Thoughts on Adopting a Waiting Child

When my wife and I first discussed the idea of adopting a child on the waiting child list I have to admit I was a little nervous. With two girls in the family already, everything had to be considered and thought through including the living arrangements, cost of care, our ability to emotionally handle whatever circumstances might arise, and most importantly, could we give the child the chance in life they would truly need? Was God really asking us to consider this option? Were we just being impatient? The bottom line was we knew we wanted to grow our family via adoption and we also knew that if we had a biological child born with medical challenges it would not change anything. Every child deserves a family and deserves to be loved. Even so, we knew we had to be honest with ourselves and make sure that if we adopted a child on the waiting child list that it was truly because 1). We believed we could provide this particular child the kind of home he/she deserved and 2). That we had a sense in our hearts that this child was supposed to be “one of us”.

What helped us process these concerns, questions and considerations was meeting with our social worker to discuss the waiting child list. We worked through a medical condition worksheet that forced us to be real about what challenges we felt would work within our family. It was a very hard process because it went against every fiber of our being to say in a sense that “a child with this or that condition” could be cared for better by someone else. However, it helped us narrow down what conditions and circumstances we could give the proper love to. After our social worker left we had a total peace about what was in front of us and began looking almost daily at the waiting child listings. We knew it would be clear to us which child was supposed to be our child.

The day we saw our son for the first time on the webpage I literally broke down in tears as did my wife. She found him first and sent me an instant message at work. I logged in and she did not even have to point him out to me. As soon as I saw his face I knew which child she would direct me to. I saved an image of that webpage that day and still cherish it over two years later. Just four months later we traveled to Korea and brought him home and it has been truly amazing. He has taught us how to be more loving, less self-centered and the joy of life itself. He has a constant smile on his face and is known as “Mr. Smiley”.

Close friends are always telling us, “It’s like he was always a part of your family” or “I cannot imagine your family without him.”

He is a perfect fit for us and our lives would truly be incomplete without him.

Now we are praying about doing it again!

ChildLink Story about Our Little Quinny

Our son was featured in the recent ChildLink newsletter published by Dillon.

http://www.dillonadopt.com/PDFs/CL-archive/FINAL%20ChildLInk%20Newsletter%202-10%20REV.pdf

Great Adoption Resource

This is a great place to start in terms of learning all about adoption. We read this front to back more than once!