What are we to do when we feel God is calling us to do something that may appear crazy to others?

For me personally, it is adopting from Ethiopia.

The last couple of months the conversations have gone down like this:

‘Are you done having kids?’

‘Well, we are naturally done having children’

‘What does that mean?

‘We are in the process of adoption right now’…

Silence.  Awkward silence, you know the kind.

The verbal sparring begins after this:  ‘Why don’t you just have another child naturally? Why aren’t you adopting domestically? Do you think this is fair to your current children? Do you really thing GOD is calling you to do this?’.

Why all the push back? There are 153,000,000 orphans in the world.  I assumed when I told people we were adopting, there would be some sort of celebration, some sort of, ‘Hallelujah! God’s people are moving!’…but I have received a lot of silence followed by strained questions; and it hurts.  I feel the need to defend our call to adopt, and it is breaking my heart. I regret to admit, I have allowed it to tear some of the joy out of the process.  Satan must be so pleased.

In the meantime, I feel I am in the ebb and flow of the tides. A tide pushes at me, I push back…

‘No, random mom I just met, we haven’t considered reversing my husband’s vasectomy, Yes, we feel it is GOD calling us to adopt.’ And ‘I have a lot of fears of how it will affect my current children, but God loves them more than me. He knows what he is asking of us.’

In the middle of my ‘pushing back’, this week I heard him say, ‘Why are you down in the water, pushing against these tides, when you could walk on top of the water child?’  

Yes Lord! WHY!? Continue reading →