We have BIG news!
We are adopting!
We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption-related costs can easily total up to $35,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $20,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents.
We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up.
How has God led us to adopt?
We have both seen the hand of God work in our hearts concerning adoption. We’ve both always dreamed and prayed God would give us children, but He directed our hearts toward adoption in different ways. I (Hayley) began learning about adoption when my sister started fostering several years ago. She eventually adopted through foster care, and by that point, I knew I wanted to add to my family through adoption. When Cliff and I began talking about marriage, we hoped God would give us biological children. We talked a little about adoption. Over the course of our first year or so of marriage, God took care of us through discouraging doctor visits where we were told we would not likely have biological children. At the same time, we kept learning about adoption, and we both saw God revealing this would be how He would build our family.
We eagerly attended a Wait No More seminar hosted by Focus on the Family, where we learned a lot more and felt further encouraged. One powerful thing we heard was the testimony of an adoptive father who said he was more concerned that his children looked like Jesus than looking like himself. We were both convicted by those words and knew we needed to trust God would give us a deeper joy in seeing our children (adopted or biological) look more like Jesus as they grew than the joy we thought we would find in seeing our own traits passed down.
Since the seminar, we’ve talked at length with adoptees and couples who have fostered and adopted, and we are convinced that God is calling us to adopt. Adoption is so close to God’s heart. We decided we wanted to adopt whether God gave us biological children or not! We are excited to see how God builds our family through adoption, and we hope to continue to build our family through foster care as well.
