A Question of Adoption
April 7, 2008
Written by: Katie
Please feed my need for information.
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The daily musings of a mom of 12 as she strives to train, educate, feed and love her children well. Join us on our journey.
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April 7th, 2008 at 8:00 am
We got into foster care with a long off idea of maybe adopting if God allowed it to happen. We really didn’t anticipate our first placement would lead to adoption. Granted its taken us 2 1/2 years to get to this point, but we are currently trying to adopt the 3 of them. We also have another child and possbily here sibling that we are moving forward on adoption with. Termination of Parental Rights trial will be held next week on the older, if that goes through, they will start proceedings on the baby. So within the next year we could adopt 3-6 kids!
We are happy that our path has brought us to where we are and see God’s fingerprints over everything.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I’ve always been interested in adoption ever since I became best friends with a girl in my first grade class who was adopted. And of course my Momma heart wants to provide love and a home to hurting children. I just can’t imagine children being abused and abandoned by their “parents”. It breaks my heart and makes me angry at the same time.
I don’t feel a strong pull from God on this though and truthfully haven’t really prayed about it. I know my husband isn’t interested at all. He’s happy with the two we have and doesn’t want any more. :(
I voted that I’ve wanted to adopt but the time wasn’t right because it best fit my feelings. If I knew dh was for it I’d be so praying about it and pursuing at God’s leading.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:29 am
$$ was a big issue for us….
We did take some classes thru a local Christian Foster Care agency—but then found out we were preg (high risk) and still have the papers (filled out) but again are preggo—(2 in less than 12 months)
I do think this will be in our future (foster care)— not really sure about adoption–as the costs are $$$$$$!!!
PS: We are doing some bedroom re-thinking— where to put 2 babies and 2 children in a 3 bedroom house (the one bedroom is the size of a LARGE closet)….how do you do bedrooms, sharing???? How do you fit in dressers etc…. How do you label or store things…. I am really hoping and praying for a large family– but not sure the logistics of some of these SIMPLE things— INQUIRING MINDS would LOVE TO KNOW!!!
April 7th, 2008 at 8:51 am
There is no answer that adequately describes my passion for adoption. I had to answer ‘I’ve wanted to adopt but the time was not right’, simply because I am 15. I know it is my calling to adopt at least one child in my lifetime. God has actually placed it on my heart from a very early age. I know it is going to be huge, hard, expensive, and emotionally draining, but those children have the ability to make me cry, just thinking, and though emotions aren’t enough, they certainly mean something.
My future husband will have to understand this passion before we marry. :)
April 7th, 2008 at 9:35 am
I’m no longer obsessed with having more babies or adopting. I know that we will have more children. I don’t know how we will, but I trust God and His timing. I may be meant to have teens and toddlers. I am okay with that. I have no career ambitions beyond raising Godly children. I have a feeling being in ministry full time God will bring children who need homes into our lives. When it is God’s will everything falls into place. I don’t want to force anything to happen. I am enjoying the ones I have now and am praying for God to have our hearts and minds ready for when the time comes to receive more.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:38 am
We have adopted 6 (4cases) through foster care. We have have 3 cases now. 2 have been TPR’d, just waiting for the baby’s TPR and we can hopefully move forward on all of them. This will make our total 10…
I am not sure after 7 years of foster care and the system we will continue to go through this process again. The stress of it all is…well you all know!
I am unsure we could finance a private adoption at this time, but would like to for the future. I love taking care of foster kids, it is all of the other stuff I do not like.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Katie, If I had the money I would adopt in a minute!!!!
Shannon and I have SUCH a desire for more children. I know if God ever allowed we would have more by adoption or by birth.
So I didn’t vote, because I would adopt if I could.
There’s my vote! :)
Love,
Chas
April 7th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I don’t think any of the statements describe my feelings accurately. I love the idea of adoption (except for the screwed up, frustrating system in our country). Dh and I both would be very open to it in the future if the Lord opened that door. I picked option 3 as the closest one, but I wouldn’t say we definitely WANTED to adopt, just that we’ve talked about the possibility in the future and are open to it.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I have very much wanted to adopt since I was very young. My husband is somewhat open to it, but since God has seen fit to give us a lot of kids the “normal” way, (I’m expecting #9, and my oldest is 9) he thinks that either we aren’t meant to adopt, or that it will have to wait until later.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:22 am
My DH and I were foster parents for 11 years. We adopted our first FC case - 3 bio-sibs that were newborn, 9 mo. and 26 mos. at placement. Then we waited and fostered one child after another for the next nine years that we fell in love with and had to return to questionable circumstances. I thought I was going to completely fall apart having my heart ripped out time after time, but we kept doing it. Our last two cases were a sib group of 2 (3 and 4 at placement) and a single 8 mo. old, all of whose adoptions were completed 2 1/2 years ago. We turned in our license because after 11 years and 3 CPS investigations over silly, silly allegations, we were sick of the system. We’ve been contacted about the baby sister of the 8 mo. old (now 4 yo) we adopted, only to have the workers change their minds and place the baby with relatives (he is bi-racial, she is white - NOW the relatives want to step in?). We’ve also been contacted about a sib group of 3 older sibs (twins 10 and one 11) after the foster parents declined to adopt (after 2 years of fostering them) and as soon as we committed to them, the foster parents changed their minds. I am completely open to adopting again, but will not foster again, it’s too hard on my already adopted kids. They want to keep everyone who walks through the door and if it’s devastating for me to see them leave, I can’t imagine how they feel. I am constantly looking on AdoptUSKids and have found several larger sibling groups that I would take in a heartbeat. My DH is not interested in adopting again (he says NEVER, but I think if the right circumstance came along he might change his mind). The needs of the 6 we adopted are much more severe than we ever could have imagined when they were just babies. FASD, Bi-polar, a myriad of learning disabilities and one with RAD that is such a mystery to doctors, they just assume I must be doing something wrong with him because they can’t figure him out. I love all my kids dearly, but I have learned so much during the last 15 years that it seems a waste to just stop now and not put all of that good sense into adopting again. I really feel led to adopt.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I fit two of those! I have adopted in the past and would like to do it again and I am currently pursuing an adoption. Still waiting on Ukraine to cooperate!! :O) 20 days before our second set of documents expire. Grrrr….
April 7th, 2008 at 11:18 am
We are open to the idea. We think it is more of a future thing for us.
April 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
We have adopted 2 so far. The first was year old when he came home (out of Foster Care) and his baby sister (full sibling) followed a year later. I just wanted to let people know who are being held up by the cost of adoption… there are options! Here in Washington State, we have Antioch Adoptions (we worked with them for both of ours) who provides adoptions services for FREE to Christian families (no fees!) In other states (and here as well), YWAM has adoption ministires that do something very similar. Great organizations like these are making it possible for all families to make adoption a reality. And although working with the Foster System can be difficult at times, it’s another FREE option - the state reimburses your fees when the adoption is finalized, and quite often continues medical insurance and subsidy payments for the kids until they are 18! Adoption is SO possible if you’re committed to the process. Right now our home is too small, but we will adopt again, as soon as we can. Good luck to all of you!
April 7th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
We have two birth children and are currently fostering here in the UK. We await the day that God brings two more into our home who He means to never leave! Until that day, we continue to be His hands of love to these little ones in desperate need.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I’m somewhere between have adopted and wouldn’t again, and have adopted and would love to.
My 3 girls were adopted through foster care, and a big reason we aren’t foster/adopting more is because we feel it would impact our girls negatively.
So I would love to, but we won’t.
For those who are concerned about money, here in Texas it costs next to nothing to adopt through CPS. We were licensed through a private foster/adopt agency and our girls were placed through CPS. The state reimburses almost ALL expenses, including legal and travel fees.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I checked “Have a adopted and would love to again” and I should have also checked “Pursuing adoption”. The son we have fostered for a year and a half will be “placed” with us in adoption next month. See, I just forget that he isn’t our adopted son yet, becasue he is our son, and the Ministy has left us all alone to love and raise him how we want without much interference. Whoops.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
My husband & I offered to adopt a special needs baby (spina bifida) about 14 years ago, but the biological parents chose to abort the baby instead.
I would love to adopt, but my husband doesn’t want to right now. (We have 8 biological children at this time) I hope someday we can adopt. I have the desire, but my husband doesn’t.
We went to an Above Rubies family camp a few years ago & my children looked through the notebook that had photos of orphans from Liberia & they picked out quite a few babies & begged us to adopt. I’d love to adopt a bunch of orphans, but…God would have to change my hubby’s heart & “Make” it happen. We’ll see what God has in store….
April 7th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
You left out a few options:
- I am adopted and I wish I wasn’t
- I think adoption SUCKS and should be outlawed
- I adopted a child who would up to be a monster and had to be put away bnefore i killed him or he killed me
- I lost my child to adoption and have never gotten over the grief
April 7th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I honestly feel no calling to adopt. My husband doesn’t either, so even if I did we probably wouldn’t. If the Lord brought a child needing a home to my doorstep, I would take that child in. But I won’t voluntarily open my home to CPS, and I don’t have the money for any other means of adoption, *and* I kind of have my hands full already (because so many of mine are still small and in training).
I would have reservations about bringing an older child into my home (influences on the youngers), and I would also have reservations about setting a cut-off age under which I’d be willing to adopt. Both ideas leave me feeling uncomfortable, for some reason. I know if the Lord were in it, though, everything would be all right. I am open to the Lord’s leading.
I deeply admire and cheer on all my friends who are adoptive parents. I think they are more noble than I. Guess you know which one I picked, then. :)
April 7th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Money doesn’t need to be a factor…I am single and have no money or assets to speak of yet I have 6 children in my home. Three are adopted and I just visited a two year old girl tonight who will hopefully be my daughter very soon. Woo-hoo!!!! I love adoption!
April 8th, 2008 at 3:33 am
Uhm, Katie, you left out the option that says: We tried to adopt and went through endless classes & interviews with social workers. Then we did more paperwork and sent it off to a certain country in the Caribbean and paid an agency in excess of US $20, 000, but a certain orphanage went broke and we ended up with no kids? (And I’d still LOVE to adopt, but we live in Oz now, and the regs say we have too many kids here.)
April 8th, 2008 at 9:39 am
We adopted 3 years ago and 2 months ago suddenly decided to do it again. If you’d done this poll 3 months ago, I would have answered adopted and would never do it again. It’s not the adopting part–it’s that I hated my maternity leave. (My DH is a stay at home Dad because I have a PhD and he has a high school diploma. Plus, he’s an awesome DAD and I’m not as great a Mom as he is a Dad.) Anyway, I could suddenly see doing it again and so we started the process. I just can’t imagine having 12 like you do although when I was little (and up until about age 25) I always wanted as many kids as possible; I thought 1 or 2 was way too few!
We will likely do foster care in the future, as his family has done it for 2 generations. I have always held out the possibility of enlarging our family via adopting a child who we fostered. But I’m not sure if we’ll do it now. We also expect to adopt our sister–one of 3 who were adopted from foster care–when my MIL dies or is too old. She’s 63 and the kids at 13 and 4 and highly special needs (one is FAS with a developmental age of about 5, the other MD and other issues and expected to have about the same development). But she’s my sister, so not the same as adopting from other routes.
April 8th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I wouldn’t mind adopting at all - I know that if it is God’s will He will bring my husband around - my husband LOVES children (I’ve barely given birth before he starts praying for God to bless us again, lol!) he is simply afraid he couldn’t love an adopted child as much as his own (not that he wouldn’t love them but a different kind of love spooks him a little like it wouldn’t be fair to the child). Yet when we actually talk about it, I’m not sure he’s talking about “love” so much as “forgetting this child was adopted” and they aren’t the same thing. KWIM?
Anyways, I know it would only take very little for him to change his mind. Right now I am very content and I have trust that if it is to happen, God will arrange it. :)
April 8th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I would love to adopt, but God has not put that desire int DH’s heart.
Our finances are often strained as is, and he worries that another child would push us over the limit. If money were not an issue, I think he would be a lot more open to it.
April 9th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I have always been open to adoption, as I myself was adopted as a baby. Money is not the issue for us, my husband’s job is. Currently we are in the military and have moved every one to two years for the last 15 years. Once he retires it is something we plan to pursue.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:14 am
We are adopting our nephew. Had to become foster parents to get custody of him and once we went through the training we realized the desperate need for foster families. Currently we are only doing temporary emergency foster care though. Some day we would love to take on another long term foster to adopt.