Hey everyone, I've got a special treat for you today. I asked Trent if he would do me the honor of writing a post to describe some of the reasons why we are taking this step into foster care instead of having biological children at this point in our life. This path for us didn't begin this summer when we decided to pursue it actively. It didn't begin a year and a half ago when we found ourselves discussing adoption for the first time. It began 27 years ago, when Trent was a child in need of a home and a loving family.
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When Anna asked me to guest blog for
this post, I wasn't exactly sure where to start. She gave me the
basic prompt, “Why not biological children?” Where do I start?
How do I get a complex decision like that on paper? Then I realized,
I should start from exactly where I started: my parents.
My mom and dad were forced into
adoption. After losing their first two biological children to
muscular dystrophy, they decided to adopt. Though they were more or
less forced, it doesn't change this fact: they chose to take a child
(who by the common idea of family is not theirs) and make him or her
their own. First, they adopted my sister, K'Lee. Take it from a
younger brother's standpoint, they had their hands full with her...
but they couldn't turn off the love they had in their heart. Three
years later, they adopted me at 6 months old.
I grew up knowing I was adopted. Some
people keep it a secret from their children, but all my life I knew
that I came to be part of this family in a way different than most
people. My parents went out searching for me and God placed me in
their arms. Not willing to be restricted by the normal means of
building a family, they reached out to two kids who really needed a
home... and gave us the best home we could have. Family was something that K'lee and I knew well. It may not have been formed in the normal way, but we knew we were loved... and we knew family. The idea to break
out of the norm and go a different route to build a family was
instilled in me for as long as I can remember.
Fast-forward 27 or so years. During
that time I've married my best friend and have found a faith that is
relevant and alive to me. Anna and I work side by side to help
further the Kingdom of God here... now... right next to us in Waco,
TX. When we started discussing how our family would be put together,
I never really felt all that excited about having biological children of my own.
It just never felt like what was right for us. Yet the day that we began to talk about adoption as a possibility, it just clicked. This is the right path for
us! This is what God was leading us to the whole time!
Looking at the world around us, Anna
and I see so much hurt and pain. We can look overseas at the
extreme poverty, starvation, and orphanage there. We looked right
out our door and realized there are children needing a home right in
our neighborhood. Without getting into a debate about which is more
important (because it's a dumb debate. Both are extremely important
needs in our world), we decided that our hearts lie in our local
community. We decided to look into adoption from here in the States.
Long story short, adoption has morphed
into Foster Care. We'd love to adopt through it, but we view Foster
Care as a way to work for the Kingdom here and now, and we'll let God
handle how our family comes together.
It's scary, yet exciting. It's
complex, yet one of the easiest decisions we've made. We don't know
what is ahead of us. We'll be leaning on all the loving people surrounding us in this process, but I
personally know we can do it. We'll follow the example of two Godly
people who looked outside the walls of their home, made drives from
a rural town to the huge city of Ft. Worth, sacrificed so much to
bring in two children who needed a home, and made a family.
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