Moving (Part I) - Just WOW!

Even setting this blog up is very surreal. I have blogged in the past but not on something as specific as adoption and the journey that God has us on at this time. However, as I have shared with a few sweet friends the burden that God has placed on my heart, my friend Paula particularly encouraged (or begged, really) me to journal this journey. I didn't take her up on it immediately but have been tossing around the idea of doing so in this fashion. So here goes.....

I can't say precisely when I began to have a tug at my heart regarding adoption. I wish that I could. I think back as early on as my 20's when I volunteered through the Big Brother/Sister organization....I definitely had a heart then for underprivileged children that, at some point, grew into something altogether different.

It was many years later that I began to really struggle with the idea that there were parentless children in the world. I really felt convicted by it and began to talk with Jeff about it. What I found was that he didn't have the same convictions. When I would bring it up, he would say that God had not convicted him this way and, therefore, it must not be what we were supposed to do. We have always subscribed to the fact that God is not the God of confusion, and that He would not ask one spouse to do something in direct opposition to the other. (I still believe this, by the way). So, every so often, we'd have a talk about it and then I'd move on....sortof.

Eventually, I began to soak up every bit of information I could find; mostly through reading blogs of other families who had or were adopting. Eventually, after much prayer, I was certain that I was supposed to do something (now rather than later) and that since Jeff didn't have the same convictions, that "something" was going to need to be something that I could do on my own which, of course, did not include actually adopting. So the search was on.

I continued reading blogs and praying for lots of different families and/or organizations. From time to time, I would make donations to the cause and/or buy products that families were selling in order to raise funds for their own adoption. I ordered products that were available (through 147 Million Orphans) that were intended to raise awareness of the current orphan crisis. Namely, Ugandan magazine beads. I began purchasing these as gifts in 2009. (read more about this organization and these beads at www.147millionorphans.com).

And all of that was great.

But, eventually, it wasn't enough.

I wasn't doing enough. And God wasn't leaving me alone.

To be continued.....