Karl's appointment this a.m. went well! With his form filled out, we only have his TB test to be read and documented and our CPR class on Monday night.
I tried to tell the children about the significance of this news and Claudia asked me "how many years do we have left?" It is hard for them to grasp the details and the somewhat uncertain time frame of this family expansion endeavor.
Since we are on the topic of funny things, I guess I'll bring up how the announcement went with Karl's co-workers. Some of the common comments/questions went like this: "well, after this adoption you'll be done, right?" and "are you and Julie Brady Bunch fans or something?" (we're not) and "why do you have to adopt more kids?" and "why are you adopting more kids?" as well as a host of miscellaneous adoption process questions and references to how busy we'll be and if we'll have enough money, etc. Now to their credit, they are all dear and wonderful people. They are all very kind and great to work with and thankfully hold our family in high regard. Most of them have no children and live very different lives then us. I know that all of them will be very supportive during the remainder of the adoption process and beyond. But, our choices seem totally alien to them and they cannot help but be shocked and wonder why in the world we would "burden" ourselves with more children.
The thing I am constantly realizing is that our American culture no longer values children. I mean really values. Quite honestly, Karl and certainly myself did not hold children/parenthood as a priority until we were confronted with Scriptural principles about God's view of child-raising and then a little later with God's teaching about adoption. Anyway, we know that this is counter-cultural (to have or desire more than 1-2 children) and that we would face some resistance. Our little "instant family" is not finished growing and that will be information that is hard to grasp for many people. I suppose it is extra shocking since we are adding to our family in "batches" rather than one at a time.
Anyway, after some hopefully recover from the shock, I pray that we are an encouragement to others to not only value children and larger families but to graft orphans into our families and raise those young ones for the glory of God and to impress the greatness of our God into those children who will them impress them on their children and so on and so forth for generations and generations to come until the time for the Lord's return.
May each one of us be found faithful, dear ones. Not vainly living a life to serve ourselves and to our shame but to live in such a way as to invest our lives in order to further God's kingdom and declare His goodness and mighty ways throughout all the earth.
