.
She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”
The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,
“Well, I made a difference to that one!”
The old man looked at the girl inquisitively and thought about what she had done and said. Inspired, he joined the little girl in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined, and all the starfish were saved. - adapted from the Star Thrower by Loren C. Eiseley
My sister-in-law and brother-in-law have adopted a child, and yes, I can testify that they made a difference to that one!
A couple of days later, my husband and I were on another walk. He looked at me and said, I think we should adopt. My first reaction was surprize followed by thoughts of all of my selfish plans for our family. Then, I remembered earlier in our marriage before we had kids... I had a passion for adoption. I was reading books and really seriously longing to adopt. My husband said, no. He wanted biological kids first. I talked to God about my longing for adoption and I prayed, "Lord, You heard what he said. If you want us to adopt it's up to you." Since that discussion I had put the subject of adoption on the shelf to collect dust thinking that it wasn't going to happen.
I told my husband that I needed to pray about this. I felt confused. I prayed that night as I got up for a night feeding with my youngest child. Did God want us to adopt? Was that His plan for our family? As I continued to pray all of the passion and feelings that I had for adoption came back. God answered my prayers in a big way! I felt like God was telling us, Yes! We talked and agreed that, yes, we were going to adopt and we started looking into the adoption process. Since then, we have felt God leading us to apply for a sibling group from Ethiopia. We have our paper work in and we are waiting for a referral, which will probably be another year in waiting from now. Although waiting is hard, we continue on with our daily lives. We are finding the joy in it despite the unjust world around us.
