November is National Adoption Awareness Month

This will be the first year I'm going to take the month of November to write about adoption in honor adoption awareness month.  I follow many blogs that feature other adoptive and foster families and I have been inspired by the blogging community to express my thoughts and muses about adoption.   It's really fitting that this month brings awareness of adoption and foster care due to the increased amount of time I have been thinking about the adoption of my children.

I have spent the last 10 years of my life eating, breathing, and sleeping adoption.  At the age of 24 when my husband I learned that having biological kids was not going the way we planned we quickly started researching adoption.  We both felt that adoption was the way we were going to form our family.  At first it seemed like an insurmountable task.  How would we afford it was of course the first question.  Then there was the endless amount of information available on types of adoption: domestic, international, infant, special needs, sibling groups, and foster care.  Once you narrow that down you have to research agencies and or attorneys to help facilitate the process.  After finding the right path to travel down you enter into the land of non stop paperwork and once that's done you're on your way to receiving a referral of a child.  Easy right?

This process can take months and months for some people.  I was highly motivated, because we had done the unthinkable (didn't know that at the time) and found a baby on a photo listing before completing any of the other steps, and got together everything we needed to complete and international adoption in just under three months.  Our beautiful baby girl joined our family after a total of 5 months.  Adoption made it possible for me to be a mother, ten years ago I wondered if that was going to be possible.

We first met our daughter when she was 8 weeks old when we visited her in Guatemala.

Our daughter is almost eight and we have a 5 year old son who was also adopted from Guatemala.  They are the light of our lives, I couldn't have imagined more beautiful, funny, spunky, loving children if God had let me take the drivers seat myself.  I'm so glad he didn't.

Meeting our son for the first time when he was 8 weeks old.

Adoption today means something totally different then it did 10 years ago.  As we live our lives raising our children the impact of adoption is present everyday.  It has presented challenges I never dreamed of (although I should have,) and joys that have forever changed my heart.  I praise God everyday for allowing me to parent these two amazing children. Adoption isn't right for everyone but for us anything else would seem wrong.