How adoption has changed my family

I have to admit, I think my kids are pretty amazing. However, there are days when I stand in awe of them.

Adoption has always been on my heart. When I was a teenager, I felt God calling me to help orphans. At the time I thought that meant to open an orphanage in Kenya and love on all the kids in my orphanage. When I got married, I thought the dream of helping orphans was over. Little did I know, God was calling me to be a MOM to orphans, not just an Orphanage Director.

I also never expected this calling to take root in my kids, but it has! Adoption, whether it's more siblings, a dog, a horse, bunnies, anything, is how my children want it to be.

That desire is so strong within them that they are willing to go to extrewme measures to make it happen.

Last week my kids started concocting a plan to have a bake sale to raise money for special needs adoptions. Now, we live in the country so I was pretty doubtful that anyone would drive by and stop to buy a cookie. But, I never want to discourage them, so they started baking. We had a busy weekend planned and I didn't quite know how to implement the bake sale.

Well, every Saturday morning Mel and Matthew go to the local fishing spot for some "man time". When they came home, they still had a few minnows left. My husband, never wanting a good fishing opportunity pass him by, thought maybe they could go back later in the day and while he fished the kids could sell cookies to the hungry fishermen.

My awesome kids packed up those cookies and hit up every person there. When they came home, they had sold $5 in cookies and had six bags left over for us to eat. Now, I would have been discouraged to come home with cookies. Not my kids. They knew they gave it their all and God was pleased with their effort.

I asked who they wanted to donate the money to. Obvioulsy they know that we are fundraising for our Jessa and Mason, but it was never a requirement that they give to us. Without a pause, Matthew says, "Duncan". He is a teenage boy with CP that we really considered bringing home, but we didn't think we could get there fast enough. Our kids already consider him a long distance brother and wanted to help get him home fast.

So we donated my children's "widow's mite" to his family. Later, Matthew came up to me and said,"Mom, my heart feels really good about what we did."

My boy, all of heaven is smiling down on you. You make your mommy and daddy so proud!