THE ADOPTION PATH WE DIDN'T TAKE

I've wanted to write a post about this for quite a while, but as you may imagine, a few other things came up.  I feel that even though this is not the path we ended up on, I want to advocate for it.  God has a funny way of revealing his plan, and sometimes it happens all at once.  But, more often, the path is illuminated one step at a time.  That was certainly the case for us.

It is perfectly clear to us that God placed William and Violet into our family.  There is no other reason or explanation for how it all happened.  He moved mountains to help make them ours, and I am confident that he used each step of our meandering journey to bring us to the place where we would be open to and ready for them.

I need to just fess up right here and let everyone know how self-centered and controlling I can be.  Adoption was not in my plan at all, but God changed my heart dramatically.  If you had told John and I two years ago that we would have adopted twins domestically the way that we did, past Carol would have been mystified, confused, shocked and scared.  I just wasn't there.  We had to take every step of our path to get to where we are.

We had to start an international adoption - that would appeal to us more, since it would involve travel and the need seems so great.  We had to open it up to two children and hope to get them at the same time, because of the costs involved and wanting them to share a story.  We had to open it up to special needs, and we ended up landing on one special need in particular.

If you followed our adoption story, you know we were open to Special Needs.  Our reasoning went like this: we felt called to adoption to help address the needs of orphans in the world.  There seemed to be a long line to do that in most places, and so we began looking for the shorter lines.  There are certain realities about adoption that I didn't understand until we started walking down this road.  I didn't realize that the lines to get a healthy young baby (in international adoption, a baby is any age younger than two) were long in any program, in any part of the world, including the United States.

The biggest special need, from what I understand, is older children (6+).  Because of the ages of our bio children, and the restrictions put on us by both our placing and home study agencies, we did not want to pursue adopting older children.  So, I began to do research.  What special needs existed in Ethiopia that we might be a good match for?

I remember the conversation with John quite vividly.  It is amazing the way that God moved us through this process and allowed our hearts and minds to be quite united through it all.  When I suggested that we adopt, rather than try for a third biological child, John said, "Sure."  When I suggested that we try to get two at once, John said, "That sounds great" without batting an eye.  The evening of this conversation, however, was different.  I said, "What if we opened up our parameters to include HIV positive kids?"

It gave us both an enormous amount of pause.  It was not something we took lightly.  I threw myself wholeheartedly into research, and I discovered all sorts of amazing things.  Things that as I shared them with our families and close friends, we were all shocked at what we thought we knew about this disease and how off we were in most cases.  Here's a rundown of the most basic facts.

What you need to know:

• HIV is considered a chronic but manageable disease with proper treatment.
• Children who receive treatment are expected to live a normal lifespan.
• HIV has never been transmitted in a normal family living environment.
• You NEVER have to fear contracting HIV through casual contact with an HIV + person.
• HIV is spread in three main ways:  sexual contact, IV drug use through the sharing of needles, and mother to infant (pregnancy, birth or breast feeding).
• All around the world, orphans are overlooked for adoption because of their HIV+ status.
• Medications called ARVs can mean the difference between life and death.
• The combination of three or more ARVs is called HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy)
• With medication, HIV can be effectively managed to the point that the virus is undetectable in laboratory tests.
• There is a term for the miraculous transformation HIV + people undergo when they begin receiving the medication they need:  it’s called the Lazarus Effect because people once on the brink of death are restored to health!

Taken from Project Hopeful.org.

What we determined pretty quickly is that one of the hardest things about having HIV would be the stigma leftover from an era when HIV was a death sentence. The reality is that the public hasn't been widely re-educated since sometime in the 80's, much to our detriment. I had no idea how manageable HIV had become.

That doesn't mean that it would be easy to raise children with HIV. We did not take it lightly, but it did seem manageable with its own set of challenges. Our families and friends were incredibly gracious - they all had questions and concerns, but everyone came on board fully, which was such a blessing. It is wild to look back and realize that we won't be taking that journey after all the time and emotional energy we invested into it. While we would never say never and sincerely hope and pray that we are open to whatever God brings our way, we certainly feel as if our quiver is quite full for now. We are not looking to do another adoption and feel stretched with all of the things that God has called us to for the time being.

In the end, for us, this is not the road God took us down.  I know he has his reasons.  It is really a great comfort to me to see the HIV+ wait list growing with the agency we were with, and I am hopeful that more people will open their hearts and homes to these kids who need a chance at life and a forever family.

Resources for HIV+ Adoption:
Positively Adopted
Positively Orphaned
Project Hopeful