As a little girl, God planted the seeds of adoption in my heart. Since the age of 8, I've known it's how I'd grow my family. Thankfully I met a guy who wasn't scared off by me telling him my plans after just a few weeks of dating; this summer, we celebrated our 12 year anniversary. Yep, he's a brave one.
Our son Max joined our lives in June 2012 through domestic infant adoption. Max is our wild man who is always making us laugh. He has a vivid imagination and is always pretending to be something or someone -- recently, he's been mastering the moves to "Thriller" as his alter ego, Michael Jackson.
Little did we know on that day Max came home, at that moment there was a tiny, sick baby boy named Michael half a world away who also needed a mom and dad. Two days before the two year anniversary of becoming an orphan, Dan and I arrived in Uganda to meet Michael and petition the court to allow us to adopt him. Two months later, Michael and I joined Dan and Max in the US, finally a family of four. Michael has cerebral palsy quadriplegia, is mostly nonverbal, and is dependent in all activities, but he is the most joyous, beautiful little boy I’ve ever met. We are blessed to be his forever family.
The day after we finalized Michael’s adoption, we announced that God had placed special needs adoption on our hearts once again and in June 2016, we welcomed our daughter, Lorelai, home from China. There was much unknown about Lorelai when we committed to adopting her, but we knew in our hearts she was ours. Since coming home, she’s been diagnosed with cerebral palsy as well as deafness, a need we had originally said “no” to. We continue to be amazed with the ways that God stretches us out of our comfort zones and asks us to lean more and more on him.
In January 2017, we formally committed to our fourth child, a precious little girl with vision impairment from China, who we've named Charlie Joy. Charlie Joy came home in September 2017 and has been bringing us joy and laughter since. We're excited to celebrate her first birthday as a treasured daughter in December, when she turns 2.
We do not know what the future holds for our family and adoption, but we do know God has blessed us immeasurably with our precious children.
