Why?

Why is adoption soooo hard? Why is something so close to God's heart so difficult. I knew when we adopted Noah we were blessed, but I didn't know the full extent of it until I really got involved with adoptions. His was a dream. Weren't looking for a baby, had one fall in our laps, didn't even have a home study, brought him home, was finalized in 4 months! We only even knew he existed three weeks before he was in my arms in my home. But that was the last easy adoption story I had! But it is not just us. I have a dear friend who was our first family with AH. They waited THREE years....only to end up adopting a five year old little boy right here in our home town. But the wait was heart wrenching! And this was after they lost a little boy who lived with them three weeks before his parents came back to get him, and lost a baby intenationally because the birth mom wouldn't go to the Embassy appointment at the end of the process without being paid a bribe!

My friend Jody just got home yesterday with her twins, but the trip took her and her husband to the end of themselves and that was after they thought they were at the end of themselves for the wait.

You have thousands of families trying to rasie the money needed because they have the hear but not the dollars.

I have another friend who lost her girls in Haiti after traveling to meet them and waiting for months on end only to be told her family was already too big.

Another friend went to Ethiopia to pick up her twins on deaths door after losing one to death in Liberia, one to a family returning for him, and one in the foster system.

One of our AH families lost a baby in Guatemala to death.

We have a family who have had visas for a long time now and just need a clearance letter, but still their children sit waiting. All of our families are waiting on their court decrees. Their hearts ache for these children. Yet they have to wait. If only all of them understood how much I want those children in their arms! I looked at pictures last night of my trip to Liberia, and I had to put them away because it just made my heart hurt too much to know that there are children there wanting love and wonderful families here waiting to give it, but I can't do anything to get them together but pray and beg God to move the mountains!

My dear friend had a disruption after the agency lied about the magnitude of issues in the child they placed in their home. Just showed up on their door step and took the children, literally. Then they lost two to parents deciding to parent. Lost three to parents returning and taking them from an orphanage before getting to bring home the three they have now.

Another friend has been on this adoption journey for nearly four years and still waits for her children in Haiti. She has lost one to being lied to by the agency that she was working with domestically. She has lost more than I can count to women saying they were going to place their children but then changed their minds.

I have yet another friend on her way home from a trip to pick up babies that they were suppposed to take home at birth, but bmom changed her mind. Then 11 months later, she calls and says she can't parent and wants them to have them. Yet after a week in another state in the bmom's city, bmom has quit talking to them and the lawyer, so they are headed back home, empty arms and broken hearts!

These are just the stories of families who have crossed my path...families who are answering God's call to adopt. Many of them truly answering a call...they can have bio children, they just desire to follow God and have His heart for orphans and children! Yet it is soooo hard!

Every one says when you get to heaven you will forget about all the questions you wanted to ask. But if there is on that I could ask, it would be, why God, did you make adoption so hard?

.....Maybe it is because He is giving us a glimpse of how hard He fought for our adoption as His sons and daughters! To show us the value He places on us, that He would allow His son to suffer the ultimate suffering so that we could be in His family. Just maybe......