Deciding to embark on the adoption road brings a seemingly unending stream of questions. There is an entire learning curve of simply wrapping the mind around what the process of adoption is and learning what terms mean (home study, dossiere, and Hague or non-Hague). Also, we have been reading, thinking and praying about what it means for our family to be multi-ethnic. The answers are not easy and the pitfalls seem to always loom.
The question we have currently wrestled with is how should we think about how much money we should personally contribute to our adoption fund and how much should we seek to come in from the outside. Through discussions with Johanna, prayer and talking with my pastor about it, these are the three things that will govern how we answer that question.
1. Don’t rob God’s people from the chance of helping. God’s Word commands all Christians to care for the widow and orphan. Asking other Christians to contribute to this is an invitation to obey God, invest in eternal rewards and receive more of God’s grace through sacrificial obedience. While it would be nice to have $30,000 sitting in an account just waiting to be used for an adoption, raising these funds slowly over time gives God more glory and us more joy in him as we see God’s people come alongside us with help.
2. We should feel the financial hurt personally and use it as an opportunity to evaluate our spending. The first reason does not absolve us from our personal contribution to this. If God has called us to this (which he most certainly has) we should be putting more money and feel more financial pain than anyone we are asking for money, and that is what we are doing. Savings are being delayed, extra mortgage payments are being put on hold and extra money is being put towards this adoption. None of it feels like a sacrifice because each dollar brings us closer towards having a son or daughter in our home that is right now in pain and needing a family.
3. Have a sense of urgency. We will do whatever we can to keep this train chugging down the adoption tracks and if it means we have to do some radical things to keep it going, we should be prepared to do that. I’m not entirely sure what that means right now, but our prayer is to remain sensitive to God’s leading and not have a lackadaisical approach to this.
I wanted to write this down for our sake and for those who have and will support us to know what our thinking is on the financial side of adoption. Also, maybe others will be helped as they consider adoption and begin wrestling with the same questions we are.
Justice The Line 
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