by Deana Wood

Every family embarks on a journey.  Many times the journey includes job changes, moving, and raising children.  But recently, our family began the journey to adoption.  I say recently….but that’s not exactly accurate.  

Actually, my husband, Tim, and I began our journey about 14 years ago, before we were even married.  While we were in college at Arkansas Tech University, we both volunteered for an at-risk children’s ministry where we were mentors for elementary-aged children.  We loved those children so much, that the little boy that Tim mentored became our ring bearer at our wedding.  However, every day we would drop “our kids” off, look at each other, and say, “Can’t we just take them home with us?”  

A few years passed, we married, graduated college with degrees in Early Childhood Education, and we both began teaching elementary school.  Each year, we would have one or two students who just broke our hearts, and again, we would find ourselves asking each other, “Can’t we just take them home with us?”

A few years later, we actually began having our own biological children to take home.  Three of them, to be exact, and they were (and still are!) absolutely beautiful. In 2008, my husband was deployed to Iraq with the National Guard, which left a four-year gap in age between our oldest and middle children.  When my oldest child, Isaac, was in the first grade, we made the decision to home school, and it was a great decision.  We spent large portions of our days reading great literature.  It was through the biographies of the great missionaries, George Muller and Gladys Aylward, that the desire to adopt stopped being a dream just for my husband and I and began being a dream for our family.  I vividly remember the day my 7-year-old son and I were discussing George Muller.  I was commenting about how amazing it was that he was able to make such a difference among the orphans in Bristol, and I asked, “Do you think we could ever adopt a child?”  And he replied with a chuckle, “No way, Mom, that’s just for people like George Muller!”  To which I replied, “Well, why can’t we be like George Muller?”   I could see the beginning of the wheels turning in his mind.  Over the next year, our three kids were just as excited about adopting as we were.  But still, we weren’t sure it was time.  It just wasn’t right yet.  

As the weeks wore on, I began to feel more and more uneasy.  When I counted my kids as they boarded the van (yes, I count them!), I began counting four instead of three.  I constantly felt like I was missing someone.  Our six-person dinner table seemed unnatural with the one empty seat.  The four year gap between my oldest and middle child seemed to expand to ten years.  Then, although I never miss sleep if I can help it, I would lie awake at night and think about the child that was out there who needed me to be their mother. Once, we visited Tim’s cousin, also an adoptive mother, for her perspective on adoption and when she knew it was time to move forward.  She said it was when she couldn’t sleep because she felt she was missing a child.  As we sat on her couch and spilled out our heart to her, the tears began to flow from my eyes, and I was powerless to stop them.  I began to realize that it was either time to move forward or I was losing my mind!   

Then, one Sunday morning, and my husband and I were sitting in church behind a family who had recently adopted a precious little baby.  I had stared at that baby the whole service.  At the very end of the service, my pastor said, “I don’t know why I’m saying this, but if you’ve ever thought about adoption, keep that alive in your heart.  Don’t let it go.”  That was all we needed.  When we got in the car after church that morning, I looked over, and said, “Tim, I think it’s time,” and he said, “Oh yeah, I know it is.”  

Within a couple of weeks we went to our first adoption meeting with The CALL.  Now, you’ve heard the horror stories about paperwork and adoption…well, it’s all true!  The paperwork is endless and frustrating at times, but I quickly realized that the paperwork of an adoption is much like the pregnancy leading up to birth.  You anticipate, you are emotional about everything, you begin hoarding items that you think your new child might just need, you clean, you begin to imagine how this child will rock your world, you eat too much.  Wait, what?  

It took almost a year from that point to get all the paperwork done, all the visits completed, and all the training finished.  We thought it would never happen.  But just a few weeks after we got all our paperwork in, we got a call.  We had been matched.  Then the whirlwind began.  Within a few days, I had a little 7 year old boy in my home calling me Mom.  Those first few weeks were hard, and when I say hard, I mean they were brutal.  Our family went through two rounds of the stomach bug in that first month and I spent the month sick with a sinus infection that would not heal.  Within a couple of weeks, I felt depressed.  My expectations for being his perfect family went down the drain with the first round of sickness.  It was a long four weeks of depression like I’ve never felt before.  It took a while for me to realize that my dreams of being his perfect family were totally unrealistic, and it wasn’t until I decided to let go and trust God that I began to see daylight and experience joy again.  At that point, I was able to begin bonding with my new son, and what a gift that has been!

There have been hard times of walking through hurt with our little guy, but then, there have been some amazing times of victory that we have shared.  We have taken this journey together, all six of us.  I know how cliché this sounds, but I wouldn’t change it for anything.  I would take this journey again and again and again because everything that our family was missing…we have found in this little boy.  He has brought this life and energy into our family that we desperately needed.   

Adoption is a journey unlike any other that you will ever do in your life.  It is a journey that you cannot prepare enough for, you can’t perfectly plan it all out, and it will stretch you to every emotional extreme that you can experience.  So why do I encourage you to takethis journey?  Because although there will never be a perfect time for you to adopt, there also is never a perfect time for a child to lose their home.  They did not ask to be a ward of the state with no one calling them family, and I promise, they didn’t deserve it.  

A child doesn’t need someone who is perfect.  He needs someone who is willing.  Someone willing to hang in there for as long as it takes for him to realize that he’s worth loving.  He needs someone who is willing to grieve with him for what he’s lost.  He needs someone who will be totally honest with him so that he will learn to trust again.  He needs someone willing to see that they needed him too, someone to take the journey with him.

Right now in Arkansas, hundreds of children are waiting for a forever family.  They are waiting for the chance to “come home” for good.  So, what I will leave you with are the words that my pastor spoke that Sunday that changed our life.  If you’ve ever thought about adoption, keep that thought alive.  Keep it in your heart.  Don’t let it go.   And when the time is right for your family, take the journey.  

To find out more about adoption in Arkansas, visit The CALL and The Arkansas Heart Gallery

Deana is a homeschooling mom of four.  She loves reading, bird watching, porch-sitting, and writing.  Her blog is Redeeming the Days where she writes about adoption, homeschooling, children’s ministry, and her faith.