Why not?

Thursday, January 13, 2010 has to be one of the craziest days in our family’s history. At 3:30 PM, we opened the e-mail, which showed us pictures, and information about the boy we plan to adopt, I know many of you are thinking… “Wait! I thought you were adopting a girl!” Yes, up until about 3 hours earlier, we thought that too. There’s no short way to tell the story about how we ended up there, so we’ll just take you back to the spring of this year.

Mother’s Day 2010

Without mentioning it to each other, Anna and I both felt God stirring in our hearts regarding this adoption. The process was moving slow, and one of my friends even said, “I guess they are starting to meet the needs in Ethiopia, huh?”

At that same time, our friends the Thrashers, were on their aoption journey as well. I’m not kidding when I say their options changed about 5 times. That Sunday, they told us about how they had been contacted regarding a set of twins that were being born, that were up for adoption. They had prayed about it and were seriously considering it. The thing that struck us most was they were completely open to whatever God wanted regarding their adoption.

Over lunch that day, we asked ourselves this question. Are we as open to God’s will during this process as the Thrasher’s are? So we discussed it, and discussed all the options. Older child? Special needs?

We came to no resolution over lunch and after that had some errands to run, so we went our separate ways. While away from each other, I remembered some blogs I had read when we first started the process, but it had to wait until I saw Anna face to face to discuss it.

So when I got home, I told Anna, “I think I have it. I remember reading some blogs about adopting an HIV positive child, maybe that’s it.” Anna immediately thought of every reason why we wouldn’t want to do it.

“I can’t do that! What will people think about us?”

“I don’t want my other children to get HIV!”

“I don’t want to adopt a child that is going to die!”

And so on and so on. It was a moment that Anna would describe later as her moment “wrestling with God”. I sat quietly and at the end said, “I agree with everything you have said. But every reason was selfish. Maybe we should investigate it further.” We agreed to investigate it further, with this caveat from Anna, “I’m still not on board with this thing.”

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

Deuteronomy 31:6

Within 24 hours of investigating it, we found out that most of our views of HIV were founded in 1980’s thinking. Bringing an HIV positive child into our family poses no risk to our other children. We were shocked to learn that there are ZERO known cases worldwide of someone contracting HIV through daily household activity. The more we learned, the more we discovered that this wasn’t as crazy as we thought. We even found out that there is a world-class HIV clinic in Birmingham and the doctor answered any and all questions we had. She even gave us her e-mail address to follow up with her at any time.

So at that point, we made the decision. We wanted to change our request to an HIV+ child. We told our family and a few select friends, but we kept this information quiet. There are several reasons for that, but the main reason was fear of how others would view and/or treat our daughter.

One other note, little did we know that about the same time we made the HIV+ decision, our son was being born somewhere in Ethiopia. (This still gives me chills thinking about it.)

(At this point, we know you have a ton of questions about HIV. We’ll put a few links at the bottom of this post, plus we’ll post again later this week with more detail from our perspective. Now… back to the story)

December 2010

Uh, oh… we both were feeling that restless feeling again. The first time resulted in our decision to adopt. The second time our decision to adopt a HIV + child. We again asked the question, “Are we completely open to God’s will in this process?” Things were moving slow and were wondering if we were being selfish for asking for a baby. So we talked to our adoption agency coordinator (Caitlyn – remember that name it will be important later), and asked her if it would speed things up if we changed our age range to 0-24 months. After some discussion with her, she said it really wouldn’t change things. So we decided to leave our request as is. And that was that…or so we thought…

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Separately, we began to feel that maybe we shouldn’t be so private about our decision to adopt an HIV+ child. That day, while driving home from work, I was listening to a podcast in which the preacher essentially asked “How would you advance the gospel if you were essentially in the condition you are in now, without the baggage of the past?” After thinking about it, I thought, “What if we went public with our HIV adoption? Knowing what we know now, and without the baggage of the past 20 years, everyone would be receptive to it. Plus, we have witnessed our friends the Davis’, be advocates for Down’s syndrome adoptions and we could do the same for HIV+ adoptions.” So we discussed it together that night and Anna had similar feelings. We decided that in the coming days we would disclose our HIV adoption on this blog.

At the end of the conversation, Anna said, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if Caitlyn called us tomorrow, after we made this decision?” My response was something to the effect of “Yeah right!!!”

Thursday Jan 13, 2011 – 12:30 PM

My cell rings. The first words I hear is “Hi Tim. This is Caitlyn from America World!” I tried to utter a response, but I was really freaking out thinking about Anna’s words the night before. Caitlyn had a question for us. “Would we be willing to consider opening up our request to a boy?” She remembered our call from December and thought we might be open to it. Caitlyn made it clear that she didn’t have a boy waiting for us; she just wanted to know if we were open to it.

I wasn’t sure Anna would go for that. We already had a name picked out. (Olivia). We had the room painted…not pink, but still pretty girly. We have two boys and one girl. A girl just made sense. Plus, Anna had always wanted to have another girl....and was dreaming of hairbows!

So we talked about it, and finally Anna made this statement, “I guess if we’re going to ask people to be open to a child with HIV, we need to be open ourselves to adopting a boy OR girl.”

So I called Caitlyn back and said, “Yes, we’ll change our request.” There were still details to iron out, like our homestudy and approvals which were all for a female, but we had time to sort that out. I knew that the dinner conversation that night would be interesting for sure.

Thursday Jan 13, 2011 – 2:30 PM

My phone rings again. Same number as before. (I know, right! This is too much. Imagine what we were thinking). With not enough time to even process the fact that we had said yes to the possibility of a boy, Caitlyn was on the phone. “I have a potential referral for you. He’s a beautiful 7 month old boy.” (Side note: We cannot post pictures of him online until he’s officially ours. But trust us on this one…he’s beautiful!)

We had Caitlyn send the e-mail to Anna at the house, and I rushed home to view the pictures and info with her. Throughout the process, you dream of this day. Finally seeing pictures of your child, rejoicing in the fact that it’s that much closer to the day you bring him home. But for us, it was a little bit different.

First, we had a stranger in our house. We were upgrading our satellite receiver and the repairman was at our house when we were looking at the e-mail. Second, for almost two years, we were expecting to see a girl, and just a couple of hours earlier, we gave the approval for a boy. So we were still in the midst of comprehending everything that had happened. However, don’t get us wrong, we were still excited, just more shocked than anything.

"God is not going to pour out his power on you until he sees in you a spirit of submission."

-Adrian Rogers

The next 24 hours confirmed our decision. Yes, the homestudy would have to be updated, but it doesn’t have to be completed until our second visit to Ethiopia, so we have some time. The doctor in Birmingham reviewed his records and reassured us he’s in relatively good health.

We went public with this information, especially with our church today, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive. We know now, that we’re open to God’s will in this adoption; we just never knew we would end up here.

"Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails."

Proverbs 19:21

So to summarize, yes, we are now planning to adopt a 7-month old HIV+ boy. Two years ago when we began this process, we never knew we would end up here. And guess what, it's not over yet. Secretly, I hope I don't get that restless feeling anymore. If I do, there's no telling what will happen.

Here are a few Frequently Asked Questions that we have tried to answer:

When will you get to go over to Ethiopia?

We have to wait until our court visit is scheduled, but our agency is telling us that the courts are behind right now and we are looking at an 8-16 week wait.

When will you bring him home?

We have to make two trips over to Ethiopia. The first one will be in about 8-16 weeks (March-May). Then we will come home, wait a couple of months, then make a second trip to Ethiopia. During this second trip we will be going to get him….so, probably this summer

What will you name him?

We obviously can’t call him Olivia. We’ve decided on the name Cooper. We’re going to use his given name for his middle name. We can’t post that here until he is legally ours.

About the whole HIV+ thing……

We know you have a ton of questions. Some of which you might not want to ask us in person for fear of hurting our feelings. Believe me, anything you can think of, we have already thought it. We plan on posting later this week a detailed post about HIV adoptions. But for now, check out these links below. This will get you the basic information

http://www.fromhivtohome.org/faqs/

http://www.projecthopeful.org/