Why Adoption? Why Now?

We've always thought of adoption as something good...something we should do at some point in our lives. But the morning never seems to come where you jump out of bed and exclaim, "Today is the day to start the adoption process!"

Then on April 27th, 2017, a life-changing morning came, but not what we expected. Anne's phone rang at 6:45am, and it was her dad.

"Anne, I don't know how to tell you this, but Mom died in her sleep last night."

Those moments, ingrained in our memories, will probably never fade. Anne screamed, dropped the phone, and dropped to her knees in shocked anguish.

We rushed out of the house, like we were caught in a blazing fire, grabbing the kids and the keys, and sped over to Anne's parents' house.

Mom had passed away suddenly in the middle of the night - there was no warning and nothing we could do.

The shock took a long time to wear off - at times it still hits us afresh. That morning changed our lives forever. Reality was shaken but not all for the bad.

In the past few months God had been really working on our hearts concerning adoption.

The "good idea" had now become a pressing notion we could not shake. So, we began praying and asking God if it is His will for us to adopt.

The Book of James tells us that when we ask God, we should do so expecting an answer. It's sort of funny but the answer God was beginning to give us after a few weeks of praying about adoption was, "Why are you still asking me ... as if you don't know that I've already answered 'yes'?"

God's "yes" turned into us talking with various people in our church family that are involved with adoption in one way or another. The more we talked about God's plan of adoption for our family, the more we knew we were absolutely being called to do so. Bible passages concerning adoption began jumping off the pages at us. We couldn't avoid it any longer. Life had become much more real with Anne's mom passing, and we knew we now had a mission from God to bring Eve home.