God's Mission: Adoption

by Max Lucado

When we come to Christ, God not only forgives us, he also adopts us. Through a dramatic series of events, we go from condemned orphans with no hope to adopted children with no fear. Here is how it happens. You come before the judgment seat of God full of rebellion and mistakes. Because of his justice he cannot dismiss your sin, but because of his love he cannot dismiss you. So, in an act which stunned the heavens, he punished himself on the cross for your sins. God’s justice and love are equally honored. And you, God’s creation, are forgiven. But the story doesn’t end with God’s forgiveness.

For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our Spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:15–16 NASB).

But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons (Gal. 4:4–5 NASB).

It would be enough if God just cleansed your name, but he does more. He gives you his name. It would be enough if God just set you free, but he does more. He takes you home. He takes you home to the Great House of God.

Adoptive parents understand this more than anyone. I certainly don’t mean to offend any biological parents—I’m one myself. We biological parents know well the earnest longing to have a child. But in many cases our cribs were filled easily. We decided to have a child and a child came. In fact, sometimes the child came with no decision. I’ve heard of unplanned pregnancies, but I’ve never heard of an unplanned adoption.

That’s why adoptive parents understand God’s passion to adopt us. They know what it means to feel an empty space inside. They know what it means to hunt, to set out on a mission, and take responsibility for a child with a spotted past and a dubious future. If anybody understands God’s ardor for his children, it’s someone who has rescued an orphan from despair, for that is what God has done for us.

God has adopted you. God sought you, found you, signed the papers and took you home.

Staying the Course

Until recently we have relied on our agency and some friends for information about China adoption and the wait at hand. Now, however, we have discovered there are numerous forums on the web discussing this very thing. As a result, I (Lonnie) have learned more about our wait and where it's going.

We thought 23 months worth of waiting sounded like a long time. Turns out, it could be even longer. The "rumor" is that the wait could grow to three years and possibly even four. Yikes.

We have also found out that our agency will allow us to adopt in the meantime, some thing that was not allowed until these unusual circumstances arose. They gave us four countries that had turnaround times that would allow us to complete the adoption and have a year in between adoptions (a requirement).

We sat down at the computer one night and decided to review the countries and see which one might be the best. After an hour or so we stopped. The same kind of excitement and spirit we had for our China adoption just wasn't there and we don't want to adopt out of impatience.

Whenever we wait for anything, God works in us as we wait and prepares us for what we are going to receive. In the end, we end up better off than if we had what we wanted "today".

So, we prepare.

We Beat the Elephants

We just received the October update from our agency and the wait has now reached 23 months.

That is 23 months from March 2, 2007 for us. So that places our referral time around Feb 2009.

Prior to this announcement, the mammal with the longest gestation period was the elephant at 22 months. Now however, it is Lonnie and Nancy at 23 months!

We're #1! Yeah!

A girl?

One of the questions we get asked a lot is, 'how do you know you will be getting a girl'. Here is a little more background on why we will likely get a girl.

When it's time for us to receive a referral, a photo of a baby selected by the CCAA (Chinese Council of Adoption Affairs) will be sent to us. At that point, we will have a given amount of time to agree to adopt that child--of course we will. There is a >90% chance that she will be a girl. Why?

a) China has a one child law. You can have one child and that's it. It's to control their population.
b) There is no social security system in China, so boys are preferred over girls as they will work and support help support the family and support their parents in their elder years.
c) When girls marry, they leave their family origin and go to live with the husband and his family.

So, when families are trying for boys and have a girl and can't have any more kids, they abandon or abort the girls. The abandoned girls are left in public places, so they will be found and taken care of. From what we have read, it is an incredibly painful decision for the family, but one they feel forced to make.

We'll post another update as we hear more about the wait.

Update from Holt

On Friday, July 29, we went to a meeting in Omaha where we heard from Holt's Director of Services for their China Program. As you can imagine, she was asked a ton of questions about the length of the wait for referrals.

The gist of the answer on the long waiting period was this, at a meeting held in December 2006 the CCAA (Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs) announced that the number of dossiers received at the end of 2005 and through 2006 had increased over 200% from previous years. With this increase there are more dossiers for families than paper-ready children available for adoption, causing the wait time to increase. There are literally thousands of dossiers at the CCAA awaiting a referral and while there are undoubtedly enough children available in China, not all orphanages or children are registered with the CCAA for adoption. Unfortunately, there are extremely rural orphanages that lack the resources needed to register with the CCAA. The CCAA is working to register more orphanages; however, this is a lengthy and complicated process.

It is estimated that roughly 1/4 of the orphanages in China are registered with the CCAA, so you can imagine how many children are not being adopted and growing up in orphanages.

So, all that being said, there are a few glimmers of hope that the waiting period will a least stop expanding. Certainly, when new applicants see the length of the wait, they will choose another country--although it is common in the US to wait for 'years' as well. People may drop out of the process due to the wait and with the new requirements the CCAA has put into place, that too could lessen applicants and shorten the wait. However, we're not sure that will be before we're done.

We planned on waiting at least a year anyway, so we're not that wound up about it yet. Perhaps as we get toward the end of next year we'll start getting impatient, but I'm not going to 'plan' on being impatient. Guess what will happen then?

It's completely out of our control.

In the Beginning

Hello,

Welcome to our blog! This is where we will share with you our adoption journey. Ready to get started?

Here is a quick model of what the adoption journey is like: Get ready, get set, wait!

That's it. That's where we are. We're waiting...for the next year and a half (at least).

At the moment, we are estimating that we will not receive a referral until the winter of '08 or beginning of '09.

We are spending our waiting time learning about what it means to have an adopted child, a bi-racial family, and praying for our future baby (most likely a girl) and the Chinese family who will be choosing adoption for their child. Anytime a family chooses to terminate their parental rights, it is a painful and difficult decision. However, God promises he will give us beauty for our ashes. So that's how we pray for the family in China who has a tough road ahead.

Following is a time line of how things have unfolded so far.

11/11/06, Mailed our application to Holt International--our agency.

12/10/06, Learned that China was changing their marriage requirements (that we do not meet being married less than two years). In order to 'get in' under the old requirements we had to have our application to Holt by March 1 and it had to be in China by May 1. We made the Holt deadline by a few days and the China deadline by a month.

2/22 - 2/23/07, Spent a couple of days in Chicago at the Chinese Consulate getting our paperwork authenticated. We could have shipped our documents to the CC, but that would have taken too much time; so we drove them there. The CC puts stamps on the paperwork basically stating that these are indeed official U.S. documents so the folks in China know that we're on the up and up. They're pretty serious about who they give their babies to. The photo to the right is from the planetarium looking back toward the city.

2/23/07, Shipped our dossier to Holt headquarters in Oregon for review. The photo is from the UPS store in Romeoville, IL where we stopped to copy and ship our documents.

3/2/07, Our dossier was shipped to China.

3/28/07, Our dossier was logged in by the CCAA which essentially means they have received it and it's part of their records.

Our waiting period of 19 - 20 months (as of this writing) begins from the day our dossier was shipped to China, that is March 2, 2007. Doing the math, that's about Nov '08 assuming the time line doesn't continue to expand. Right now, it gets longer every month. So we'll have to see how everything shakes out.