Why "A Royal Lineage"

I have received a fair number of inquiries regarding the name of our blog. So here is my response.

There is an adoption theme throughout the whole Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. In the OT, Abraham is promised to be a great nation and it is his offspring that will become that great nation, Israel. They are referred to as the Children of God. Everyone who was not born into the Jewish faith was a called a gentile. To convert to Judaism, one had to be circumcised and was at that point no longer called a gentile.

Throughout the OT we also see prophecies and promises from God that HE will send a perfect King to rule over Israel and restore her to a place of perfect relationship with God. This King will be the Messiah.

Along comes Jesus, in the NT. He is perfectly sinless and is sacrificed as atonement for the sins of the world, thus making a way for gentiles to receive repentance and forgiveness for their sins. I grew up hearing this concept referred to as "being grafted in" as in vineyards or orchards, becoming part of the body of a different plant. The reality is that this is more of an OT concept that is continued in the NT through Jesus' ministry and sacrifice. But it was not until recently that I began to see this concept as adoption in its purest form.

Jesus is our King. When we accept Him as our King, we become part of the Royal Family. We become joint heirs in the Kingdom of God. So, in actuality we are adopted into the family of God. Our lives are changed for greatness, not our own greatness or because of who we are, but because of HIM and who HE is. We now have an inheritance that is everlasting and can know the Love of our Abba Father and our Creator.

Adoption has been perfectly modeled for us by our Heavenly Father and therefore we are compelled to model it in our earthly lives. Galatians 3:29

Our Home Study Experience

The home study is one step of many in the adoption process. It feels more like a necessary evil than a joy, but is necessary nonetheless. The process goes something like this. If you are adopting internationally you will have two agencies to work with, one in your state and one that works in the country you are adopting from. The agency in your state is called the "supervising agency" and  determines your eligibility to adopt. They are the gatekeepers so to speak. They also handle your post-adoption studies if you are required to have them.

The home study (HS) is a narrative written about you, telling about who you are, where you come from, where you work, how much money you make, why you want to adopt, your preparedness for adoption, etc. It feels like a total invasion of privacy but is no more invasive than applying for a mortgage. The HS is completed by a Social Worker by means of interviews and home visits. Then is translated into the lingua franca of the country you are adopting from. It must meet your states requirements as well as the requirements of the country you are adopting from. This is no easy task, especially for the SW.

Our first meetings with our SW were rough. She didn't know us and we didn't know her. We really resented her questions at first but after some time we began to realize that she was really the best for the job. She got us thinking in ways we had not before, encouraged us and challenged us where appropriate, and by the end of the whole process, we really came to appreciate her. God was in it from the beginning, calling us to do this, even the hard parts, and without Him we would have given up after the first meeting.

Several close friends who have adopted and also had served in the military likened the home study process to Basic Training. BT is not so much about where your physical breaking point is but more so about where your mental breaking point is. Do you have the mental stamina and resolve to keep on keeping on? These words rang so true for us in our HS process, as did the promises of our Savior, to never leave us nor forsake us, that He will never give us more than He has equipped us to handle, and that we can do all things through Him who strengthens us.

We are happy to be finished with our home study in only 5 meetings, and now just waiting for the home study to be written up, reviewed, and then certified, so it can be translated. What a relief to have that behind us. Now we can focus on our I600A and gathering all the documents we will need for our dossier. Once our I600A is approved and we get FBI fingerprinted, we can accept a referral!

You may ask... Is it worth it? Worth the money? The time? The stress? The social workers? The disruption? The scrutiny? I would ask you... What is the value you place on a life? A life that could be changed forever by love, family, hugs and kisses?

Jesus said, 'Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn't he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ Luke chapter 15 is one of my all-time favorites. In it we see a triptych of parables reminding us how far our Heavenly Father is willing to go to have us be in His loving care, abiding in Him. If He did that for me, the least I can do is follow His example. Our son or daughter is worth it!

800,000 Minus 1

Why adopt from the Democratic Republic of Congo?

When David and I were trying to decide which country to adopt from we began researching. We considered several regions of the world but continuously circled back to Africa. At one point we had even narrowed it down to a different African country. However, as we researched the DRC more and learned about the decades of conflict and the immense need there, the more we felt we needed to adopt from there.

To be honest, before researching this country, I had no idea of the atrocities and horror that has been taking place there for so many years. As I read about stories of children's mothers hiding them in the woods at night so that they wouldn't be found when rebels and other intruders came, and story after story of rape and torture, I couldn't help but cry for all of this suffering. As a mother, every time I read a story about a child who lost his/her family to war or sickness, or who had been forced to join the rebel army and kill their own family, I think of these stories being the stories of my little girl or my little boy, and again, I just want to weep. I wish we could fix this. I wish we could help these people and take away all of their pain, trauma and loss. But I can't. We can't. Not in its entirety at least. One thing we can do is help the children that have suffered and now do not have a mommy or daddy to hold or protect them.

An image that I think about often is a picture of a mother nursing her twin babies. Her breasts have no milk due to malnutrition and perhaps other illnesses. I cannot imagine not being able to provide for my babies like this. It makes me feel sick to think about it. I am sorry if any of you feel offended or that this picture is inappropriate. I feel it is time we are honest with ourselves about what is truly happening in our world. The media that so many rely on for world news is not reporting these things. Please read about the Congo and the stories of the Congolese and spread the word.  Pray about how you can help, and please consider helping us to help an orphan have a forever family.

Some DRC facts:

 In 2012, UNICEF estimated that 15% of the population in the Democratic Republic of Congo were orphans. That's 800,000 orphans! The decades of conflict in this country have left more than five million people dead, over a million displaced, and many more living in fear for their lives. This has been the deadliest war since World War II.  More than 90% have not been killed in combat, but have died and are dying from diseases that are both preventable and treatable (malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition) aggravated by displaced populations living in unsanitary and over-crowded conditions that lack access to shelter, water, food and medicine. Forty seven percent of these deaths have been children under five!

Learn more about the DRC.
Learn more about orphans in the DRC.

... and so it begins.

Our paperwork for our supervising agency here in Maine is complete and has been sent to our agency. Now starts the wait. Not the really hard one but one of the many little passing waiting periods that only give us a glimpse into the myriad of emotions we will feel when we begin the big wait for a referral. We signed many documents releasing information to our agency so they can better determine our eligibility to be adoptive parents. Now our agency will send out these documents and wait for the respective departments, agencies and offices to respond. Once all those responses come back, and if we are then found fit to adopt, we will be assigned a social worker and schedule a Homestudy.
Though we are not yet officially waiting for a referral, this wait is part of the whole adoption process and therefore is, for all intents and purposes, the wait for our children we have not met, who have been separated from us, and we are leveraging our lives and every penny we can scrape to rescue and to reunite them with us.
This is the first time in this journey that God has stirred in me a pining to get my children safely home. It is quite a strange thing to feel a longing for children I do not even know yet. All I can think about when I reflect on it is this... "My children are out there somewhere in an orphanage and are not receiving the love, comfort, care and attention that I can give them as their father." Maybe they are not even in the orphanage yet, maybe they are crying themselves to sleep out of pain from malaria in some slum after a long day with no food and a host of mistreatment.