Adoption is a beautiful thing

Look at this beautiful family.

Without adoption, this family would not exist.

Adoption is usually not an easy road, for many, many reasons. Adoption is usually not the first thought of people who want a family. Adoption is misunderstood by too many. Adoption is often expensive, and heart-wrenching, and challenging.

But adoption is rewarding. It is so amazingly rewarding, and worth it, and wonderful!

It’s worth the heartache and the struggles, and I don’t mean for the children who find a forever family. Well, I don’t mean JUST for the children. I believe most adoptive parents will tell you that THEY are the ones who are blessed. THEY are the lucky ones.

Before Kenny and I even got married, we talked about building our family. I have always wanted to adopt, and I told him so early on. He was on board, as long as we could afford it. We didn’t know we’d be adopting our first child. We thought we’d have babies the way the majority of young couples have babies. But God had a different plan for us. He had a completely different plan for us!

Twice, He took us through the highs of finding out we were pregnant, only to walk us through the valley when we lost those babies before having the chance to meet them.  I asked God why. I cried, and I begged for an answer. I couldn’t understand the point. My heart was broken, and nothing made the loss OK.

But then, Kenny and I started talking about adoption. I have a friend who was working at an adoption agency, so I contacted her. We started the process, and 9 months later, we were holding our daughter.

9 months. Just like a pregnancy. The timing was perfect. God had a plan. The miscarriages were part of that plan. I will hold my babies in heaven, but God knew I was going to hold THIS baby on Earth.

I always thought I would love my adopted children just as I loved my biological children. I didn’t think there would be any difference. But there is a difference.

I do not love one more than the other. I love them equally, and with the same intensity.

But my love for Kennison grew differently than my love for Colton. It is very different to love someone whom you carry and protect from the beginning of their tiny form than it is to love someone before you’ve met them, felt them, and had them near to you. My love for Kennison includes the love I have for her birth mother, a woman who made an unfathomably difficult choice to give her daughter a different kind of life.

My love for Kennison is different than my love for Colton. Not more, and not less, but different. And that’s OK.

Adoption is a beautiful thing. It brings people together to love and protect each other. It strengthens and softens us at the same time. It stretches us to love in new ways, and to imagine a different life.

Without adoption, this family would not be possible.

Neither would this family.

***The above family is our friends Josh and Stephanie who just returned from California where they met and adopted their beautiful Ava Claire. More pictures of Ava are below, because who can resist pictures of precious babies?***