a different kind of family planning

i want to invite you into my brain for a moment.

as a woman (and i say as a woman because i know my husband does not think in these terms at all), i like to plan for the future. and to be honest, it gets a little nutty sometimes. i have about a dozen thoughts a day about what our family should and will look like.

it's funny how deciding to have a transracial family right off the bat affects your whole thought process about building a family. we would like to have at least one biological child. but the questions abound: should our biological child be the only white face among our children? is it fair to that child, especially considering that his/her older siblings will both have brown skin? so maybe we'll have two biological children. at that point in my planning, we'd have 4 kids, which used to be my stopping point. but i would like to adopt again. and the questions abound there too: where from? should we adopt two again since the other kids came into our family by twos?

it's a different kind of family planning. and like i said, it can get nutty.

i find that people think the decision to adopt is something that must be approached with much prayer and fasting. and yet the decision to get pregnant is not seen this way at all. i don't think i've ever heard anyone say, "we're really praying about whether we should get pregnant." people just decide it's time to start a family, and they do it...literally.

i think we all have these plans for our families, but we rarely ever consult God for his opinions. i mean, here i am planning for our next two or three or four children, and i have no idea where God will call us or how he will choose for our family to be built. the reality is, we might get these first two home and realize they're all God has for us. we may not be able to have biological children. things might not go according to my plan (we might also end up with 10 kids, which was never, ever in a million years part of my plan).

certainly i think planning can be a good thing for families. we knew God had called us to adoption before we even met each other, and when we got married, we made it a priority. i love hearing about people who want and plan for big families because that decision stands so much in opposition to our culture that views children as burdens. i just think God wants to plan and dream along with us. i think he wants us to sincerely ask him what he has for us rather than assuming we know.

but let me tell you, in all my planning, i have one dream that i hope God will bring to fruition. go watch this.