I just checked Facebook and Twitter after a day at work and wow - pretty much everyone who has a blog is writing about adoption ethics, the orphan crisis and what we as Christians can do to help without hurting. It is time for this conversation to happen! When I took a sabbatical from blogging for a few months this spring,...
"Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation." -Psalm 68:5 I just checked Facebook and Twitter after a day at work and wow – pretty much everyone who has a blog is writing about adoption ethics, the orphan crisis and what we as Christians can do to help without hurting. It is time for this conversation...
[caption id="attachment_872" align="alignleft" width="400"] This is my adopted daughter Ella, now 2.5 years old.[/caption] I want to start by saying I am thankful for Jen Hatmaker, a Christian adoptive mom and writer. She's the author of one of the most thought-provoking books I have read this year, 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess. She has a huge platform - and something...
Do you feel the tide turning? When I began to speak boldly about corruption in international adoption a year ago, I faced a lot of opposition. The adoption and orphan care movement was growing quickly within the Christian community, as thousands of families and churches where embracing God's heart for orphans. At the same time, there was a lot of fear that talking about corruption in...
My friend Holly is one of the most fearless voices in the adoption blog world. Holly and her family lived and served in Democratic Republic of Congo for four years. During this time, they supported an orphanage in Eastern DRC called Tumaini - or "Reeds of Hope". While living in DRC, Holly adopted two children and began facilitating international adoptions...
My last post definitely struck a nerve. I am thankful to see more and more families truly wrestling through the issues with international adoption. Many of you have said something very important - this is not all black and white. Sometimes it is hard to know what is best for a child, even when we are willing to surrender our...
I have never met an adoptive parent who began the time-consuming, heart-wrenching, wallet-emptying process of international adoption with a desire to traffic a child. Our family adopted for a few simple reasons. We wanted one more child and could not get pregnant again. We believed we had been adopted by God and that adoption was a demonstration of the gospel. We thought there was...
Today I wanted to share a link to a Mark and Keren Riley's blog. They have allowed an adoptive mother of a Ugandan son to share her story. It's long and it's hard, but it's good. "This is the truth. The messy, hard, ugly truth. The truth about how a well intended mother's heart, messed it all up. Admitting that I...
Our children are not our own. This was the hard truth we learned over the last four years. Early in the process of praying, learning, discerning God's will. Were we called to adopt? We knew we could not have any more babies the old-fashioned way. My pregnancies were too high risk. Just one year earlier, our son Zephaniah was born more than...
Today the New York Times published an article about orphan care and adoption in Haiti. The article by Nicole Brennan, Campaign in Haiti to Close Orphanages Where Many Aren't Orphans At All, highlights an important issue. The article also raises some challenging questions. But in many ways, the article does not dig deep enough into what is a very complicated issue. [caption id="attachment_809" align="alignleft"...
I serve on the Advisory Committee for A Child's Voice, a non-profit that advocates for the rights of children in Uganda and across Africa. Today I had the honor of guest posting on the ACV website, telling a story you need to read...
Not quite two years ago, Mark and I were packing our family for a trip to Uganda to adopt Gabrielle. We were eagerly anticipating our "gotcha day". For years we had been crying over videos and stories of the first time parents met their adopted children. It seemed like everyone with an adoption blog had a video full of beautiful...