We Are Really Doing This!

That's right ... Josh and I submitted our formal application to Bethany Christian a couple weeks ago! Honestly, it is a little surreal. Anyone who has just started to see a long-awaited dream realized probably knows the feeling -- I have wanted this for a long time, so it is strange to see the gap between the vision and our reality slowing starting to close.

I have heard so many horror stories of adoption paperwork, but this wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it would be. I'm sure we have barely scratched the surface of filling out forms and signing our names, but it feels like a major milestone to be considered an officially adopting couple.

The hardest part of the paperwork? Signing this form:

That's our fee contract. We officially committed to pay the $12,500 in fees ($550 of which we have already paid for applications) without having any idea how we are going to do it. When it's all said and done, our adoption will cost $15,000, which includes legal fees and birthmother medical expenses. That is a big, scary number.
And we believe two seemingly contradictory things:
1. God wants us to adopt.
2. God doesn't want us to incur any more debt.
Seeing that we don't have the $15,000 sitting in our bank account, we signed this form on total faith that God will provide for Cash baby #2 just like He did for Phoenix. We should be over $30,000 in debt from Phoenix's birth/hospital stay, but we are debt free. If God can handle thirty grand, I am sure fifteen ain't no thang.
I recently read "The Circle Maker" by Mark Batterson, and it was a perfectly timed read for me in light of this leap of faith. Batterson suggests that we should make huge requests of God, and that He is honored in their fulfillment. When our adoption is finalized, it will be undeniably a work of God's provision alone. Josh and I are fighting in prayer for this, and claiming God's promise to us. Please continue to partner with us in prayer!

We have also started the 6 weeks of adoption classes at Bethany. I missed the first class last week (because of a staff retreat), so last night was the first one for me. There was a panel of three couples who had already gone through the adoption process -- it was simultaneously encouraging and terrifying! Encouraging because they were all holding their babies, and each couple said that everything difficult about the process becomes a distant memory once you hold your child for the first time. Terrifying because we more deeply understand the difficulty of the road ahead. Each of the couples had walked away from a potential match, and had their hopes dashed by at least one birthmother. And one of the couples waited three and half years to bring a baby home -- that is a horribly long time.

It's going to be an emotional roller coaster, for sure. Thankfully, we have had a little practice surviving the unknown.

Here are a couple snippets from the blog while Phoenix was in the NICU:

"I was talking with Miles (a friend and mentor to both Josh and I) about the time that he and his family spent battling his wife's cancer. He said that it would have been easy to feel like they were on a roller-coaster, since her progress was always tainted with periods of regress. But they chose instead to let their emotions be defined by the stability of God's presence and kindness -- and this is what Josh and I are choosing to do. We have no faith in diagnoses or predicted take-home dates, but we have all kinds of faith in the God whose timing is perfect."

"There is this very real part of my subconscious that is raining on my baby's homecoming parade ... what if it doesn't happen? Her healing has certainly not gone according to plan, so why get excited about a date if it might just get changed. I allowed this train of thought for a while ... indulged my pessimism by calling it 'realistic.'
Well, screw that. At the end of the day, I would much rather hang my hat on hope. I am not talking about a flighty, faithless kind of hope, but the bold and virtuous breed. I put my hope in God and in his Word, and I know that He has a wild, intricate and boundless love for my girl. And that doesn't change, no matter how long she is in the NICU.
So I am allowing myself to champion hope ... and to let the goofy grin spread across my face"

I can already see so many ways that God is using Phoenix's birth to prepare us for the adoption road ahead. Just another example of His kindness in molding us.

We have an amazing opportunity ahead to operate out of that kindness and His promise, and will keep updating you on the journey!