Adoption, it's personal.

From A Treasury of Adoption Miracles by Karen Kingsbury...

There's a story often told of a particularly rough storm that came up one night and left a sandy beach strewn with starfish. The next morning a child walked along the shore, stopping every few feet to pick up a starfish and fling it back into the sea. An old man watched the child and finally shouted at him, "Why bother, son? There are too many starfish to make a difference!" With that, the boy picked up another starfish and looked at it intently before heaving it out to sea. Then turning to the old man, he said, "It makes a difference to that one."

I love that story! Adoption is personal. It makes all the difference in the life of the child you adopt and that child in turn makes all the difference in your family. Can you believe the boy pictured below happily swinging wasn't always a part of our family? He was always meant to be, though. God uses more than one method to make a family and I'm so grateful that our American Boy is part of ours.


Some fun facts about our adoption miracle to help make our story personal to you.

1. He is an adoring big brother. Having Baby Lu made me fall even more in love with him since it brought out this tender, caring side of him. He is so precious with his baby sister!

2. My kids call seats when running to the car. Not wanting to miss out on the fun our American Boy always yells out at the top of his lungs, "I CALL MY BOO-STER!" He feels quite good about himself that he gets it every time!

3. Even though he's only 3, or maybe because of his age, he's always the first to remind us if we've forgotten to pray. He also makes it impossible for us to forget family worship. Currently his favorite hymn is "Nothin' but the Blood".

4. Everyone else in our family wants another baby girl (except Big D who would be happy to be through having kids:), but our sweet boy says he's praying for a baby boy. Lately he's been saying he wants a baby boy from Kazakhstan. When I tell him we'll pray about it, he says, "Yeah, right now," and insists we pray right then and there.

5. He's named for his grandfather, my dad. I've always wanted him to know this so we've rehearsed his name (all four of them) a couple of times a day since he's been with us. I decided to test him a few months ago to see if he knew he was named for his grandfather, so I asked him what his name was. He told me. Then I asked him what his grandfather's name was. He told me and his face lit up as he made the connection, "AFTER ME!!" he yelled with glee.

6. He never leaves ANY food on his plate.

7. He loves taking walks with his baby sister right next to him.

8. He's extrememly talkative. So much so that I've recently started encouraging him to take time out to listen for a little while. That usually lasts about 2 seconds until he thinks of something else to say.

9. He overheard the girls talking about marriage and announced that he's going to marry Ella, a 2 year old at our church. He seems to know what he wants. We did have to tell him that he's not allowed to kiss Ella (it was cute the first time, but not so much after a while).

10. Until just recently he was afraid to swing.