In the Beginning...

This was originally posted on August 8th, 2007.

All right, this is going to sound a little weird to some people, but God has called me. Now, I'm not the most loyal of christians, though I go to church every week. My views on Christianity are a bit loose (including reincarnation and Jesus being married) and so I fugyred that, according to most Christians that I know, I would be the last person that God would poke.But poke me he did.

It was a small way, really. My husband brought home a packet of information about international adoption and pulled out the sheet on Ethiopia. He then left it on the kitchen table for me to look at when I realized it was there.I saw it finally and wondered what it was doing there. I asked him and he shrugged and said "I just thought maybe, since you were adopted, maybe you'd want to adopt a little boy."

We have a daughter, who was born to us, and my pregnancy was easy. What came after, however, was awful. My post-partum involved therapy, support groups, suggestions of medications, and terrible dreams and images, all of which constituted to making me decide I never wanted to be pregnant again. But adoption doesn't involve pregnancy, does it?

So I thought about it for a bit and then went to bed. And I dreamed. Oh, how I dreamed. Of a tall black man, graduating from college, and I knew in the dream he was my son. And his name was Abraham. It was completely bizarre and when I woke up the next morning, I knew God had called me to do this, that it was my duty in this life to bring a child from a war-torn continent and give him a life he would be unable to have where he was. And it was a very powerful realization.

Over the course of a few weeks, my faith lagged. I found myself afraid, terrified, of bringing another child into the family. How would I get time to myself? It's hard enough with a two year old, much less another baby. What would I do? Would I feel trapped? Would I BE trapped? And so I never filled out the paperwork.Then, a month ago, we sat down and filled it out. And it sat on the counter for three weeks, with me alternatly staring at it and debating throwing it away.

And then we went on vacation. And on vacation, I was able to get up early every day to go for a walk in the woods, God's temple, where I found it far easier to get in touch with him than I had anywhere else. Where better to pray than somewhere made by his hands and not the hands of man? And I realized I was ready.

So we came home and the next day, I mailed the application with the check to America World Adoption. And now we get to wait for them to accept us. And when they do, I start the 'paper pregnancy' which hopefully does not come with post partum.And on a side note, the night I had mailed the paperwork, my daughter and I watched Sesame Street and it was about one of the women, Gina, adopting a baby from Guatemala. When Elmo went up to her and asked her what adoption was, they sang a beautiful little song and I began to cry.

And God tells me I'm doing the right thing.