What About Africa?

"I thought you were adopting from Africa."  Yep.  So did we.  But here's the thing about adoption (and life in general)-it's unpredictable.  Even when you think you know what's going to happen, you don't.  There have been many many times when I was absolutely confident beyond a shadow of a doubt about something and then that something did not happen.  Surprisingly enough, God's plans are often way different than mine.

For instance, back when I was in high school, I was absolutely certain that one day I'd adopt from China. That certainty continued through college and as I started graduate school, planning to head to China to work in an orphanage.  I read books about the orphan crisis there and I wrote research papers about it.  I was certain that one day I would go there and help orphans.  Fast forward to the day that Josh and I began talking more seriously about when to adopt-it seemed pretty clear to us that God was leading us to adopt from Rwanda and not from China.  (We didn't meet all of China's requirements.)  Fast forward a couple of months; the country of Rwanda closed its doors to international adoption.  (Pretty clear that God doesn't want us to adopt from there right now.)  Fast forward a couple months later; we thought that Ethiopia was the place where our children were.  We learned about Ethiopia and dreamed about going there to add to our family.  Fast forward a couple more months and my thyroid continued (and continues) to be an issue.  It became pretty clear that travelling twice to a third world country to adopt wasn't in the best interest of our family given my health.  We went from China to Rwanda to Ethiopia and were left completely unsure of where God was actually calling us to adopt.

So when I hear, "I thought you were adopting from Africa" I can't help but shake my head.  That's what we thought, too. But God had other plans.

***This is the long version of why we switched from international to domestic adoption.  I'm planning to chop it up into several posts.