We serve a GREAT God!

Anyone who has adopted can tell you how emotional the journey can be.  It is not for the feint at heart. The running joke in adoption circles is this: "You know you're adopting when..." and then you fill in the blank with something that broke down in your house, on your car... something unexpected happens that cost you a lot of money or you get negative comments about adoption from friends, family and complete strangers.  Sure many of these things happen to people every day, but when you are adopting, working so hard towards a goal and you hit a stumbling block, it hurts!  Almost no adoption process goes smooth, but let me tell you folks, we serve a GREAT God and adoption is worth it!

I have several friends that are in the adoption process now and I was talking to one of them today about the financial aspect of adoption.  They asked me if I ever worried about not being able to come up with enough money in time.  My answer: Almost every single day!  But I then was able to share some of our experiences with our adoption of Claudia that prove how incredible God is and that He does provide.

Being new to adoption, and not personally knowing anyone who had recently adopted, we were naive when we began our journey to Claudia.  We were originally led to believe that the adoption process would take about 6 months or so.  (Insert hysterical laughter here).  You see, often when you talk adoption with an agency they give you the timeline for adoption once you have submitted your dossier.  In order to submit your dossier you first must have a home study completed, accepted by your adoption agency and sent to the US government for approval.  During this process you will likely have to be fingerprinted at least twice and wait for your background checks to return (from every state you have ever lived in).  Once your home study is complete you can start getting your paperwork ready for your dossier.  This includes medical exams, marriage licences, birth certificates and any number of other documents the country would like you to send them.  Once you have all of your documents notarized, certified and Apostilled, you send them to your agency for review and if everything is in order, they ship that off to the country you are hoping to adopt from.  If you are lucky, this is when your timeline starts.  This process differs slightly for different countries, but this has been our experience and that of many other people we have met through adoption. 

So...  needless to say, we expected Claudia to be home several months sooner than she was.  We were disappointed for a while at how long the process was taking but we kept moving forward and in January 2013, we got to meet Claudia for the first time and she was home on Valentine's Day 2013.  Call me crazy, but during our adoption I was in the middle of nursing school, pursuing my RN license.  Had Claudia come home when we had originally planned, it is very likely that I would have had to take a year off from school to be with her for bonding.  If I had taken a year off, I would not be an RN right now, I would not be working as an RN, would not be making money AND we would NOT have been able to start another adoption at this time.

God is good!

God has perfect timing.  When we travelled to meet Claudia, I was on winter break from school.  I had almost a month off from school and spent two weeks getting to know my daughter.  I got to spend more time with her than I would have if I was in the middle of a semester and I did not have to miss a single day of school!

God is good!

God provides, Jehovah Jireh.  In December we got the call that we could meet Claudia in early January.  As elated as we were to be nearing the end of this part of our journey we were several thousand dollars short of having enough money to complete the adoption.  Thankfully we were able to apply for a personal loan and were approved.  We were a couple of days away from signing for the loan (it happened to be around the holidays so the bank was closed for a few days) when I received an email and Facebook message that changed EVERYTHING.  A very excited member of the staff at Reece's Rainbow who works with the grants told me on Christmas Eve than an anonymous donation of $8000!  It was just enough to complete our adoption!  God has perfect timing!  If we had not received that donation and had taken the loan, we would still be paying that off and would not have been able to pursue Chance.

I believe that God has called us to something great and that if we are obedient to His calling, that He will provide for us.  I am not saying it will be easy, we know better, but with God on our side, no matter what happens we will push forward until He closes doors.

I would like these stories to bring you encouragement.  When you are struggling please remember that God has a purpose for each and every one of us.  We may not see it at the time, we may not even know the purpose of certain events in our lifetime. But God uses our life events, good and bad, to mold and shape us for His purpose.  He does not make bad things happen to us, He gives us free will to do what we please and we suffer the consequences of our own actions.  No matter what we have done, if we seek to do God's will, He will forgive us and He can use our past for His purpose.  God can turn our past struggles into something good.  We serve a great God.

Because of the events of our adoption of her:

 

 

 

We are now able to persue him:

 

http://reecesrainbow.org/69430/sponsorvanhalle-2