Hey y'all my name is Alison Sandridge. My husband Stephen
and I moved to North Carolina last year so that he could attend SEBTS. We are
so excited for what the Lord has in store for our future ministry and thrilled
with where He is using us now! We will be married 3 years this May. Stephen and
I met because his dad became the pastor of my home church when I was in middle
school. Stephen and I started dating when I went to college. He and I have
always had a love for orphans. We have both served separately at orphanges
abroad. We knew even before we were married that we would one day adopt.
Something you should know about me though is that in my
flesh, I want to be in control of everything! I'm a huge planner. I make lists
and timelines for everything. Really y'all, it is such a joy for me to make
lists and check things off that sometimes I start my list with “make a list” so
I have something to check off right away, haha! I know that's awful, right?
Well thankfully the Lord has been working on changing that about me and He has
used our heart for adoption as a big instrument in this change.
See, I had this perfect plan for our family. I knew when and
how and how many children we would have. So I just prayed and basically invited
God to come along on this journey I had already planned! Crazy, but sometimes
we do that. Instead of trusting the Lord with our future, we plan our future
and then ask God to bless it! I cannot tell you how overwhelmed I am at the
grace God has shown me in the these last few years. It has at times been
incredibly painful but it has been so good! The Lord has stripped me of all my
best laid plans and left me with nothing to cling to but Him and His precious
Word!
After a miscarriage and some new information from doctors,
we turned our focus from hopes of pregnancy to hopes of adoption. I did tons of
research and mapped out the best course of action but I was relying on my own
ability to plan rather than humbly coming before my Father and seeking the
direction He would have me to take. Things have certainly not worked out how I
originally planned but I am so thankful!
“For my thoughts are
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”
Isaiah 55:8
Isaiah 55:8
“For I know the plans
I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give
you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11
Why adoption?
At the beginning, we knew we would adopt “one day” because
we are passionate about orphan care and we want a big family so that just fits
perfectly! But the Lord has graciously shown us such a better picture of
adoption. When we really started looking into adopting when we realized
pregnancy was going to be difficult for us, we read an incredible book called Adopted for Life by Russell Moore. That book led us to truth after truth in
the Word about adoption. We realized that this adoption we so longed for here
on earth was just a little picture of the perfect adoption we had already
experienced through the blood of Christ into the family of God.
“The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in
fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to
sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.'” Romans 8:15
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive
adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son
into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.'” Galatians 4:4-6
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and
blameless in his sight. In love he
predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with
his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given
us in the One he loves.” Ephesians 1:4-6
Friends, those are just a few of the verses that we can hold
onto that tell us that we are now truly adopted into the family of God, no
longer enemies but heirs with Christ! Isn't that incredible?! Stephen and I
were learning so much about the Lord and His love for us as we sought to learn
about adoption. We were also learning about God's love for orphans. We can see
that over and over in the Word too. I really encourage you to look through the
Bible and just search for words like orphan and adoption and see what you
learn. You aren't all called to adopt, but you are all called to care for
orphans and if you are in Christ then you, yourself, have been adopted! As we
learned these things our desire to adopt became stronger and stronger. We long
to mirror God's adoption of us to children that He deeply cares for and has
commanded us to care for! We are so excited to share with our children one day
that though we love them and want to do the absolute best for them, that we
will let them down sometimes, but that we can introduce them to a Father who
will NEVER let them down and will always love them PERFECTLY! Though we originally thought adoption was plan
B, God intended it for plan A so we set out much earlier than we thought on our
journey towards adoption.
Our adoption process...
Stephen and I first thought we would only adopt
internationally. We had fears, but mostly misunderstandings about what domestic
adoption looked like. But once again those were our plans and not the Lord's.
One night I was hanging out with some ladies I was friends with and blabbing
about why I would “never” adopt domestically because of this or that fear. Not
too long after, one of those sweet friends had Stephen and I over to her house
and sat us down to share her story of domestic infant adoption. My incredible
friend is a birthmom to a beautiful daughter, I had no idea before that night.
As she sat there and humbly told us her story, I just wept. The Lord completely
changed our view on domestic adoption that night and I will always be thankful
to that friend for allowing the Lord to use her to direct us to the child He
has planned for our family. At that same time I was volunteering at a crisis
pregnancy center and God used the combination of that testimony from my friend
and the numerous mothers I was developing relationships with there to pull my
heart towards a desire for an open domestic adoption.
We decided on an agency and planned to start as soon as we
had been married for 2 years which was required. But when that time came the
Lord had shown us another plan. We had just moved to North Carolina and we
still owned our home in Georgia, we didn't have employment or insurance so we
were in no place to start the adoption process. I was really hurt by that. I
was angry, really, with the Lord for making me move when that would mess up my
adoption plans that I thought He had given to me! Even in my sin, the Lord
covered me with grace and showed me again that His plans are better than mine.
The Lord has used this past year to teach Stephen and I so much about Himself,
about marriage, and about our hopes for adoption and parenting.
We are now happily at our starting point in the adoption
process. We are beginning our paperwork and working through some requirements
that we must meet. We are so so so incredibly excited! We have started
fund-raising for our adoption and have already seen the Lord bless it
tremendously. We know there is a long journey ahead of us but we are just happy
to be starting!
What have been the biggest struggles/joys?
The biggest struggle has to be the waiting. It truly hurts
my heart deeply some days to have no children filling our home. I long to hold
them and see their sweet faces. It hurts to have to wait and wait and wait. I
know that the Lord is using this time for such good and that we must cherish
this time in our lives where we have so much extra time to devote ministry,
marriage, and to service to the Lord. But the waiting is hard and the waiting
hurts. But friends the Lord knows my heart and He is able to heal all that is
broken. And most importantly, the Lord is all I need. I don't need to adopt or
get pregnant or ever have any children at all, I need Christ! My identity is
not tied up in motherhood, Christ is my identity. So I cling to that and I
wait.
The joys even as we wait are ever present. I am continually
overwhelmed at the love our Father has for us as we learn more about what He
has done for us through our adoption! We are blessed beyond belief with sweet
friends and family who encourage us, pray for us, and give financially to our
adoption. Also, this calling to adopt places us in this sweet little community
of families who have or are adopting and we experience joy after joy as we see
others bring home their children and we watch the healing that takes place in
little hearts that are placed in their forever families. Additionally, we long
for a future joy that only the Lord knows the time and face of!
And lastly, what I
wish for you to know about adoption:
The thing I am continually trying to communicate is that
adoption is not a second best option. Some people have been confused because I
certainly have grieved the loss of pregnancy, but not because that is the
“best” way or the only way to get children of your “own.” The child we will
adopt will be our own, absolutely. There is nothing that will make them not our
own. We aren't shopping around for the most attractive, healthy, or easy
option. We are adopting the child God has predestined for our family. We will
accept whatever that means just like we would if I were pregnant. If we start
to think of adoption as a substandard way of bringing children into our family
then what does that mean for us eternally? Are we not really God's own? Do we
not really have the full inheritance of Christ or are we second best to the
first children of God, the Israelites? No, that's absolutely not true! God sent
Jesus so that we could be adopted as sons with the full inheritance given to
us. Adoption was always God's plan for me to join His family and it has always
been His plan for Stephen and I to adopt our children too. I am certainly not
telling you that pregnancy is second best either but they are truly both best
because they are what God planned for each family.
“For you created my inmost being; you knit
me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because
I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full
well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made
in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for
me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139:13-16
We may not
yet or ever know the womb in which our child is knit, but we know the knitter
and He has already ordained all of their days. We can trust that and hold on to
that truth!
Adoption is such passion for us and such a joy to talk about!
Thank you for allowing me to share a little with you about what the Lord is doing in
our family! Please feel free to follow our story at http://sandridgesdaybyday.blogspot.com
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