Pages

Friday, May 14, 2010

8109 Miles



Kristy and I were married on March 1, 2003. Like most couples, we both came into our relationship with lots of thoughts and ideas and dreams about what and who we could be as a couple. From the very beginning, one of the things that we discussed often was our desire to one day adopt a child. We were so young at the time (and we still are), but individually we both shared a similar desire, a heart to one day be parents to a child who did not have parents.


It was not long into our marriage that we became pregnant with our first son. Micah was born in 2004.


Our second son, Jonah, was born in 2005.


Our third son, Nate, was born in 2007.


Our fourth son, Lucas, was born in 2008.


It’s not that we really had anything against 2006; we were just taking a little breather.


Though, we were incredibly busy having all of these little fellas (some of us were busy making, some busy having) we always kept our conversation about adoption going. We would discuss between pregnancies if the timing was right and each time the timing just didn’t feel quite right.


After Lucas was born, we picked the conversation up once again. Only this time, something felt different. We both sensed that we still wanted more children, but we also sensed that we might be done actually having children. For the past year or so, we have revisited the conversation about adopting a child, many, many times.


The desire has continued to grow and in January of 2010, we took the conversation from ‘should we one day adopt?’ to, ‘we should one day adopt.’


In March of 2010, Kristy and I took a trip to Austin, TX together with our 4 boys to spend about 8 days with some friends. While we were there, we experienced incredible bonding as a family and amazing time being fully engaged with one another and God. On that trip, I remember looking at Kristy one day and saying to her…


“We have our lives to live and love together. If there are dreams in our hearts that have been placed there by God, then we need to trust him and chase after those dreams. We can do anything that we want. We are deeply connected to God and we can trust the stuff inside of us.”


We came home, and decided that now is the time.


On April 28, 2010, we applied to adopt a baby girl from Ethiopia.


Today, our application was accepted. (This sentence should be read with a ridiculous amount of enthusiasm and excitement!)


We are choosing to adopt a child, because feel that God has given us a heart for more. It is true, with our track record, that we could probably have more natural, biological children; however, we know that there are millions of children around this amazing globe who do not have wonderful homes to grow up in and we would like to open our lives and share our love to make a lifelong difference in at least one of these children’s lives.


We have chosen international adoption because our hearts have been enlarged by the love of our incredible God - our God, who is a global God and has taught us so much over the years about his kingdom and his intense love for all people. At the same time, Kristy and I both have an unexplainable leaning towards Africa.


For those of you who are interested, we invite you to journey with us. We have created a new blog for this journey at http://www.jeansonneadoption.blogspot.com/.


Along the way, we would greatly appreciate all of your prayers. There are actually a few specific things that you could pray for:


Please pray for our daughter who, more than likely, has not yet been conceived.


Please pray for us and for the process. International adoption is a long and tedious process and there is a lot of red tape. Please pray that things go smoothly.


For various reasons, international adoption is incredibly expensive. We have a game plan in place, but would appreciate your prayers in this area.


Please pray for our daughter’s biological mother and father who will be placed in the position of having to put her up for adoption.


We are incredibly excited about this path and this journey and look forward to sharing it with you.


Thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers!


* 8109 miles is the distance from New Orleans, Louisiana to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.