Our Adoption Story in a Nutshell

A Facebook page I like, the Archibald Project, posted a question: "At what point in your life did you decide to adopt? What were the reasons?! We want to hear from YOU!"  

Well, surprise, surprise, my answer was a bit long for a comment on a Facebook page (though I posted it anyway), so I thought I would post it here since it's our adoption story in a nutshell.  I'm still working on the longer version, but that may take a while.

As a child, I loved babies and younger children and knew lots of adopted kids, so it was pretty normal.  I also used to love the book, The Family Nobody Wanted, about a family who kept themselves opened to helping kids and ended up with a dozen or more.  So I think I was always opened to the idea.  My husband isn't really a kid person, but he's a theological one and knows that God loves adoption so we had talked about it as something we wanted to do.  However, we are from two different countries and living in a third so we didn't think it would be something for this period in our lives.  A pastor we know with four kids wasn't pursuing adoption, but his family said "yes" when asked and I always said it would be nice if that happened to us -- someone just said, "Here's a baby that needs a home.  How about you?" without all the paperwork and agencies, etc.  Low and behold, my husband preached a sermon on Ephesians 1 in our tiny English speaking church (in Taiwan).  In it, he mentioned our desire to adopt "one day," and a Taiwanese friend who visits from time to time came up to him after the service and said, "I know a baby."  He then came up to me with the same news -- and called the grandma and told her about us and called us back and said she wanted to meet us if we were interested.  And ... less than a month after that sermon, our "first born" came into our family at 4 months old (though two years later we are only finished one out of three countries' worth of paperwork).  So, maybe it was decided back a long time ago or maybe it was decided a week before we became parents and actually went through with it.  I'm not sure.  I do know we'd love to adopt again some day, though with a two-year-old, a one-year-old, and another on his way and an international move within the next year, maybe we'll wait it out a bit.