Thinking Adoption

When I was a child I loved to play with dolls and play "babies". And when there wasn't a doll, I had imaginary babies. A friend and I use to pretend we had 8 children each … I always had a couple of sets of twins in my lot. As I grew up, my desire was to get married and have lots of babies. By the time I was a teenager I’d started spending weekends with a family from church who had 4 kids under 5. I was in my element, giving bottles, changing nappies … not really how most teenagers spend their weekends. I loved it, I felt like I was born for it. Anyone who knew me as a teenager, knows I used to talk about having my very own 7's rugby team.

If only it was as simple as getting married and having babies. 2 ½ years after our first child (Zac) was born, and a after a difficult journey with surgery, doctors, medications and the like we were given the diagnosis of "unexplained secondary infertility",Gutted!

It was heartbreaking.

It felt like the journey of a lifetime that would never end.

In the midst of the heartbreak and tears God began to speak to us about adoption. Looking back now, I see his hand in it all. Hindsight really is a wonderful thing.

I was in Palmy with Family, about halfway through last year, when someone who I admire and respect as a friend and parent asked me "Have you considered heading down the track of adoption?" In that one comment, something resonated in my spirit and I couldn't let it go. It was a thought that hounded me, so I prayed, "God, if this is your plan, you have to be the one to tell Brenton". It seems that God didn't think Brenton was the one who needed convincing. From that point on a series of events occurred pointing towards adoption.

Family members kept raising the idea of adoption, we’d get out DVDs – they’d have adoption themes running through them. Steve Dunne from the Jeremiah trust was guest speaker at youth councils. I wasn’t even there, but the youth came home raving about it and by some strange series of events I ended up on a phone conversation with him where he challenged me about adoption. I went to a women's conference where one of the key speakers spoke on Isaiah 54 (pretty sure that passage of scripture is compulsory for any women's conference, in my limited experience, it seems to make an appearance at least once!). She weaved the theme of adoption through her message and by the end of it my stomach was in knots, my heart was beating a million beats a second and the tears were flowing like a torrential downpour … God was speaking … again! It was like everywhere I turned there was a giant billboard with “ADOPT” written on it, plain as day!

Come November adoption was a frequent topic of conversation between Brenton and I. Brenton had a whole lot of questions and so we decided to attend an information evening through Child Youth and Family early December. At the end of the evening we both came away thinking this is something we could possibly do. We took the application papers away with us and decided to commit it to prayer over our summer holiday.

One of the key things that struck us at the adoption information evening was that last year in New Zealand there were around 50 adoptions (side note: There were 15,863 abortions in NZ in 2011). There are a few hundred people in the pool to adopt. So the chances of adopting in New Zealand are pretty minimal! With that in mind, by the end of our holiday, we thought “Why not? The chances of us actually adopting are next to none. Let’s send in our papers and see what happens. We will trust God with the outcome.”

So at the end of January this year, we posted our application papers with only close family knowing. Within a week of sending it off, we were approached by Evy's Birth Mum who asked us “Would you consider adopting Evy?” This is a young woman we know, who had no idea of the track we were heading down. Here begun our journey of adopting our precious, God-given daughter.

Our beautiful daughter on our first family outing

 I have no doubt of the hand of God in this situation. God is faithful and true.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." Jeremiah 29:11-13