Faces With Names

Our meetings with local adoptive families spurred me on! I was ready to research and explore options for adoption. With list in hand, I looked at recommended agency web-sites and prepared to sign on the dotted line with our money, hope, and future to an agency. But that is a very difficult thing to do.

Tim and I both felt paralyzed. We wanted to start, but how? We knew enough to be dangerous...but not enough to really commit. In my aimless exploration, I stumbled upon a web-site called Rainbowkids.com. And that is where I first saw them.

The site exists to help families adopt and specifically tries to encourage families to adopt children from around the world who are hard to place. The site contained great information for families interested in adoption, so I kept clicking around on the site until it asked if I wanted to see pictures of waiting kids. YES, I WANTED TO SEE PICTURES OF WAITING KIDS! And so, I added a user name a password (was I really doing this?!?!) to get a glimpse of children waiting for a family.

I knew this decision could be dangerous...especially when I logged in and saw #1 of some 1,700 waiting kids. An orphan seems like someone far away. A distant prayer request. But this orphan had a face with a name. My eyes softened, right along with my heart. Good thing I didn't have any plans that night.

The photos I saw on my initial visit to Rainbow kids were from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the United States. I learned that disabilities made placing kids extremely difficult. I understood why. Tim and I weren't opposed to a child (or sibling set) with disabilities, but seeing them here with names made that become much more real. What could we handle...were we really up for this?

About two-thirds of the way through, I found a little girl from Africa. I remember thinking, I shouldn't even be pulling this one up...a boy would be much better suited for our family. Then, instead of one African girl, I was looking at an African boy with an African girl. I hungrily read the information....a girl, with a brother, healthy, but considered too old to be easily placed. And then I looked at their birth dates. They were TWINS!

I remember thinking right away, "Don't get too excited, Lana. You are far from an adoption. Keep researching." But I couldn't. After viewing every last one of the 1,700 orphans on Rainbowkids.com, I realized that I had "saved" only two files...the two files from that set of twins in Africa. I showed Ally (Tim wasn't home) and she immediately melted. Not only were they twins, but seemingly healthy, and from Africa no less!

Of course, I told Tim about it when he returned home that night. And of course, he told me not to get too excited because we were a long way off from deciding what direction our adoption would take.

Regardless, I had a set of twins to pray for and they had names: Edmond and Edina (I loved those names!). I didn't care if it was a long shot for these two to join our family, I prayed they would be placed in the family God had waiting for them. (And if that happened to be us, that would be fine with me!)