a dads perspective.

I am putting together a blog post about frequently asked questions and I asked Stephen to write something & this is what he sent me. So I HAD to make it it's own post. It brought some serious tears to my eyes and I think it's really powerful to hear coming from a man....his heart on adoption.

God has truly blessed Wynne and I throughout our adoption with everyone that has become apart of our Journey to Camp. However I was not on board and felt very perplexed that my wife had taken off on some tangent that I was not yet apart of. It was more of not being on the same page with what God had in store for us with starting a family. For as long as I could remember I thought our story would be to get pregnant and have "our own kids". I kept telling Wynne that I wanted to have our own kids, over and over. I was stuck on the idea that for some reason we had some kind of ownership over something that was clearly given by God and therefore His. I think that we as humans think we own everything, we don't. Everything from our talents and abilities to our children are all on loan from God. This concept was something I asked God to show me because I didn't get it.

I had to pray a specific prayer: God show me what it means to be an orphan and why you want Wynne and I to adopt, I don't understand? Simple enough, I figured God would answer this prayer over a long time or at least in a month or 2. But the Holy Spirit moved me the same day at the Together 4 Adoption conference in Austin back in October. Literally 3 hours later in the middle of some praise and worship the Holy Spirit showed me what it felt like to have no parents for about a minute. It was one of those moments where you get goosebumps, your heart races, your hands shoot up toward heaven and all at once it is so clear. Being an orphan and not having any parents is the hardest thing to have to endure in my mind as a human. We were designed to love and be loved. In that moment I felt my heart breaking, tears streamed down my face and I felt what I can only imagine the other 147 million orphans in the world feel on a daily basis...unloved. I also realized in that same instant that God adopted us into his family. He adopted all of us into his family, it is our choice to respond or not. James 1:27 commands us to care for orphans and widows, I had no idea or at best was ignoring this verse. Clueless to the fact that God was trying to start a revolution in my spirit to fight for orphans and widows. After this minute of heartbreak of feeling what orphans feel, I immediately understood what God was directing Wynne and I to do. God was clearly calling us to something bigger than ourselves, he was calling us to be like minded and adopt.

Ethiopia was the country God put on our hearts, I have no idea why. He is in charge, not me. I knew next to nothing about this country much less that there are around 5.5 million orphans in Ethiopia. Wynne and I are ready to be blessed by a child that has not been born yet. But He has a name, he is an orphan with parents in waiting, he has shirts with his name on them, he has a fan club of about 1,000 people maybe more, he has lots of love and a life waiting for him in Midland Texas!! How awesome is that!! If you would have asked me a year ago today if we would ever adopt a child from Africa I would have laughed at the notion. Now, my heart is broken for the country where my son is coming from. Our family story is just getting started. God has already used Camp in a mighty way, Praise be to the Father. How much love has God blessed you with? People tell Wynne and I all the time that they have thought about adoption at some point in their life. Wynne and I had never thought about adoption much less knew anything about it. It was a foreign concept that God had been preparing our hearts for. If you feel a tug to adopt; pray about it. Take the leap of faith and trust in God's provision, you will be blessed beyond comprehension. I once heard a father of 4 adopted and 2 biological kids say that he cannot imagine ever not adopting. It is pure joy to love on a child that would have otherwise had no love and no one to show God's love for them. Put yourself in the orphan frame of mind and ask God how you can change a little one's life. Our prayer is that God would use Camp to change lives for God's Glory and spark other adoptions. Camp has already changed our lives.