Adopt Without Debt – Can It Be Done?

When my husband and I started our adoption journey in the fall of 2007, we had just completed another lengthy “journey.” We had spent the previous seven years paying off all of our debt, including our mortgage. (We’re HUGE Dave Ramsey fans and used his plan to do it.)

During the first 12 months of intense debt-payment (paying off $30,000 in credit card, car and student loans), we scrimped and sacrificed a lot. We rarely ate out, we put off big purchases, we watched where every penny went. By the time we cleared that debt, we really didn’t miss all the things we’d “given up.” We found a new sense of contentment with what God provided us.

We also found the joy in giving. Suddenly we had $900 every month that wasn’t going toward a bank or credit card company. We were able to increase what we gave to our church, support friends who were missionaries and help families in our church who had financial needs.

And THAT is where it started. As our eyes started to open to the needs in the world around us, God began working on both of us, unbeknownst to the other. Somehow he took this mom, who defiantly declared herself D-O-N-E having kids a year earlier, and made her yearn for two beautiful children in Ethiopia.

Being the number-crunching people that we are, we began to look at the $28,000 cost to see how we could afford it. To further complicate matters, a couple months after we started the process, Mark felt called to leave his job at our church to pursue full time mission work. We just didn’t know what that would be. (And it would be 12 months before he found it.)

I began to panic. HOW were we going to afford this adoption? We had $10,000 in our savings and that was IT! I tried to remain calm and casually threw out, “Well, if we have to do an interest-free adoption loan, we’ll just pay it off as quick as we can.”

This was met by mostly silence from my husband.

A few weeks later I was at a friends, flipping TV channels, and came across Dave Ramsey’s TV show on Fox Business. A man called in and said he felt God calling him to a career change, which meant going back to school and incurring student loan debt. Of course I knew Dave wasn’t going to support THAT idea! He encouraged the man to find creative ways to finance his schooling or wait and save up the money.

Then Dave uttered the words that rocked my world.

“There is not one example in the Bible of God calling someone to do something,
and then using debt as a tool to accomplish it!”
I think my jaw dropped into my lap. I had such little faith. Sure, I knew God could provide the means for us to adopt.  But here I was, trying to take control and figure out HOW he would provide. I had put God in an itty-bitty box and forgot how powerful He truly is.

Mark and I knew all the scriptural warnings about debt. God knew about our commitment to live debt free. So why would He ask us to adopt and then require debt to be part of that process?

The simple answer is, He wouldn’t. And he didn’t. We brought home Wendemagegn (now Luke) and Beza 12 months later without a penny of debt. It took some hard work, but it was so worth it and God showed up in amazing ways.

It was this journey, and God’s prompting, that inspired me to write “Adopt Without Debt: Creative Ways to Cover the Cost of Adoption”. I wanted to show people that through grants and some pretty creative fundraising, adoption can be affordable – lack of money should NEVER be an excuse.

The book shares more of our story, and some ways we trimmed our budget during these months.  It also features 25 other families who shared their fundraising successes with me. In total, the book has about $65,000 worth of ideas to help those adopting.

On June 7th I’m excited to be able to share our story and this message on The Dave Ramsey Show. (Talk about a dream come true!)

I know that many people write off the idea of adoption because of the price tag. Don’t! If you’re already in the process of adoption, I hope the book will give you encouragement and the resources you need to raise more funds.

Julie Gumm blogs about their crazy family life, living debt free and being an orphan advocate at Four Plus More.