Why Adoption? Why Ethiopia?

When my husband and I met (after both of us had been widowed), we already had three kids between us. We knew that we also wanted to share the experience of having babies together. We got pregnant, and I proceeded to have one heck of a nasty pregnancy. It ended up with the baby clinging to life in the NICU for almost three weeks, and me losing about half my blood volume. Not a pretty picture. We knew that we would not be traveling down that road again. We had always talked about having a 5th child, but felt at peace with our four after the trauma we had just experienced.

Two years later, God presented us with an interesting situation. Our dear friends, who suffer from infertility and had already adopted their first child, were looking to adopt again. One of my parents' oldest friends found out that their son and his girlfriend were pregnant. They were definitely interested in giving the baby up for adoption, and chose our friends to parent the child. It was an intense, stressful few months, but pure joy when we had the opportunity to travel to Colorado with them to get their new daughter. We all stayed at my parents' house together for about a week. It was really great to see those first bonding moments.

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A couple months later, we were sitting in church listening to one of our pastors speak about the months he had lived in Lesotho, Africa. In spite of the tragedy that we all know about in Africa, it was actually a pretty uplifting talk. He had slide after slide of beautiful scenery and pictures of happy kids. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I had a vision. God stood right in front of me and told me that I was to bring one of those children home. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I argued with Him. I have always been a big proponent for adoption, but not for my family. Why would we adopt when we already had four biological kids? God assured me that He did mean for adoption to become part of our family. I told Him that my plate was already full with the four kids I had. He told me that if I leaned on Him, there would always be "enough". How could I argue with that?

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Immediately following the service, I went looking for the pastor and the man from the orphanage in Lesotho. I was saddened to find out that Lesotho did not have international adoption laws in place. I was undeterred though. I mean, God had stood in front of me Himself to say that a child needed to come to our house. I figured I better do my part. After speaking with my husband about my vision, and finding out that he was definitely on the same page (huge relief), we went home to start researching. Once we confirmed that Lesotho was indeed not an option, we decided to seek out other options ion Africa. Ethiopia was a perfect fit for us, and our adoption journey officially began.

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I know we will adopt again. This is not the season for it, but it will be down the road. Going to Addis and seeing all the beautiful children touched our hearts and changed us deeply. I don't think either one of us would have considered an "older child" adoption before our trip. Now, the thought is never far from the front of our minds. We know that our family has some adjusting and growing to do before we will be ready to add a new member, but we have already committed to ourselves, our kids and our families that there will be another McC kid from Ethiopia someday.



...once our eyes are opened we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows that we know, and holds us responsible to act. (Proverbs 24:12)