Beginning the process

I am a 28-year-old stay-at-home mom in Massachusetts. My husband, also 28, is a senior software engineer, town moderator, and level 2 Magic: the Gathering judge. We have a "perfect" house (on the outside at least), live in a beautiful neighborhood on about 40 acres of wooded land, and we have the "perfect" family--a 3-year-old girl and a 1-1/2-year-old boy. We also follow a Risen Lord who really is perfect.

In the years between our decision to add a child to our family and our daughter's birth, my husband and I learned that God's plan for our family does not always match ours. For a long time our hopes and prayers for a son or daughter went unanswered. Shortly after we started the process to adopt a healthy infant in the US, we discovered we were pregnant. We were delighted to become biological parents to a daughter, and then a son. Within hours of discovering our second child's gender, the congratulations on having a "perfect little family" started. I've always wanted a big family, though--two kids isn't my idea of perfect. I wanted brothers for my son, sisters for my daughter, and sisters for my son and brothers for my daughter.

It seems, though, that like when we were waiting for our firstborn, and like when we first started the adoption process, God again has plans that are different from ours. I believe God is calling our family to adopt. Now that we have some parenting experience under our belts, we don't feel like we need a baby or a child who is perfect in the eyes of the world. We feel that our family could--and should--be enriched by the addition of a child or children with special needs.

We have decided that an independent adoption of a child or children with special needs is the best fit for our family. Three times I have felt called to a child--first to a sibling group of 3, second to a boy with genetic and craniofacial differences, and third to a little girl. The first two times, God closed the door. But we are hopeful the little girl who God has put in my heart will be our daughter.

At this point in time we can't publicly say much about the little girl we are hoping will become our daughter. If we can't complete the adoption, we don't want her to be on hold and other families not to be considering her. In her country, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, children with special needs are often placed in adult mental institutions between 3 and 6 years old. Often they do not survive long there. She is listed on Reece's Rainbow, which specializes in finding homes for children with Down Syndrome, and also helps connects children with HIV and other special needs with families who want children. So feel free to take a look around and guess (and maybe fall in love yourself), but we won't be able to tell until our home study is complete. Except for you two who figured it out. And you two that I told. And you that I told. And her, but she won't bother reading this.

New beginnings happen every day. We are at the very beginning of our adoption process--about to submit our application for a home study. We hope this is going to be a new beginning for a certain special little girl too!