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.