Why are we adopting?

For a long time (since before we got married), we've talked of the idea of adopting.  It seemed like a neat thing to do: grow our family by giving a family to a child in need.  But early on, we were very unsure of our parenting abilities and wanted to try having children biologically first: learn to parent first, then learn to parent an adopted child!  That turned out to be a more challenging journey than we had anticipated.  But eventually the Lord blessed us with a beautiful daughter in 2011.  As we struggled with infertility, our thoughts sometimes turned to adoption, but as long as there was another relatively simple step to take on the medical side, that route seemed to make the most sense.  But by summer 2013, we had reached the point where we didn't feel comfortable going further along the medical technology path, and it was becoming clear that we likely wouldn't have more children born to us.  That's when we started to seriously investigate adoption.

The biggest factor at that point was the desire to have more than just 1 child: we both grew up with several siblings and appreciate both the experience of growing up in a larger family, and the relationships we have with our siblings as adults, so we didn't want our daughter to be an only child.

We also feel strongly that children need families, and it's tragic that there are thousands of kids in the world who are growing up without the security and support of a family.  We can't help all the orphans in the world, but we can completely change the life of one child, by adopting them into our family.

As we started researching adoption, it also struck us that it is a beautiful picture of the Gospel.  What God does through Jesus' sacrifice is not just to save us from sin and death, but to adopt us into His family, as His children!  Just as marriage is a picture of Christ and the Church, adoption is a picture of God making us a part of His family.  So by adopting, we give witness to what God has done for us.

The Bible also talks repeatedly of God's care and concern for the orphan (and other vulnerable and powerless people).  So adopting an orphan is a way both to serve God and to show God's love to a vulnerable child.

Eventually we started seeing how God leading us down this path, and was using our journey of parenting and infertility to lead us to bless a child through adoption.