We were accepted into our agency’s Ethiopia adoption program in December 2008. Soon after we received our acceptance, we filled out a supplemental application to be accepted into their waiting child program for Ethiopia. There are two different types of adoption in respect to international adoption. Healthy children are children who are under 5 years old and free from any medical or developmental conditions. Waiting Children are children who are over the age of 5, have special medical or developmental needs, or are part of a sibling group where one or more of the children match the criteria for waiting children. Waiting children are considered harder to place and less adoptable. Sometimes the only special need they have is their age. Many children over 5 are on waiting child lists and have no other medical or developmental special needs other than the fact that they are over five. And, it is fair to state here, sometimes children who are adopted as healthy children in fact have medical conditions that have gone undiagnosed or undetected. It is important to remember that cultural and medical standards are very different in developing countries. Do your research, and trust God.

We had been approved through the healthy child Ethiopia adoption process, so the next step was to also gain approval to adopt a child from the waiting child list. Why did we want approval to adopt from the waiting child list, knowing that these children are harder to place and come with special needs (some lifelong)? When we began talking about adoption, we felt the Lord placing on our hearts to be open to any child that He has for us. It was through many conversations, prayer, and reading God’s word that we knew God was calling us to more in our adoption. The Lord was gentle in leading us to this revelation, and He was sure to take us to a place where we were at peace with possibly having an adult child to raise. We knew that the Lord was at work when we found ourselves not fearful about bringing a child with special needs into our home, even if that meant they would be with us at home forever.

I can remember how the Lord walked me through the realization that we would be giving some pretty big things up in order to fold children with special needs into our family, things like freedom through retirement, freedom from financially supporting children, freedom to rest in retirement, travel…all the things that are so important to our society. It seems that as Americans, the pinnacle of our life is to make sure that we have set ourselves up for retirement. And, once we have arrived there, we have made it. Then, we have total freedom to do as we choose until we leave this earth. We knew that we would be giving all that up, until we realized that the only freedom that truly exists is to be living in God’s will for the rest of our lives. And, the bottom line for us was that we chose to serve Him. And, He was clearly calling us to serve Him through loving His orphans, specifically disabled orphans.

Please don’t think that this decision was made lightly. We had many conversations. We counted the cost. And, in the end, the cost was insignificant. Serving God, loving His orphans, living in His will, finding peace and joy in His commands