For John and I, adoption has always been and always will be a spiritual journey, a destiny, a calling from God. It would forever change our lives and send us down a path we would never have chosen for ourselves. The words within my book are taken from my journals; scribbled in the dark of night, the wee hours just before dawn, or during the children’s naptimes in the afternoon. There is no place I desire more to be than in the center of God’s will and purpose. Still, my writings reveal how we have clearly faltered and often failed in our walk.

As I grow older I am ever more fascinated with the realization that each life has a very specific purpose. Our children were always conceived in my spirit long before they arrived in our family. God has made it so. There could never be children who are more loved than those told about within the pages of my book. Each has won our hearts and enriched our lives beyond our wildest imaginings.

This book is a chronological presentation of the roads we have traveled in our marriage and more specifically in our adoption journey. I will share with you how each child was divinely placed within our family and therein has or will experience exactly what God knows they need to experience in order to reach their full potentials. We are humbled in the knowledge and responsibility that comes with the task of parenting our unique family.

Finally, this is a work in progress. (The book) shows God’s continuous preparations, plans and provision when we choose to walk in faith toward our destinies. Herein are stories of God orchestrating events and guiding people down the pathways of life, frequently without human understanding or knowledge. Included are testimonies of God’s faithfulness and love, even in hurtful situations and valleys of uncertainty. Hopefully, these realties will encourage others to realize conception is purposed and each life important in God’s eyes. It is my prayer that you, the reader, will grasp anew how God can turn seemingly insignificant and often frightening events into stories of great spiritual significance

We have adopted in a variety of ways. Our first adoption came while we were on a tour of duty in the Philippines nearly 30 years ago. It was an international adoption where we met the birth mother but would not have further contact once we came home to the states. So, there was some openness, but not in the sense that there have been years of correspondence or visits such as the term ‘open adoption’ sometimes refers.

I later had a biological son. He was just as unexpected as those added to our family over the years by adoption. His birth would have great impact upon my life, giving me a compassion for birth mothers and empathy with pregnancy and labor that I would not have been able to have any other way. Having a birth child has given me a great respect for birth mothers who not only choose life for their child but are strong enough to make an adoption plan for that child’s life as well.

For a season we also did foster care for the state system. There is a huge need for Christian foster parents in this world. Though we feel we were right in doing this service for a season, God had other plans for our family, as you will read in my book. I learned much about the system, some I did not want to know, but still, my eyes have been opened and after years of working with adoptive families I feel I have a very good grasp of what it is like to work with and in the system in America. It is an exhausting job, and it is my opinion that the church is needed like no other time in history to be made aware of the need for Christians to become intricately involved in the welfare of children. I offer some suggestions for service in my book, the harvest is ripe, the workers few.

Our most traditional international adoption was through an agency and brought our daughter from Korea home at the age of 3 months. We did not have to travel to get her and our experience was one that further fueled our desire to bring more children home.

We would soon enter a different field of adoption as we added a bi-racial child. Our eyes were painfully opened to the prejudices that still haunt our land, and at the same time to the awesomeness of God’s greatest creation, the life of a child. I was more sure than ever after this placement that God intends for the races to love, honor and cherish one another, and that God ‘makes no mistakes’ when children are conceived across racial lines. He knows us before we are born, and our race changes not the soul He has given us before the beginning of time as we know it.

We worked with acrisis pregnancy center for a season and it was there that I would make connections that would bring us our next placement. This was a private adoption through an attorney.

Growing us up in our walk with the Lord, He saw fit to add another child to our family, this time through a private agency. This child would also have racial mixes that would, at that time, label the child as a harder to place child. We traveled out of state for this placement. It also involved a biological father and legal father, so the adoption was a legal risk—very complicated with many twists and turns.

Soon enough our family would be increased by the addition of a full African American child. Selected by the birth mother and encouraged by our Lord there was no doubt that this was a child destined for our family. Whenmedical risks presented themselves and her future looked very bleak we doubted our ability and our God. This story includes much soul searching and a healing touch from God.

In a unique placement we would experiencetrans-racial,agency, interstate, sibling, and open adoption all in one! Newborn twins joined us when the youngest child in our family was only 8 months old. Though contact with the biological family has sense faltered, the openness and friendship I experienced with the birth mother at the time contained many new lessons for me.

We would add more African American children to our family, a severely handicapped child and a second set of twins to our family before the book was completed. There are few adoption experiences that God has not sent our way. Hopefully those lessons in life will be used to help others as they travel the path of adoption or journey into other areas of child welfare and the taking care of and feeding of God’s children.