Have you thought about....

I promise to not start hijacking Anna's blog. This will probably be my last post for a while, but I wanted to share a continuing conversation that Anna and I have been having. Hopefully by now you have read Anna's FAQ's about HIV. If you have not, stop reading this and go read that first. It has its own tab at the top of the blog.

Since we've made our HIV+ announcement public, we've received nothing but positive comments from our family and friends. Of course, the people with negative feelings probably wouldn't share them with us anyway.

When we began sharing this decision with a few select family and friends in May, one conversation stood out over all of the others. At the same time we were feeling the call of God to adopt a child with HIV, our good friends the Boykin's (they don't have a blog, but at least you can see pictures here...in fact, the thought of them having a blog cracks me up) were in the process of selling their dream house in order to move to the West Circle housing community. In today's culture, that's pretty insane. We have been close friends with the Boykin's for a long time. They are the type of friends that we knew would pray for us and give us wise counsel concerning our decision. (They are also the friends that will laugh the hardest when we tell them that Walker just figured out that it's not real blood we are drinking when we have communion. No wonder he was so interested every Sunday when we take communion and would try to smell it.)

Armed with our HIV facts, we sat them down with the news. You see, when we shared our decision, we felt the need to give people all of the HIV facts. As soon as our friends and family saw the research, they were very supportive. Yet Andy and Glisa had a different reaction. As soon as we told them about our adoption, we started in on the standard facts. Zero reported cases of household transmission, etc. But they cut us off. I'll never forget their response..

"You don't have to justify your decision to us. When God calls you to do something, it may seem crazy to everyone else, but it's crystal clear to you. And you need to do it, regardless of what everyone else thinks."

What a sense of relief! Instead of trying to justify our decision based on worldly, scientific facts, this couple understood that we were just answering the call of God in our lives. I still went on and gave them all the facts and they politely listened, but they didn't need to hear them. In fact, I'm not sure they really cared.

We've had tons of questions, which we knew would happen. Anna addresses most of those questions in the previously mentioned post. Some of the questions, have been so outlandish that even we haven't given that scenario thought. And when we get those questions, we respond with "I don't know. I haven't thought about that." The questioner never says it, but their body language screams "See! I knew they haven't thought this out completely." As if that would change our minds.

This adoption may seem crazy to you, but it's really more of a faith thing for us. We feel God called us to it, and if we're going to claim to follow Christ, we're going to have to do it completely. There is no extreme outlandish scenario that will change the fact that we feel this is God's call for our lives.

We've had several people say to us... "that's a wonderful thing you are doing." When they say that, they are referring to the HIV+ adoption. It's awkward for us because we don't know how to respond and yet we are appreciative of what they are trying to convey.

We hope people will see our HIV+ adoption and decide to do it as well. We really hope people will see this decision and decide that it's more important for people to follow the call God has for their lives rather than be concerned about how people will perceive them.

Romans 8:15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”

(FYI... You can find out more about the families moving to the West Circle community by reading up on the Dixon family, Davis family, or the Pierce family.)