Our Adoption Blessing

I've been posting this month on adoption in honor of November being National Adoption Awareness Month. Thus far I've mostly talked about general topics such as the theology of adoption, God's compassion for the fatherless, and the Christian's responsibility to care for orphans. But tonight I want to post specifically on the great joy that our 3 year old adoption blessing is to us.

I have a 10 year old son and a 3 year old son with girls in between. I've been working hard for several years to train my 10 year old to run ahead and open doors for me and the other kids. Well, our 3 year old has noticed this and he, too runs to get doors for us. The gym where my kids swim has two sets of heavy doors right in a row, so Monk usually gets the first and American Boy struggles to get the second. It's really adorable to see him pushing so hard to get that heavy door open. So last night American Boy also held the door for a man who was walking out behind us. On Wednesdays we go straight from swimming to church and my 3 year old is always excited to go to church, so he turned to the man and said, "I'm going to church. Are you going to church?" The man was kind of taken off guard and muttered something like, "Uh, no." Unphased my bold preschooler fired back with, "Well, I am!" Then just on the other side of the door stood a man taking a cigarette break. Our boy went right up to him as we walked by and said, "Hey, give me five!" The other kids really got a kick out of that. We've been going through The Way of the Master at church on Wednesdays and we decided God's going to use our zealous and bold guy to share the gospel with others. What a blessing to have him for a son!

I mentioned that our adoption blessing loves church- he's really learning about the Lord there and at Community Bible Study, too. His Sunday School teacher was bragging on him the other night that he can tell her what the lessons were about the previous two weeks. He is very attentive! Sunday during the sermon he was listening so carefully that when the preacher asked a rhetorical question, our boy yelled out the answer. Everyone chuckled. Our church remembers praying for our son before we even traveled to Kazakhstan to adopt him, so they've loved him a long time.

Lately he's been asking us to adopt another baby boy from Kazakhstan and I usually tell him that we'd like to do that someday and he should pray about it. He always responds with, "OK, right now, Mom. Let's pray." I haven't let his dad in on this, yet, so we'll have to see how God answers his prayers. Today I was a little unnerved that he asked for two baby boys from Kazakhstan! I corrected him right away that the Lord knows Mommy can only handle one baby at a time:)

Our adoption journey to bring our precious boy home had its share of emotional ups and downs. There was lots of fear on my part, but God had us in His hands the whole time. Big D and I didn't think it was right to pray that he'd be smart, so we didn't. We did pray, however, that he would have lots of personality, like our other kids. Oh boy. He has that in spades! God is so good! (And he's smart as a whip and so compassionate, too.) I want to encourage those of you who are interested in adopting, but fear of the unknown is holding you back. Take a risk. There might be someone missing in your family and you don't even realize it, yet.