Prayer Requests - Take 1

Many more learned than I have written about the implications of Japan’s existence as an island nation. We generally feel very welcomed here and thankfully have many friends that accept us "just as we are." However, we are aware that we are "outsiders" in many respects. For starters, our faces look different from those around us and we are guests here, not citizens. Apart from issues of ethnicity, adoption in the sense that we are approaching it, is a VERY FOREIGN concept. For those children who make it until birth, yet whose parents for various reasons choose not to raise them, orphanages are the default. Adoption is so radical, that I get the feeling some can't fathom why anyone would even bother navigating through it, when other culturally acceptable options exist. On top of that, you add ethnicity to the mix and some people just shake their heads.

While we see adoption as a natural expression of what God has done in our hearts and who we are in Christ - having been adopted into God's family - the general public here can't relate. I guess I have taken for granted that in N. America, adoption is becoming much better accepted for all the wonderful, positive aspects. All that to say, we want to be humble, yet persistent in this journey to love a child that the Lord will bring to us.

By the way, for anyone who's interested, there's a great article expounding upon the Biblical & physical concepts of adoption. Interestingly, it was in our mailbox at the beginning of 2008 when we started seriously looking into adoption. :-)
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/december/21.22.html


The Process Details (more than you wanted to know…but important stuff)

Within Japan, adoptive parents are allowed to have their child(ren) placed in their homes as soon as possible. Once the child is in our family, we will begin the legal adoption process. After our child has been with us for at least 6 months AND all of the paperwork/official procedures have been done, the adoption becomes finalized by law. We've been told with all the legal work involved, this whole process usually takes about 10 months.

At first we thought the ~10 months might feel kind of "probationary," which legally is the case. However, the more we thought about it, we recognized that all of life is "tentative." From God's viewpoint, the child will be as fully "ours" as he can be from the start, because He will have given the child to us. All of us - our every heartbeat - really belong to the Lord, the Giver of Life, and claiming possession of anything or ANYONE as ours, is really only a temporary stewardship that has been entrusted to us by our Loving Creator. This may sound like a 'slap in the face" to us as humans, but I actually find this truth liberating! Thank You, Lord, that I'm not "in charge," but You are and You can work through me, your servant, as I surrender to You.

So, we want to love our child with reckless abandon from DAY ONE, whether we have him or her for 10 weeks, 10 months or a lifetime. Should the adoption not go through for some reason, it would of course be heart-breaking in a way we cannot fathom right now, we both know it is totally worth the risk!

One interesting tidbit on bonding that we learned this past weekend was that once babies have bonded, they can much more readily learn to bond again. (Pardon my layman's terms that may not be technically precise.) So, fully loving our child - no matter what - will help him with whatever future God has in store for him! To say nothing of the fact that we would never forget this family member and our prayers for a lifetime would be able to bless his whole life in a way that never would have been had he never come to us.

We will pray that we have a lifetime together with our child, but know that we can entrust him fully to the will of our heavenly Father above all from the first day he is with us!

Having said all that as a backdrop, we would greatly appreciate your prayers in the following areas. Please pray…

1) That we would be gracious, winsome and shrewd in this whole process, especially in light of the culture:
… That God would grant us favor in the paperwork process, that it would be done correctly and smoothly.
… That we would communicate well and be a blessing to the government workers, social workers, judge and everyone that we come into contact with.
… That He would bring many across our path that have hearts tender and longing to know the Good News that we know in Jesus that is proclaimed uniquely in adoption!

2) That we would love this child with "reckless abandon" from start to finish!

3) For the child's Birth Mom, her physical well-being and overall emotional "heart" condition in this whole process of making these courageous, loving decisions.