That's what we heard next. . . TELL!! Tell your family, tell your community group, tell your closest friends. . . just TELL. God knew that the Enemy would be lurking around trying to convince us that we didn't hear what we knew we had heard. He knew that Satan would tell us that we couldn't start over with a newborn after 7 years. He knew that we were prone to believe the lies that we couldn't raise a brown baby. He knew that we would need people surrounding us to encourage and love on us through this process.
Some of the first people we told was the couple who led the Orphan Ministry at our church, Southside Fellowship. We had NO IDEA where to even begin. DSS? Private adoption agency?? Lawyer?? They gave us lots of options, and encouraged us to tell two more people. . . our boys.
One of the things that we had regularly prayed over the last several weeks was that God would give us unity in all decisions. This was the one decision that we didn't have unity on. I wasn't ready to tell the boys; Rick was. Jeff and Ashley have lived through this a couple of times, and were able to give us new perspective. At this point Gabe was almost 10 and Christian was almost 7. We realized that night, that the boys were going to remember this experience for the rest of their lives. The story of their brother and how he became a part of our family was going to be a part of them until forever. We had the potential to involve them in this really BIG God story. We decided we didn't want them to miss out on that.
Not long after meeting with J and A, we sat around the kitchen table and told the boys we needed to talk to them about something. Before we even got out what we were going to tell them, Gabe said. . . "We're going to adopt a new brother or sister, aren't we?". We were floored. We hadn't discussed this in front of him, and although we had talked about what adoption means several times in the past, we never gave him any indication that we were ever going to go down that road. It was as if God was even preparing his heart as he prepared ours.
There was some uncertainty in their attitudes over the next several minutes. I knew Gabe was thinking he was going to have to give up his newly acquired room (they had been sharing since we moved 3 1/2 years before). We assured him that no one was going to be giving up any rooms just yet. After that, he seemed a little more at ease. Christian was not at all convinced this was a good idea when we first told him. That is until we told him that he was going to be a big brother. Then he was "all in".
Several hours after we had told them, Christian and I were in the kitchen alone and I asked him how he felt about all of it. His response. . . "Well, it's going to be weird to have a brown baby". I laughed out loud and asked him why he thought that. He responded with, "Well, he's not going to look like us". That was true. He was deep in thought. (Remember that my sister and her husband have done foster care for the past several years, so brown babies have been a part of our family for awhile.) After he collected his thoughts he said, "I guess we have had lots of brown babies in our family before, and we love them just the same way". Lessons from a 6 year old. . . I'm never prepared for the way they convict me.
We decided to begin walking through two different doors. One with DSS and another with a non profit here in Greenville called Special Link. At this point, we were just one month into our journey. We loaded up the car for a trip to Ohio for Thanksgiving with a stack of paperwork to fill out on the way. Our last Thanksgiving as a family of four.
