Praying for Little A

Each day we pray for our Little A, the little girl, who Lord willing will join our family sometime in the next year and a half.  We do not know anything about her.  In fact, she may not even be born yet.  But, in our home her name is spoken on a regular basis.  Prayers are offered on her behalf and on behalf of her birth mom.  Prayers for safety, provision and good health.  As we decorated our Christmas tree this past weekend we wanted a visual reminder of Little A's presence in our hearts and home and so we have added this ornament to our tree.  Eleanor enjoyed picking it out and then insisted we buy a D,G, and E to add to our tree also.  We are all looking forward to a Christmas in the future when our Little A will be home with us and will get to put her first ornament on our tree.  We are coming Little A, we are coming!

Puzzle Update

Our puzzle fundraiser is going well.  So far 218 puzzle pieces have been sponsored.  I have never completed a 2000 piece puzzle before and I can tell you this one is going to be a challenge but it is so fun to see each piece added to this visual reminder of bringing our girl home!  Thank you to everyone who has sponsored a puzzle piece or pieces.  You are an important "piece" of our adoption journey!

What Are We Up To

Many people have asked in recent days how the adoption process is going.  The answer is, "it is going!"  We have spent the past month doing internet training through Adoption Learning Partners and collecting various paperwork (medical forms, financial forms, employment letters, and references) as part of our homestudy.  We have also started two fundraising projects.  You can learn about them here and here.  Daniel and I have been reading two books that have been quite helpful and would recommend them to anyone considering adoption.  They are Adopt Without Debt by Julie Gumm and Adopted For Life by Russell D. Moore.  Next week we will begin to obtain FBI clearances from all states of residence since the age of 18 and we have our first face to face interview with our caseworker on November 16th.  So, that is pretty much what we have been up to.  The process is long but we are slowly plugging away one step at a time toward our Little A.

Jonathan Edwards and Orphan Care

Jonathan Edwards (1703 - 1758), the famous American pastor and theologian, talked about the care of  orphans in a couple of sermons. He considered the care of orphans to be evidence of the success of the gospel in the world and a part of a divine history of redemption. He believed that acts of generosity were a vital path toward spiritual growth. He took particular note of the work of August Hermann Franke (1665-1727), a professor of theology, who helped to establish a major school for orphans in Saxony, Germany beginning in 1704. As well as the work of George Whitefield (1714-1770) in Georgia in establishing an orphanage.

See Jonathan Edwards, "Much in the Deeds of Charity" in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) and a sermon in his series called History of Redemption.

Why I Want to Adopt

Every child needs a family. There are children in the world who have no family to care for them. Just as every child needs food, shelter, and clothing, every child needs a family. I want to adopt because every child needs a family. Yes, it is also true that I want to expand my current family, and adoption is a way to fulfill that wish. Adoption, however, moves beyond family planning. Adoption is affirming the dignity and worth of children who are at risk of never knowing the love of a mother and a father. Adoption is about making a permanent and profound difference in the life of another human being who would otherwise exist at the margins of society at a tender stage of life. I want to adopt because every child needs a family, and Christians bear a special responsibility to care for orphans (James 1:27).

Russell Moore, a seminary dean and adoptive father, has urged Christians to become the first in line to support those who are led to adopt and to consider adopting themselves. Moore writes, "Adoption is not just about our couples who want children–or who want more children. Adoption is about an entire culture within our churches, a culture that sees adoption as part of our Great Commission mandate and as a sign of the gospel itself."  He also suggests that adoption and supporting those who adopt "can help us peer into the ancient mystery of our faith in Christ and can help us restore the fracturing unity and the atrophied mission of our congregations." He asks his readers, "What if Christians were known, once again, as the people who take in orphans and make them beloved sons and daughters?" (Adopted for Life, 18-20) Click here to read one of Moore's articles on adoption.

I think Moore is getting at something that may sometimes be missed in everyday conversations about adoption.  If the message of the gospel, which we celebrate, is a story of a people who have been brought near to God, into the household, to be called adopted sons and daughters of God then should we not celebrate adoption of children who have no father and mother? Instead it is viewed primarily as a means for a man and a woman to become a father and a mother rather than a means for the fatherless to become a son and a daughter. If we believe that adoption in Christ ought to govern how we view the meaning of the adoption of children into our families, then adoption is about a child becoming a son or daughter before it is about a man or woman becoming a parent. God never became a father. He has always been the father of Jesus. So when we became his son or daughter, God does not become a father. Since this is so, adoption must be primarily about sonship (and daughterhood) rather than fatherhood.

This understanding of adoption is really rooted in a more basic understanding of life in Christ. The scriptures speak of being "salt and light" to bear "witness." These passages and others strike a chord that is central to the life of every Christian whether or not they are called to adoption. All of life ought to be governed by a sense of responsibility, purpose, and participation in light of the way in which God executes his design for redemption for His creation that is alienated from Him. One way that Jesus spoke of this design was the kingdom of heaven. Of course, we think of salvation as our entrance into this kingdom. However, when one becomes a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, one also becomes a resident alien in the kingdom of the world.

Paul says that we are ambassadors. That is, we are sent into foreign territory as representatives of the  priorities, values, and mission that are dictated by the character and command of our King. We labor not for our own profit but for the reward of seeing the values of the kingdom of heaven being made manifest in this world as a foretaste of beautiful things to come. All of life ought to governed by Spirit driven desire to see the beautiful display of God's character.

Christian adoption is one way that Christians are called to be Christ's ambassadors bearing witness to the character and command of God. Christian adoption is about redeeming those who are profoundly alienated from their family and their community and bearing witness to the love our of the Father who brought us into his household to call us sons and daughters when we too were alienated from Him.

Jigsaw Puzzle Fundraiser

We recently inquired of other families in the adoption process about successful fundraisers and were introduced to a unique and fun way to fund-raise.

We have bought a 2000 piece puzzle of Lijiang, China and we are asking friends and family members to sponsor puzzle pieces for $5 each.  We will then write the name of the person/family on the back of the piece/pieces.  When we have completed the puzzle we will glue it together and have it framed.  The puzzle will then hang in our home as a reminder to us and to our daughter of all those who helped us bring her home.  I am super excited about this fundraiser for a number of reasons. First, our family loves a good puzzle.  Eleanor really enjoys doing puzzles and this allows her to have a part in the process.  Second, this puzzle will be a visual reminder of those who helped us bring our little one home and third, it will be a great project to help us pass the time as we wait to bring Little A home.

If you would like to sponsor a puzzle piece you can -

* click on the donate button found in the right hand column of our blog and then leave a comment on this post so that we will know what names to add to the puzzle pieces
* mail us cash or a check with a note indicating what names you would like on the pieces
* give us the money the next time you see us

We will post pictures of the puzzle as it progresses and look forward to sharing a picture of the finished product hanging in our home in the months to come.

The Waiting

Life is full of waiting.  Waiting for the light to change, waiting in line at the grocery story, waiting in the car pool line, waiting for the doctor, waiting, waiting and more waiting.  A wise friend wrote these words to me yesterday, "waiting doesn't have to be learned - it has to be tolerated."  So true, my friends, so true.

Daniel and I have been in a place of waiting in the midst of a journey of trust.  A place of waiting that we never imagined.  A little over two years ago, Daniel and I began talking about expanding our family.  We figured it would take a few months but that in time we would once again be pregnant.  We began waiting.  The calendar pages turned and turned some more and we found ourselves still waiting.  Months passed and we finally found out we were pregnant only to lose that precious baby at just a little over 7 weeks.  We were raw.  An insensitive doctor calmly told me, "you are now part of the majority of childbearing women."  I did not want to be part of the majority, I wanted to be pregnant.  More time passed and we continued to wait.  After a little over a year of trying and waiting, along with a second loss, we decided to talk with my doctor.  In her opinion there was no concern since we had conceived naturally in the past but she suggested we begin a round of fertility meds and treatment.  Three cycles later we were still not pregnant and there were no answers.  My doctor then referred us to a fertility center and I underwent a battery of tests which all came back indicating we should have no difficulty conceiving a child.  Several more cycles of treatment followed and yet we found ourselves still waiting.  The waiting was and has been hard.  Each month brought with it a roller coaster of emotions.  We approached each cycle with great anticipation and ended each cycle trying to trust our Heavenly Father despite discouragement and disappointment. As we navigated the road of unexplained secondary infertility we continually found ourselves returning to adoption.  As we mentioned in our first post, adoption has always been a part of our family plan.  Not plan B, not "the next best thing," but 100% a part of the plan God has for our family.

So now the waiting continues but it has changed.  We are no longer waiting to conceive a child but we are waiting for the day that we will receive the photo of the child God has for our family.  We wait for phone calls from agencies, instructions as to next steps, appointments, referral, paperwork.  We wait and in the midst of the wait we trust.  It is not always easy but it is necessary and as my friend said, "waiting doesn't have to be learned - it has to be tolerated."

A New Chapter

Welcome to A Happy Road!

Our family has entered a new and exciting chapter in our lives and we would love to share it with you.

We have recently begun the adoption process to bring home a little one from China.   In recent days we submitted an application to our adoption agency, Holt International, and it has been accepted.

We are hoping to bring a child home from China. Why China? That's a great question! You may remember that we have a history with international orphan ministry in Guatemala (Click here to read about how Gloria and I met). Our first instinct would have been to focus on Guatemala; however, it is closed to international adoption right now. There were a number of reasons we settled on China, but mostly it just felt right. Adoption has always been a part of our family plan, and now it is becoming a reality. I can also tell you that Eleanor can't wait to be a big sister.

We wanted to share this news so that you can share in this joy with us and so that you can pray for us and for our future daughter or son. We would love to talk to you about the process. We are also inviting friends and family to consider contributing funds for the various fees involved in adopting a child.  We are currently doing a fundraiser through Just Love Coffee.  You can visit our site at justlovecoffee.com/cooleys and find out more.

We will update the blog as things progress.  Please check back often and thanks for joining us on this Happy Road!