Isn’t asking for adoption donations just like asking people to pay your hospital bills after giving birth?
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In a word: no.
In cases like our adoptions, our children are waiting. Zoe was waiting.
Primarily, they waited for someone who would love them no matter what. Zoe needed someone who would love her, no matter what her brain injuries would mean for her. (Oh, how we do love her!) Our three Ugandan darlings needed someone who would love them enough to look past the number of children, the diagnosis of HIV for one, and the difficult aspects of adoption in an impoverished country. (Oh, how we already love them!)
Before I say anything else: We are not saints. We are not heroes. We are not angels. We are not amazing.
When you pin any of those descriptors on us, it makes it harder. Because if I’m a saint or angel or hero, I can’t be a jerk or human or ‘fess up that sometimes this sucks. If you put us on a pedestal, then we’re too far off the ground to reach out when we need help. And we often need it.
You know what? All of us who adopt waiting kids – those who are older or have special needs – are ordinary people. And ordinary people rarely have $25,000-40,000 sitting around. (That first figure is the final cost for Zoe’s adoption; the second one is the estimated cost for this one.)
Praise God that between our savings and friends' donations we have $12,000 of our adoption costs covered, which leaves $28,000 left to go!
Grants are available. We’re applying for them.
We may take out a loan this time. That’s hard to admit, given that we’ve been thankful to only have a mortgage payment and nothing else in way of debt… but if you think of the long-term investment, adoption is worth adding a monthly payment to the mix (and my taking on extra freelance writing to pay for it).
Finding families who are willing to adopt waiting children in hard circumstances and afford it all on their own?
That’s rare.
Would it be better for our child who waited or our children who are waiting to keep waiting? Should they have had to play the adoption lottery, hoping that they would end up with the right combo of people who had the desire and the money? Furthermore, the Bible is clear: Christians are called to take on the cause of the orphans: some of us do that by adoption, others by caring for children until they can return to their birth families, and others by supporting all kinds of adoption, fostering, and orphan care.
In other words, fundraising allows other Christians to invest in adoption and thus heed the calling of scripture, even if they aren’t led to adopt. (Keep in mind that the early church was a community, not just a cohort of individually-sufficient people who shared the same God and holidays as the modern church can often be.)
When I gave birth to Jocelyn and Robbie in the hospital, we had a high-deductible health insurance plan. That meant we owed a big chunk of that deductible after their births, given that Jocelyn was a January baby and Robbie came in March, both early in the calendar year before we had accrued many costs toward our deductible.
What did we do? We saved in advance (as we’ve done for each adoption) and then if our savings hadn’t been enough each time, we could have arranged a payment plan. I know because the financial person brought us copies of that paperwork, assuming we’d need it due to such a high bill. (Thanks to our health savings account and Lee’s savvy money management, we were fine both times.)
You can’t get an adoption HSA, though. While our income is sufficient for living and giving to the church and other ministries and causes, we don’t have enough extra each month to come up with the grand total for this adoption or the last one.
We will willingly sacrifice where we can. We’ll continue to do that once our children are home, because really? We’ll have enough for everyone, but it’ll be tight and require a whole lot o’ creativity to live as a family of eight.
When we fundraise, we’re asking others to tangibly join us in saying that these kids matter.
Each dollar, each word of encouragement, each comment, each hug, each gift, each show of support in word or deed or donation… it speaks love to us.
Thank you.
In cases like our adoptions, our children are waiting. Zoe was waiting.
Primarily, they waited for someone who would love them no matter what. Zoe needed someone who would love her, no matter what her brain injuries would mean for her. (Oh, how we do love her!) Our three Ugandan darlings needed someone who would love them enough to look past the number of children, the diagnosis of HIV for one, and the difficult aspects of adoption in an impoverished country. (Oh, how we already love them!)
Before I say anything else: We are not saints. We are not heroes. We are not angels. We are not amazing.
When you pin any of those descriptors on us, it makes it harder. Because if I’m a saint or angel or hero, I can’t be a jerk or human or ‘fess up that sometimes this sucks. If you put us on a pedestal, then we’re too far off the ground to reach out when we need help. And we often need it.
You know what? All of us who adopt waiting kids – those who are older or have special needs – are ordinary people. And ordinary people rarely have $25,000-40,000 sitting around. (That first figure is the final cost for Zoe’s adoption; the second one is the estimated cost for this one.)
Praise God that between our savings and friends' donations we have $12,000 of our adoption costs covered, which leaves $28,000 left to go!
Grants are available. We’re applying for them.
We may take out a loan this time. That’s hard to admit, given that we’ve been thankful to only have a mortgage payment and nothing else in way of debt… but if you think of the long-term investment, adoption is worth adding a monthly payment to the mix (and my taking on extra freelance writing to pay for it).
Finding families who are willing to adopt waiting children in hard circumstances and afford it all on their own?
That’s rare.
Would it be better for our child who waited or our children who are waiting to keep waiting? Should they have had to play the adoption lottery, hoping that they would end up with the right combo of people who had the desire and the money? Furthermore, the Bible is clear: Christians are called to take on the cause of the orphans: some of us do that by adoption, others by caring for children until they can return to their birth families, and others by supporting all kinds of adoption, fostering, and orphan care.
In other words, fundraising allows other Christians to invest in adoption and thus heed the calling of scripture, even if they aren’t led to adopt. (Keep in mind that the early church was a community, not just a cohort of individually-sufficient people who shared the same God and holidays as the modern church can often be.)
When I gave birth to Jocelyn and Robbie in the hospital, we had a high-deductible health insurance plan. That meant we owed a big chunk of that deductible after their births, given that Jocelyn was a January baby and Robbie came in March, both early in the calendar year before we had accrued many costs toward our deductible.
What did we do? We saved in advance (as we’ve done for each adoption) and then if our savings hadn’t been enough each time, we could have arranged a payment plan. I know because the financial person brought us copies of that paperwork, assuming we’d need it due to such a high bill. (Thanks to our health savings account and Lee’s savvy money management, we were fine both times.)
You can’t get an adoption HSA, though. While our income is sufficient for living and giving to the church and other ministries and causes, we don’t have enough extra each month to come up with the grand total for this adoption or the last one.
We will willingly sacrifice where we can. We’ll continue to do that once our children are home, because really? We’ll have enough for everyone, but it’ll be tight and require a whole lot o’ creativity to live as a family of eight.
When we fundraise, we’re asking others to tangibly join us in saying that these kids matter.
Each dollar, each word of encouragement, each comment, each hug, each gift, each show of support in word or deed or donation… it speaks love to us.
Thank you.