Sunday

It was amazingly gorgeous today. One of those types of days where you just sit in the sun and soak it all up. We had a friend's 60th birthday party to go to. We sat around while our two kids ran and played and had a blast. Someone commented how much that would change once we got our daughter from Africa. And it got me thinking. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about how different it will be when we add a third child to our family and go from 4 to 5. When you have children, you just accept the different life stages and what comes along with them. Right now, our kids pretty much function on their own. We still have to keep an eye on them, make sure they don't fall out of a tree or beat each other with sticks in the backyard. But we don't have to make sure the polly pocket pieces are off the floor, or even cover the outlets because they might try to stick something in them, or remember to close the door so they don't fall down the stairs into the basement. And, I will definitely admit, it is very nice to not have to worry about things like that. But there was also a 3 month old baby at this party. And looking at him made me melt. The truth is, we want another child, and we will take everything that goes with it. Up at all hours of the night, babies that can projectile vomit across the room (our daughter had amazing distance) crying, pooping, the whole shebang from baby on up. We have come across people who really wonder at our decision. They wonder at another baby, they wonder at Africa, and they question all sorts of things. I don't always have answers that make them happy. Some people just don't understand when you tell them that you know what is right for your family and that this is what God has planned for you. I find it amazing that when it comes to adoption, so many people that don't really know you have opinions that they think they really should share with you. I can't count the times that someone has asked me why not adopt from America, what is wrong with American babies? And my all time favorite, "Oh, you are going to be one of those multi-racial families". I used to try to explain our reasonings for adopting from Africa, and that we did try to adopt from our state, but that the agencies we contacted wouldn't take our application because we already had two children of our own. That we had gone to Uganda and were overwhelmed by the children that were orphaned in that country alone. I tried to tell them about an orphanage we visited where the kids only eat one meal a day because that is all the money the orphanage has. I tried to tell them about the children who had never been held, never been loved. The truth is, so often people didn't really care or want to hear our reasons for adopting from Africa. They only had an opinion about a choice we made and they wanted to tell us. I am trying to teach myself to let it roll right off of me. In reality, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of our decision to have another child in our lives. We firmly believe that our daughter will be the biggest gift from God. And we are beyond excited to have her in our life. We have so much love that we want to share. And we want another child. End of story. It is not always easy to ignore painful things that people say. Thank goodness for grace, because I certainly need it in my life, and I am trying to have that for others as well.