Many people, upon learning we are adopting a Chinese baby (well, toddler now) ask how we got to this point. What made us decide to adopt? I am always happy to answer these questions, because I'm still in awe that our paths have been guided in this direction.
Since jetlag is messing with me, and I show no signs of going back to sleep any time soon, I might as well share our story to adoption. I have been meaning to for some time now, but life has been crazy busy, plus there's been a lot of up and down moments throughout this journey, which is sometimes hard to relive while describing our amazing journey to this point of being 4 hours away from being reunited to my son, Mason.
FAQ- Did I always know I was going to adopt?
Not at all. I always had respect for the act of adoption and felt that was amazing way to form families, when a birth family experience would be a difficult life for the child. I do believe, when possible, that a child is usually better off with their birth families, but I also understand that there are circumstances when that is not the best case. From time to time throughout my almost 11 year marriage to my husband Chris, I would think about adoption, although not necessarily for our family. I just loved hearing about the miracles that took place and watching The Lord work his wonderful ways through adoption, and in fact, at one point in time I used to watch a TV show on TLC or Discovery Channel or something similar that was about families who adopted. I was very touched by these stories, but I still never really considered it for myself, but there was a certain thought every once in a while in my head that if we knew of a situation where an adoption was needed, maybe we could step up and help, but it was not something I would dwell on, and in fact, I don't think I've ever shared this with Chris, but the seed had been planted.
Okay, so fast forward to 2011...We had 3 beautiful bio children, and we were blessed to never have any fertility problems...In fact, quite the opposite. Our 3rd child was an IUD baby! We thought we were done at 2 daughters, but Heavenly Father had other plans for us. I really believe He has an awesome sense of humor, and I wonder what His thoughts were when we said we were done at two. "Oh yeah? You think you know what is in store for you? Just wait and see what I can do. Try doubling that!" When I look back and think about how life would be without our cutie IUD Zac, I just feel so grateful that The Lord had different plans for us, because I just can't imagine life without that little guy in our family! But anyways, back to 2011...no, I take that back...Let's go back further to 1982-ish. I was 4 years old when my family and I moved to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for my dad to work as a physicist at Aramco. We were there for 4 years, and that experience helped mold my life in such a wonderful way. I was immersed in a new culture at a impressionable age, and even though we lived on an American compound, life was very different than America. In fact, I remember that it took me quite some time to transition to life back in the States, and I kept mixing up which days of
the week begun the school week, begun the weekend, when church was, etc, because Friday is the
Holy Day in Arab countries. I was also used to their money system and had to relearn dollars and cents, etc. So I have heard that children who lived an expat life frequently become expats as adults. Alright, so let's fast-forward to 2011 when Chris' company asked us to move to Asia for Chris' job. We were asked to move somewhere in Asia for 3-5 years, and boy did I jump on that! We considered the different cities around Asia where we could live, and Shanghai ended up the most reasonable place at the time, because Chris was supposed to be focussing his work efforts mostly in China. It took us one day to say yes, but we both knew when we were first asked. I know my childhood experience overseas prepared me for this.
So June 2011 we land in China, and I remember looking out of the plane before we walked onto
China land and thinking, "What did we just do?" Well, that thought quickly changed as we almost
immediately loved the city, our new friends, church, the adventures, etc. We loved Shanghai!
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