the power of the Gospel

The gospel redeems and saves and ratifies and purifies and welcomes and adopts.

The gospel is one of the largest reasons we want to adopt.

Because we have experienced the redemption and salvation and ratification and purification and welcome and adoption by the work of Jesus on the cross, our hearts will never be the same and we understand that it doesn't end here or today.

I've read a lot of secular literature on adoption lately. It's not bad or unhelpful or invalid, but it's missing the Gospel. It's missing a degree of hope and joy found in and through adoption. Joy and Hope characterize hearts rooted in the gospel and will get us through the difficult seasons adoption is sure to bring. Secular literature I've found doesn't speak to that (obviously) and the reader is left, often, discouraged and numb to the beautiful act of adoption.

Because God calls us his kids and Jesus is not ashamed to call us family in the gospel, adoption is possible and right and good, even in the face of neglect, abuse, family structures, challenges, financial burdens, jealousy, and secular opinion on the matters of birth order and twinning and a host of other conundrums.

The gospel is why we're adopting

The gospel is how we'll adopt

The gospel will get us through

The gospel will be seen increasingly in our family because of adoption

it will be SO hard. there will be SO many challenges. 

But, there's the Gospel.

twinning

An expression used to describe unrelated children in a family whose birth dates are less than 9 months apart.

benefits:

• you know that stage well.
• you have and are parenting a child that age already
• sharing toys and clothes (especially if the twin is the same sex/size)
• can be easier to bond
• built-in playmate
• helps the adopted child feel even more connected to the family
• helps the adopted child transition into school since their sibling is in their class and can help them navigate life as a 3/4/5 year old

fears:

• too much at once (don't I always say "how do they do it!?" of moms with twins, though primarily I mean in infancy)
• competitiveness
• potentially confusing for the biological child

Moments with Love, a new blog I found and adore, has a whole series of blogs with the label "twins" chronicling the adventure of their adopted African son and his "twin" sister, their biological daughter. Check it out!

Moments With Love HD from Dennis Michaelis on Vimeo.

birth order

I've been thinking a lot about birth order lately.
Lily and Oli are only 14.5 months apart, so the chances of us adopting a child (or children) between our two biological kids is slim to nil. Unless we "twinned" a kid, which I don't think we would. More on that later.
Some say interrupting the birth order of your biological children when adopting additional children is a no-no.

Your first born should be your first born, they say.
But that hardly solves the problem of the youngest.
What about the second/last born?
Their birth order is thrown out the window when you adopt children younger than your existing children, and that's supposed to be the solution to the "birth order predicament"?
Did I miss something or is that the exact same scenario, just with a different biological child?

When the time comes for us to adopt, we know a couple of things for certain.
We don't want to adopt a newborn baby.
We don't want or need to parent a child from birth for them to be part of our family and very much ours.
We are open and almost excited about the idea of adopting siblings.
The ideal age range would be between 18 months and 5 years.

But we aren't sure of birth order. If we adopted siblings, would we wait until both of those children were younger than our youngest? That could take a very long time since Oli is only 3 months old. Not that we want to adopt tomorrow, but we also don't want to wait 6 years.
Would we adopt siblings who were both older than Lily and Oli? That might make things harder to integrate.
Would we adopt siblings, one who is older than Lily, and the other younger than Oli?

What do you think?
Would you adopt a child or children older than your bio kids?
Or younger? Or do you even care? Or would you "twin" a kid (adopt one the same age as one of your bio kids)?

required reading...

I seriously feel that anyone who has the deep desire to be a parent should read this book.

I'm only a couple of chapters in and it is blessing my soul greatly. 

adoption in Quebec

We've decided to start the LONG research phase of our dream to one day adopt. Knowing how long the process will be once we officially begin, the goal is to start by the end of 2012. But right now we're mainly researching our hearts out and praying a lot. What does God have for us? What is his will for our family? Will we adopt? One or two kids? What age(s)? Local or International? Regular or Bank Mixte?

This is what we know so far:

In QC, the two local forms are regular and bank mixte. 

Regular is the adoption of a newborn or infant who is born in Quebec. Because abortion is so high here (the highest rate in North America, sadly), there are very few babies available through regular adoption (read: right from the hospital, Juno style). The wait to adopt a healthy Caucasian newborn is 4-8 years. Now, we don't desire to adopt a newborn or have any preference to race, but it's still a long time.

Bank Mixte is the adoption of a child who has been apprehended from an abusive family. This is less appealing to many because the child has "baggage" in the majority of cases. Children in Bank Mixte may have been physically or sexually abused or have health problems.  The wait time is considerably less (a week weeks- 24 months), especially if you're open minded about age, race, and health. The child starts off as your foster child until they are eligible for adoptability (if their birth parents have proven unfit for a period of 6 months or more), and once that occurs in 6 months or less the adoption can be finalized. 96% of Bank Mixte adoptions have come to this point, and only 4% of children don't end up with their adoptive parents, but the risk is still there - you can have a child who is, for all intents and purposes, yours, and they may not remain so.

Both forms of local adoption begin at the local Centre Youth, where you register for one of the adoptive programs (Regular or Mixte). I'm still not sure if you can register for both.

There are also two forms of international adoption - from other countries (there are 12 countries a Quebecer can adopt from), and from other provinces (like Ontario), but I'm not sure we'd go that route.

So now we pray. And pray and pray and pray.

Resources:

http://www.adoptiveparents.ca/pq_main.shtml

http://www.adoption.gouv.qc.ca/site/home.phtml

http://www.educaloi.qc.ca/en/loi/parents/154/