Why Adopt First?

It is really funny how when we tell people that we are adopting, many people’s first question is: “but are you ever going to have children of your own?” or “can you not have your own kids?”

Some are bold enough to ask this to our face, and some have a roundabout way of asking by mentioning their friends’ infertility issues, or their own. At our NC yard sale this summer, we were cornered by a person who said that she and her husband thought about adopting when they had fertility issues, but “it all worked out” and they had 3 biological kids afterall. She told us to keep our heads up because we are young and “never know” what might happen.

Well, in case you are one of the wondering people- we decided to adopt first, because we want to adopt first. This isn’t a “plan B” or “pregnancy-didn’t-work-so-lets-just-get-a-baby” thing for us. (Please know that if infertility led you to adoption- I’m not judging that. I’m just saying this is how our story is happening.)

My husband and I are young, we’re in our early twenties and knew that we wanted to have kids when we were young. Prior to getting married we said we would start talking about starting a family when we’d been married a year. At our one year anniversary, we looked at each other and realized we didn’t want to get pregnant then. After watching some dear friends of ours begin and complete an international adoption, we knew that adoption was also something we wanted to do, and we wanted that to be a priority for our family.
We feel that adoption is a mirror of the gospel. We believe that we have been adopted into God’s family, through his mercy he made a way for our sinful selves to be made pure and holy through His perfect sacrifice. We now have a heritage that is eternal, not from our own doing but because God chose us to be his children. Adopting a child was a very tangible way for us to portray that same picture here on earth.

When the reality of that truth really took hold of us, we knew that we wanted to adopt now. Adoption is a long process, and we knew that we weren’t facing the same timeline as a pregnancy, which worked for our stage of life with my husband being in seminary. We knew that adoption takes a lot of commitment- time, money, and energy. At this point, being just the two of us, we can live very frugally without affecting other children as we save for our baby.

We have a lot of dreams for our future, and adoption was among the list of things that it would be “great” to do one day. When we realized that it was a matter of obedience to adopt, we knew that doing it now would be the only way to make sure it really did happen. We knew that once we had biological children it could be much harder to save, fundraise, or spend time on paperwork.

So getting back to the original question: “are you ever going to have your own kids?” Well, we 100% believe adopted children will be our “own” kids. We have dreams to adopt from other countries and/or domestically, and we also dream of biological children. The only thing we can plan for right now is our little Ethiopian baby that is waiting for us right now. When we think of being parents, we picture little brown cheeks and dark hair. We can’t wait to be parents and are so thankful that God has allowed our family to grow this way.