My heart for encouraging the adoption of older children

It is 3:45 am and I can’t seem to get the older children waiting for their families off of my mind. God won’t let me. They are on His mind, too. How about yours?

What comes to your mind when you think about adopting an older child? Are you afraid to think about it? Do you think that it is not something you can handle? Do you have younger children and think that you can’t adopt out of birth order? Do the stories of difficulties others have had in their older child adoption come to mind? All of these things came to my mind before we decided to request our 8 year old son one year ago. I have been there. I understand.

We have had Zach home for 8 months now. It’s long enough to know that he is a precious gift. It is not long enough to know that we are past any possible difficulties that may still come our way. But, no matter what we have in store, we have been blessed and will continue to be blessed by our willingness to lay our decision at the sovereign feet of our Savior. The world would tell us that it is not wise to adopt an older child, especially an older boy. The world would tell us it is not wise to bring home a child older than our youngest. The world DID tell us “you and Steve are going to have nothing but trouble.”

Thankfully, we listened to the wisdom of our loving and merciful God, instead, and said “YES!” when He asked us to make Zach our son and brother. God’s wisdom is more compassionate, more loving and more complete than that offered by the world. The world only looks at the past and projects statistics to make us doubt the value of these older children and our responsibility for them as Christians. God gives us a future and a hope, and the knowledge that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

We could have let the fear stop us. We could have let fear for our youngest daughter get in the way. We could have listened to others as they proclaimed nothing but doom and gloom over our decision. Knowing that this adoption could cause struggles for the children we currently had, we could have decided that we didn’t want to “do that to them.”

As I consider what we “did to them,” I can honestly say that we opened their world to a life of obedience to God. We took a step of faith and answered God’s call with the only answer we could give, and we did it with joy, not fear. We taught our children to see that God has a plan and a purpose for our lives that sometimes goes against what the world says we should do, but that God’s desires for us should come first. We taught them to value people more than things or “conventional wisdom.”

God wants to set the lonely in families (Psalm 68:5-6). Who could be more lonely, or more in need of a family, than an orphan? This verse does not exclude older children, or older boys. This verse does not say that the families into which He will set them must only have older children, if any. This verse is all inclusive of every lonely child, regardless of their circumstances, age or gender.

Adopting an older child is not for everyone. I am not implying that it is something everyone should do, nor can every family handle an out of birth order adoption. And I am not trying to imply that our story will be yours. Every child and every adoption is different. My plea -- my heart's cry -- is for more people to consider whether or not God is calling you to one of these precious children. The called and chosen of Christ are those who need to recognize their inestimable worth. If we don't, who will?

If God is calling you to be open to adopting an older child, please honor Him by looking into it. He wants you to get past the fear and trust Him wherever He takes you. Please request the files of some older children, look into their eyes, and understand that they simply want a home and a family to love them unconditionally. God will be with you. He always is. He loves you too much to give you more than you could handle. And He loves these children so much He is asking His chosen to care for them. Will you, if that is what He wants from you?