{Adoption Video Series} What You Need To Know About Nicaragua Adoption

My Crazy Adoption friends, we are so excited to share our #2 video in the Nicaragua adoption series to help you gain greater understanding on adopting a child from Nicaragua. Roger and I interviewed Chris Bagwell, director at New Life Nicaragua orphanage, and share a few basic requirements to get you started on your adoption journey. We are ALL called to live out James 1:27; adoption is radical and we encourage you to pray big for support and endurance and miracles as a family. We hope God surrounds you with an adoption community (I’m here, too) as you open your hearts and home to protect and love the fatherless.

If you have any questions about the adoption process, feel free to email me.

Michelle and Dax are currently in the last stages of adopting two beautiful sisters from Nicaragua. I met Michelle a few weeks ago in Managua, living in a small apartment with two of her biological children and her new daughters, Khloe and Katy. Dax is holding up the fort back at home with their oldest son.  She invited our family to swim in their pool and offered to hamster-sit Hannah and Zoie’s little critter named Eppie. Michelle is a strong and brave and courageous mama as she faces the challenges of adoption head-on with fierce determination. I’m so proud of her for being real and allowing us to join her on this incredible journey!! We are counting down the days for their adoption to be completed and they can return home as a family.  This is their story …

More Than Us

In two weeks I will celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary, apart from my wife.  However, believe it or not, I couldn’t be happier. Let me explain.  I couldn’t be happier because of how proud I am of her.  I am proud of her, I am amazed by her because she has lived in the wonderful country of Nicaragua for 10 weeks (with several more to come) in order to fulfill the adoption of our 2 new daughters, Katy and Khloe.  It’s odd to think about your wife being miles away on your anniversary as a good thing, but I’m fighting to see the privilege and joy that lay before us.  We have both felt the sacrifice, our 3 biological kids have experienced the cost, we have wrestled through fear, doubt, weariness and exhaustion but in the measure of eternity, we can see it’s worth it. So, it really is a good way to spend an anniversary — temporarily prolonging a longing for one another for the sake of those who have no one longing for them.  Isn’t that grace after all? I am so proud of her.

But, I know that sounds so noble of us doesn’t it?  Noble indeed for me to talk about joyfully missing an anniversary with my wife.  But the truth is, I really am a pretty rotten sinner with a selfish heart and living with an eternal perspective is slippery; you got it and then you don’t. You see, in the big picture, we are pretty normal people…but the ability to walk through this process  with hope, with a desire to be a blessing, to open up our family to these two new additions, is not so much a testimony of our strength but of Jesus.’  At the end of the day, when the fog clears and we are thinking along the lines of our adoption into his family (Gal. 4:4-7), of the riches of our inheritance (Eph.1:18), of the investment of love in eternal souls (Mt. 19:13-15), of the eternal promises we can claim through the substitutionary work of Christ (2 Peter 1:3-5)…we realize that the gospel really is that good and powerful to provide, motivate and sustain redeemed  sinners.  Things are hard, things will be hard, but isn’t that love and grace?  Isn’t that how we have been and currently are being loved by our Father and Elder Brother?  Yes, when the fog clears, these noble thoughts from selfish people are really driven by bigger vision…a vision that sees these “paths of righteousness” are not really about us at all.  They are about him, from him, through him, by his grace and for his name’s sake.  (Ps. 23:3-He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.)  We have prayed and continue to pray that this will be more about Him than about us and ultimately, I know that we and all of our children (biological and adopted) will find a deeper joy and purpose in this endeavor when we make this our main prayer.