ANNOUNCING.....

Some of my readers might find this as old news and some might find it new but either way it is time to post that Ethan and I are expecting.

 


I realize that this is not the ultrasound you were expecting but we are not your typical expecting.  We are adopting!!!! 
When I was only 9 years old my mother decided to open up our home to foster children.  Ever since those sweet babies were in my home I have been forever changed.  That experience opened up my heart for adoption and I have often made comments to Ethan, "that I wanted to adopt".  After Elaina was born I started researchining adoption knowing Ethan was not thinking adoption was in our future.  I tucked those thoughts away in my heart and continued on with the life that we had been blessed with.  Over the next few months and years we discovered, our oldest daughter had a nerodevolpmental disorder called Rett Syndrome, we were blessed with two more children and struggled through job changes.  During this time I did not know if adoption was in our future but I kept praying.

After our fourth child, Leila was born I started praying more fervently about adoption and asked God that if this was not His will then please take this desire away from me.  Instead, God fueled my passion for adoption and the orphans and widows.  God changed my mind set about adoption and started molding my heart to see the orphans the way He sees them not the way Kara sees them.  I started to see my own adoption in God through Christ.  God worked on my heart, molding me and growing me closer to Him.  This also grew my passion for adoption for our family.  Still not knowing where Ethan was I knew that God would have to work in his heart as well.  I prayed and God answered again in ways that only God can.  I saw Ethan starting to struggle and wrestle with God over adoption for our family.  After praying together and asking close friends to pray for us Ethan also felt that adoption was God's call to our family.  We are stepping out in faith to follow God what we believe is God's will for our life.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

Over the past year we have come to realize that we were being prepared and asked to live a radical life.  Though God doesn't ask everyone to adopt He does command us to take care of those less fortunate and in trying to live an obedient life we prayed and said how does God want us to respond to the widows and orphans in this world?  It was this question that led us to start seeing adoption as a perfect picture of how our heavenly father adopted us into His eternal family through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus.  We "want our very lives...to serve as His signature to all mandkind so that all may know His work," Job 37:7.  Adoption is providing a way for us to spread the gospel, minister to the less fortunate and show the love of Christ.  We have decided to follow our Heavenly Father through growing our family through adoption as well as journeying through an experience and trusting that we will grow in our relationship with Christ and bring Him all the glory.