Pretty Piper

Hey sissy!

Someone asked us in the comments what got us interested in adopting, is it something we always knew we would do? The simple answer to that question is no, it's not something we ever envisioned doing. So how did we get here?

We believe it was God's plan all along for us, it just took us a little while to catch on.

Before we had our first child, who is now 6.5, we struggled with infertility and 2 very painful miscarriages. At that time we never discussed adoption, as we were just so focused on getting and staying pregnant. Finally Hunter came along and two years later, Ella.

My first memory of anything adoption related was when Ella was a little over 1 year old. I heard a couple telling their adoption story on the radio, though I don't remember any of the details, I remember being very touched by their story and for the first time, I remember thinking, "ok, I can see why someone might want to adopt".

At that point, it wasn't something I even really considered for us. Scott and I had never talked about it and I just assumed it wasn't something he would be interested in. Later that year, as Ella got closer to turning 2, we started talking about whether we thought a third child was in the future for our family. We both said that yes, we'd like to have another child, but I could not even imagine myself going through another pregnancy. My pregnancy with Ella was very hard, as I was contracting for the last 2 months of it every day, most of the day. In the back of my mind, I found myself thinking about adoption but was scared to say it aloud!

One day, out of the blue, Scott said "would you ever consider adopting?". My question back to him was, "would you???".

We decided to pray about it, and boy did we pray. I think we prayed more about this decision than anything else in our lives. We were at a time in our lives where we were very open anything God would have us do. We started researching different kinds of adoption, and after months of praying everyday and doing lots of research and talking to others that had adopted, we both felt very strongly that God was definitely leading us down this road.

Our hearts were broken for the little girls in China, who mostly because of the one child policy, were without families. As we read about the process for adoption from China, we both felt very strongly that this would be where our child would come from. In all our years of marriage, Scott and I have never been so united about a decision and each detail of that decision.

As we got more and more excited about adopting, I would make myself pray that if this was not what God wanted us to do, that he would put a roadblock in front of us. The process ended up taking a lot longer than we expected and my faith was tested all along the way. It took two years from the time we started collecting our paperwork until the time we a got a picture of Piper.

I keep a journal and entry after entry in those two years chronicle my hopes, dreams and fears concerning our adoption. I asked God over and over to confirm our decision and every time, He did in some way. All along He knew Piper and knew what a huge blessing He had in store for us. I could have never imagined the joy she would bring us. I could have never imagined how this experience would change us. I hope the next time He leads us somewhere, I will trust Him more and fret less. His ways and wisdom far, far surpass my understanding.