We are Adopting

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A little announcement about our adoption plans to grow our family of two.

I am so excited that our dreams are finally coming true & that I can officially announce that we have started the private adoption process!

However, we have NOT been in contact with a woman looking for an adoptive family for her child, but we are praying for her, the father, & our future baby girl.

We hope that soon (with your help) we will become connected & be able to grow our family of 2 & add a +1.

Although I have mentioned our passion for adoption a few times throughout the years, I thought I would share a little bit more about our journey to adoption.

Roger & I started talking about adoption when we began dating 10 years ago.

By the time we married 7 years ago we had formed the plan to adopt after our 3rd or 4th child.

Over the last 7 years of marriage, we went from wanting 4-5 children to wanting ~2 children (a whole other conversation for another day).

During this time our desire to adopt grew & we realized we were silly for thinking we needed to wait to adopt until after biological children.

Years ago I remember hearing that a childhood friend/neighbor had decided that they were going to adopt.

My first reaction was sadness because I thought maybe they couldn’t get pregnant. I then found out that they chose to adopt rather than take the traditional route of pregnancy to start their family.

I honestly didn’t understand why someone would choose to adopt first & only.

Since then I have had a 180-degree change of heart & understanding.

And I know that there are so many people who have asked me & my family (or have silently wondered), are they struggling with infertility?

While I greatly appreciate your concern, love, & prayers, I want you to know that we have not actively tried to grow our family the traditional way or dealt with miscarriages & now are considering adoption (not that there is anything wrong with that!); we are choosing adoption, not resorting to it.

We have decided that our hearts are set on adopting first & then we will see where God leads us next.

I’m not saying we won’t ever give the old-fashioned way of growing a family a try, but that is not where God is leading us right now.

And even though I am one of the biggest planners you will ever meet, these last 7 years of marriage has taught me to trust God with this journey, that His plan is better than our own.

We are choosing to adopt for so many reasons, too many to begin to discuss on here, but I will share a few of our favorite reasons for choosing to grow our family through adoption.

We want to love as God loves us. When you start seriously talking & praying about adoption you will quickly discover that the whole Bible is one big story of adoption.

I’ve had people tell me that we need to have “birth children” because adopting is just not the same as a “birth child.” And while obviously, the biological aspects are different, the concept of loving & raising a child of God is the same.

My husband is not my flesh & blood, but I have vowed before God to love him for eternity. We are spiritually of “one flesh.” And I will choose to honor my vow every day by choosing to love him as God loves him.

The same goes for adoption. I will choose to love any child in our home as God loves me, unconditionally.

We also know that there is a need that we can fill. We have been greatly blessed & we want to share those blessings with another child of God.

We had planned to adopt from China first, but you can’t start until both parents are 30, (which is still a couple of years off for me).

So we decided to put China on hold (for now) & start adopting domestically.

Plus private adoption is much less expensive ($5-10k) than through an agency (~$40k). And since we hope & pray we will be able to adopt again in the future, we decided that it just made sense to start with domestic adoption.

In lieu of asking for financial help in our adoption process, we would love to ask for your help in other 2 very specific ways, prayer & word of mouth.

With private adoption, it is up to the adoptees to find a mother who is making an adoption plan for her child.

I have heard countless stories of families being connected through word of mouth by friends of friends, social media, & even someone’s hairdresser.

For those interested in helping us spread the word:

1. Feel free to share this post or any of these pictures on social media. And if you want your friends & family to be able to share it on Facebook too, just make the post public (rather than private) so that your friends of friends can see & share it too.
2. Although the pictures/content of my other blog posts are owned by Domestically Blissful LLC & can not be legally distributed, this post is a special exception. You are more than welcome to download one of the pictures & even print it if you feel impressed to display the photo at your place of work or church.

If you are a mother or father making an adoption plan:
If you are a mother or father making an adoption plan for your child & have any questions or would like more information please feel free to reach out to us via our adoption attorney Michael Jennings at (423) 892-2006. He will help us get connected, & can also help answer any further questions you may have about the adoption process.

I truly believe that this online community will be the one to help us connect to our future baby girl.

And I want to thank you in advance, from the bottom of my heart, for your prayers, love, & support as we officially begin the adoption process!

I’d love to hear from you!
Feel free to comment below, email me, or tweet me on Twitter!

Want to connect on a more personal level!?
You can find me & Domestically Blissful on
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Bloglovin, & Pinterest!

With love, G

We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.
Psalm 33:20

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