Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: "Go to the great city of Ninevah and proclaim to it the message I give you" Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Ninevah - Jonah 3:1-3
The journey that Bobby and I are about to begin is our modern-day version of Jonah. For those of you who may not know the whole story of Jonah, God asked him to go to Ninevah to proclaim His message. Instead of doing what was asked of him, Jonah ran in the opposite direction, paid money to get on a ship set to sail across the Mediterranean to what is now present day Spain. The Lord sent a great storm, and the sailors set out to find out who caused the storm. When the sailors realized Jonah was running away from the Lord, they threw him off the boat where he was swallowed by the whale. Ultimately, the whale vomited Jonah on dry land, God again told Jonah to arise and go to Ninevah, Jonah complied, and the city of Ninevah turned from evil and saw the greatest revival of a city in history. The best part of this story is that God held steadfast to His plan for Jonah and continued to tell him until Jonah got the message.
So Bobby and I are not Jonah, and we have not been swallowed by a whale. If you consider a whitewater rafting trip accident as a violent storm, then we're good on that, but we have been trying to hide from God's plan for us. The topic of adoption has been brought up several times the last five years. Each time we'd discuss it for a while, but decide to set the idea aside ultimately trying to ignore it. Eventually the topic continued to come back again and again. Bobby and I heard the word of the Lord, but chose to ignore it just as Jonah. We weren't running away from a city though, we were running away from adoption. The great thing about God is that He does have a plan for our life, and He continued to tell us what that plan was over and over and over again. He did not give up on us or change His plan even when we tried to intervene and take over. He was steadfast that we were to adopt.
This decision is not something that we took lightly. Like I said, the topic of adoption has been rolling around for years. Today we took the first steps by contacting one of the local adoption agencies. The woman who we need to talk to was away from her desk so we left a message (isn't this typical on something so important and life changing). By no means are we experts on adoption, and truthfully I know there is so much more information that we probably need to have. We are excited, scared, nervous, and truly have no clue, but we know that God is calling us for this task. I don't think we are people that can look out and see the whole process. Instead we see things as very small steps. We will continue to pray and hope you will as well for us as we find strength in each step and the waiting, for the birth mother who will be giving a child the most selfless gift through adoption, and for God to continue showing His presence. With this first step, we are obeying the word of the Lord.
