A Talk That Changed Our Lives ... Forever!

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. The associate pastor at our church, Jason, gave his sermon (John 2:1-11) and it forever changed my life. In a sentence, it was about doing what God says, even if it doesn't make sense at the time. It may never...but to just do it. Pastor spoke of a very challenging adoption he was in the middle of from Haiti. I couldn't understand why my heart leaped inside my chest. As he continued speaking, I had a hard time fighting back the tears that were trying to escape. Tears of confusion, tears of unbridled emotion. Tears of "possibility for us". Subconsciously, I had been thinking about adopting for months now, but it never came to the forefront of my mind...until today!

During the sermon, I kept looking sideways at my husband to see if he was feeling the same way I was. He didn't appear to be moved. So as I took the day and the next week to allow this idea into my life, I would imagine what it would be like. How my (our) life would change. How right now, it's very comfortable. My life is on the way to being less stressful and just very lovely. And if you know anything about me, that doesn't sit well. It seems as though when life gets like that, I've got to shake it up somehow. My husband laughs at me all the time about what pops up in our life. I think what is really happening, is that I get things running smooth and ..... and then what? I believe that God has blessed us so. I believe that we've been obedient to what we believe He would have us do in all small and large things. It's not like one day we heard Him say, "Wills, you must adopt a child". Not like that. It's like, if we look back in our lives, we see the "breadcrumbs", the "God whispers" that I think could very well have been ignored. But we've had our eyes wide open to the possibilities of those "sign posts" being "God whispers". Does that make sense?

It's like our move a year ago from Southern California to Denver, Colorado. Everyone who knows me would NEVER have thought that I would decide to move from my happy little place, with happy little weather and unbelievable friends, my sister and my step dad....why the heck would I do that? Well.....God whispered. So we listened. We really moved to Denver by faith that the whisper was real. And that we couldn't see why we were doing it, and we may never, but we did it and see now. I find this hard to believe, really hard to believe, and harder to write, but here it goes. Our life here in Denver has become richer than it was back home. And I find that hard to write because right away, I think of my relationships that took decades to build. The experiences we have there. The ocean...why would I leave that?? My sister that I get closer to each time we meet. How could I leave that? But I know just as sure as I'm breathing right now, that had I not moved, the thought of adopting would not have entered my mind.

My husband and I have discussed how you can go to so many Bible Studies, hear so many scriptures at church and talk up a storm about the problems of the world.......until there comes a time to do something about it. So we shut up and took action....by discussing what we knew would end in us adopting a child from Africa. We chose Africa because it has such a deep meaning to us. We went there 3 years ago on a mission trip with our church and were forever changed. When we came home, we really did not want that feeling to leave or dissipate into nothingness...as if it didn't matter, cause it DID!

Shocking to me, however, was when my husband said, "Have you thought about more than one?" I thought he was trying to tell me not to get too crazy and think that later on we would do this again. So I said, no, of course not. I was still trying to see if he was okay with adopting a toddler and wondering if in the next 5 minutes he would freak out. Our life was just lovely the way it was. But he was going the other direction...he said, "If we adopted sisters, they would have each other." And it broke his heart to think of us adopting one little one and not having someone that she could relate to nearby. I almost burst with joy when I realized where he was going with this. I didn't skip a beat when I said, "Yes! We can do that." Not knowing how we would arrange where our boys would sleep or how we would use the one tiny bathroom for 4 kids now. Two of which would be girls and 2 would be dirty, careless boys with their clothes on the floor and a small sink and shower. Didn't matter...we would figure it out later.

So that is how we went from 2 kids to 4, and 1 adoption to 2. Is that a God whisper or a God "shout"! Go figure.