Change of heart?

I sent an e-mail to my mom to tell her we’d finally begun the process to adopt an international child. Knowing the desire God put on my heart many years earlier, she responded, “It’s about time!”

I couldn’t agree more with her. I dreamed of the day I’d meet my princess, my daughter, in El Salvador.

Soon after applying, though, we found out the process would actually take at least two full years, if not more. The El Salvador program was a new program, still in the works, with several test families still in their own process. The longer wait time didn’t bother us since it gave us more time to save money for all of the expenses involved. Expenses we couldn’t even fathom at the time.

Oh, did we have a lot to learn about international adoption! We didn’t have a clue. We took our time gathering all the necessary paperwork for our home study, the first step in a long, tedious, overwhelming process.

Several months passed while the piles of paperwork grew higher. We wrote our testimonies and our desires to adopt. We recorded every detail of our finances on paper. Several friends and family members answered questionnaires about us. Meanwhile we saved money like crazy to pay for this first step.

Finally, after about six months, we saved enough money to turn it all in to our agency. A social worker could now arrange our first of three required visits to complete our home study.

Throughout those six months, I researched the present orphan crisis in El Salvador, and I joined several online adoption groups. I wanted to know more about the process from others who either walked this road in the past or currently walked it with us. I loved reading everyone’s stories, their reasons for wanting to adopt and specifically why they chose El Salvador. They inspired me.

I soon connected closely with another member of the group and formed an instant bond with her. We shared several things in common, including our teaching experience in the bilingual/ESL field and our study-abroad experiences in college. We both desired to bring up bilingual children. Mike and I never desired to look into fertility options because we always felt called to adopt someday. She and her husband felt called to pursue adoption first before ever finding out if they could have biological children.

So thankful to find this friendship, we both encouraged and prayed for one another via e-mail. We never actually met because we lived on opposite sides of the country, but that instant connection grew into a friendship I still cherish to this day, several years later.

However, following the online group actually left me more discouraged every day. I quickly learned the program with El Salvador never truly established itself the way the agency hoped and expected. By reading online how other couples struggled and how long they’d already been in the program, I realized this process could last for years. Bitterness already took root among those who began their process more than two years earlier with still no progress in sight.

Did God truly call us to this program and this country? Did our child already await us there? These questions weighed heavily on my heart, but we continued to collect the necessary paperwork and funds to continue.

Our social worker soon contacted us to set up our first of three meetings with her. In two weeks, we’d meet up at a local coffee shop. Things progressed, despite my change of heart and the new uncertainties about this decision.

One morning during those two weeks, I spent a long morning alone with God out on my front porch. I cherish that luxury of time during the summer while my husband works and my son sleeps the morning away. Those questions burdened my heart and mind that morning as I tearfully poured out my concerns to God. I’d lost all sense of peace over this being His direction. Adopting a child from El Salvador looked more impossible every day. We felt so sure God led us to that specific agency and country, but I now felt almost foolish to even consider continuing in that direction.

“Father, if our child truly awaits us in El Salvador, then we will plunge ourselves into this process and pour out every penny necessary until you choose to unite us with her.” (We’d requested a girl between the ages of three and seven, close in age to David). “But if our child waits somewhere else, please show us.” I waited expectantly for more guidance.