The Lytle’s are going to adopt! We are excited to walk through this faith-building
journey. So how did we get to this
point? I mean after all, we do already
have children. Aren’t the people who
adopt those who don’t have children?
Well, here is the story of how we got to where we are now.
September 2011, I started the second year of homeschooling
our two children. Because I was
homeschooling, I had the flexibility to go and do things that I normally would
not do during a typical school year. I
attended the D6 conference in Texas. It
is a really great conference that focuses on connecting parents to their kids
spiritually. I heard speakers like David Platt, Dannah
Gresh, (Secret Keeper Girl), Steven Curtis Chapman and many more. Without looking at my notes, I cannot tell
you what each individual said, but the main take away was that they all said
YES to God. He asked many different
things of them and they talked about their journey. I went away from the conference wondering
what the burdened feeling was inside of me.
It was at that point that I started praying, “Lord, whatever you ask, I
want to obey you. I am willing to do
anything. I don’t know what you are
asking but I am willing.”
November 2011, I went to a women’s conference in
Indiana. A speaker I had never of heard before
was there. Her name is Lysa Terkeurst. She spoke about her spiritual journey from
the beginning to where she was at now and it included adoption. I sat there and kept asking, “Why am I
hearing about all these adoption stories?
First D6, and now here. What are
you trying to tell me? I don’t want any more kids, I can hardly handle the two
I’ve got. Is there a friend I am
supposed to be supporting who is adopting a child? All these types of questions kept going through
my mind. I surrendered and said, “Lord
whatever you ask, I want to obey you. I
am willing to do anything. If this is
what you are asking, you will have to tell Michael, because he sure won’t
listen to me.” I told Michael about the
weekend and about how all this was going along with what I learned at D6 and
with the Bible Studies that I was now conducting at church. We started praying about the direction we
should be heading in. It seemed like
every sermon, every Bible verse, every song on the radio was about taking care
of the orphans and the widows. (Did you
know that November is Orphan Awareness Month? I had never known until this past
year of 2012.) We knew money was an
issue. I had been at home for one school
year and now another half of one and even though we weren’t spending frivolously,
we were going through the savings account pretty quickly. It seemed like the month of November and
December any big household item that could break did and had to be
replaced. We added me getting a job to
our prayer list. We knew going in that
we would do this homeschooling thing one year at a time and evaluate each
year. I knew in my heart that
homeschooling permanently was not going to be an option.
May 2012, I was offered a job as the Preschool Director at Pleasant
View Christian School. I accepted the
job.
Mike’s parents were in from Panama. We talked with them about our thoughts on
adopting. We knew they would be totally
honest with us, and if they thought we couldn’t handle more children, they
would tell us.
We continued to pray about this matter. We told our kids what we were thinking about
and told them we were going to spend time in prayer seeking if this was really
from the Lord. We prayed many
months. Sometimes I even prayed that God
would take this from me. My thoughts
were totally consumed with this and I just wanted them to go away. I could not focus on anything but
adoption.
We had made a plan that we would get through my first year
of work and try to pay off debt before making any final decisions.
July 2013, I completed my first year of work, we have our
debt almost gone and the thoughts are still on adoption. They have not waned one bit. Our kids are excited and so are we. We just completed our application to begin
the process. It will take anywhere from
12-16 months and a whole bunch of money and a whole lot of paper work. As we
read through all the paperwork and contracts, there were a lot of things that
were a tiny bit scary to me. I told Mike that I am not going to fret and worry
over one bit of this. The Lord began this work in us and HE will complete it. We
are leaving every bit of it in his hands.
He will decide which child is best for our family and if that child will
be a boy or a girl between the ages of two and four. Our kids are praying about it as well. Their biggest concern is which one of them
will have to share a room!
We know that right now, in an orphanage somewhere in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, there is a little boy or girl who is without the
love of a family and at this very moment the God of the universe is preparing
all our hearts to be united one day soon.
