Adopting

For the past couple of days I have been looking online at children who need an adoptive family. Let's get some things out in the open here - I have no desire to have kids of my own, biologically that is. I think questions like, "When are you and your husband going to have kids?" are quite presumptuous, incredibly intrusive, and to be frank, RUDE!

Since I spent time in orphanages in Russia, Kazakhstan and working with kids in Peru, I have had little desire to have my own children. The feeling does come and go from time to time, but I think that's more societal pressure than my own desire to have kids.

I have come across numerous 'kids' in my college classes that were fostered. Some were adopted, some simply aged out of the foster care system. Each story has touched my heart in a big way. Some women dream of being pregnant, having a baby, and raising that child to adulthood. This is not what pulls at my heart strings. What makes my heart break is this:

1). Kids who don't have a place to call home.
2). No place to go during Holidays once they are older.
3). No one to share a first love experience with.
4). No one to lean on for support.
5). Those without grandparents to spoil them.
6). Kids who don't have someone rooting for them during graduation.
7). Folks that have no one to teach them how to drive.
8). Those that have on one to encourage them to go to college.
9). No one to teach them how to cook.
10). No one to be there when they get married or walk them down the aisle.

Thinking about these things just break my heart. There are so many teens/preteens that do not have this kind of support. I'm not committing myself to adopt or foster teens at this point, but these are the things that break my heart.

I truly think that God brought these students into my life over the last few years for a reason.