How To Adopt Without Ruining Your FamilySýnishorn

One section in one lecture during one college course I cannot even recall changed the trajectory of my life forever. I was nineteen, sitting in a history class when the professor mentioned the official one-child policy China enforced, along with the orphan crisis resulting. He told how these orphans could be adopted outside of the country to help alleviate the tragic ramifications. It stuck.

Over the past decade, my husband and I, along with our two biological daughters, have adopted six children. I can speak for the core of us: We wouldn’t have missed it for the world!

But adoption is not for the faint of heart. You can, indeed, ruin your family in the process. It’s a sad truth. And it’s easy. Just Google it. All sorts of negative testimonies will appear. Ruined marriages. Dissolved adoptions. Parents who wish they had never adopted –and possible never should have adopted. It’s not the single path for everyone. You bet. It can be cataclysmic.

What I hope to do across these days is offer my best advice and encouragement for anyone either thinking about adoption or anyone in the trenches of adoption. These tips may fit for fostering also, but fostering is not my experience. I did not want to claim it as such by placing it under my umbrella.

If you are in the midst of adoption, I pray you find encouragement, hope, and honestly, a friend in me who understands. May God richly bless your family as you seek His will in serving those entrusted to you.

If you are thinking about adoption, I pray for you, too. In full disclosure, I have not sugar-coated anything. This is not going to be the Facebook edition or my best pitch to get you on-board to adopt. But if you can prayerfully embrace all ten tips and still feel a pull toward adoption as God’s call on your life—then there is a greater likelihood adoption is exactly the direction God is leading you toward.

May God richly bless the study of His Word and his people walking in obedience of it.