And, we’re off... 

Today, August 10, 2012, marks the start of a new adventure in the Whichard household. We officially submitted our application to do international adoption. We are planning to adopt a special needs child, most likely from China or Taiwan. My goal is to keep this blog updated with our exciting adventure.

So, how did this all start? The seed to adoption was planted in my heart years ago. I could always see myself adopting a child. I don’t really know how to explain it--it was something that was engrained in me.  This seed started to sprout (I guess you could say) in January of this year. We started trying to add to our family last summer, and after 6 months of not being pregnant, I started to think about adoption. I just happened to know someone who was starting their journey to adoption in January, and we would talk about it…and what step she was currently in, etc. Every time we would talk, that seed would stir a little more, and I’d feeling a rumbling in my spirit. Finally in June, we still weren’t pregnant, and we decided we would proceed with talking to some people about adoption. I touched base with my friend, who came over and gave me a wealth of information. And was it a ton of information…in fact, we thought about it for about another 6 weeks or so before doing anything.

That led us to Wednesday, August 1. In my correspondence with my friend, she had told me about a new adoption agency that had opened up in Mt. Pleasant called Lifeline (they are based out of Alabama). She knows the lady who works there, and gave us her contact information. I contacted her, and we set up a meeting for Wednesday, August 1st. That was the meeting that changed everything for me.

When David and I walked into the meeting with Lifeline, I had domestic adoption on my heart. I wanted a newborn (I loved that phase with Kathryn—minus the getting up in the middle of the night part). God had something else planned. In meeting with Angie at Lifeline, she told us about her experiences adopting her two sons from China. She talked about how wonderfully blessed their family has been since adopting her two older sons. It was incredible. In fact, when we left I had a headache for the remainder of the evening from the pure fact that I had worked so hard to keep from bursting out in tears during our meeting. The next day I had a recurring picture in my head of us having at least one, if not more, children in our household from China. The stirring in my heart that day was unbelievable….God was moving in my heart, without a doubt. 

Of course, in the middle of all of this was the fact that David’s car had finally died. On Saturday we were headed to Charlotte to get a new-to-us car, and we started talking about it. It was actually quite interesting—we didn’t talk that much about it. I told him I definitely wanted to go the international route, and he responded that he was happy with that decision because domestic adoption scared him. I told him I saw myself adopting (most likely) more than 1 child…possibly even an older child about to age out of the system one day. If I remember correctly, that is all the discussing we did—I think we both knew this was the right decision.

On Monday I began filling out the questionnaire. It took pretty much all week (well, we worked on it for a few minutes just about every night). My goal was to get it submitted on Friday (today), which I was able to do. Within minutes I had a response that it was received, and we will be hearing from a Lifeline agent in the next 3-5 business days.

I have no clue what this journey is going to entail. All I know is that we are super excited, and know God has this whole thing planned out. We know He has a child specifically picked out for our family. And this is our story on adopting this child, introducing him/her to an amazing God who has an extraordinary plan for him/her, and loving him/her more than they could ever imagine…