Why Adoption?

Photo by Season Moore (thank you, Season!) 

We love the life God has given us.  Of course, we have struggles and hard times, but it is such a joy to live this life, to walk with Jesus through the ups and downs.  Matt is a real estate appraiser and owns Matt Harmon Inc.  Lisa helps Matt with accounting for his company and she loves being at home with the kids.  We love our local church, Redeemer PCA and are so thankful for the community there that shows us over and over again the love of Christ.

Why adoption?

God cares for widows, orphans, and the downcast.  "Father to the fatherless.... God places the lonely in families" - Psalm 68:5  (also see James 1:27).  Throughout scripture, God makes provisions for the downcast and asks his people to provide them with extra care.  A big part of the church today should be caring for orphans where they are and working with parents to help them to have the resources to parent their children.  So while adoption isn't going to end the orphan crisis in the world, for one child adoption changes everything.

We feel like this is the time in our lives that God has uniquely prepared for us to adopt a son.  This wasn't a quick decision, but it has been a longing in our hearts for years.  Here is some of the back story that might help you see our hearts and God at work in this.

Our Story
We were married in October of 2003.  We loved the idea of adoption because of our own spiritual adoption and because we had seen friends adopt and it was beautiful. We made a plan - we would birth two children and adopt two children.  We went about life. Matt had a couple of jobs, we bought a house.  We birthed two sweet and amazing baby girls. Leah was born in 2006 and Molly was born in 2008.

It was then that we started to look into adoption more.  As we pursued it, we more and more felt like it wasn't the right time.  We felt that God was calling us to not adopt at that time.  We wrestled with it and prayed about it, but at the end of that time, we had peace about it.  And, we enjoyed supporting friends through their adoption process over those years.  

We got pregnant and in 2011, Daniel was born!  He has been such a sweet joy to our family and we can't thank God enough for this blessing.  Once Daniel reached 18 months, we felt like it was time to look into adoption again.  We spent a couple of months praying about it without actually contacting an agency.  We wanted to be sure that this was where God was wanting us to go before we just jumped into it.  In July 2012, we both were in agreement that it was time to start talking to an agency and getting details.

We were open to domestic or international adoption.  Our heart was to welcome a fatherless child into our family - and it didn't matter as much where that child was from.  We have always had a heart for China, but we also saw that there might be needs within our own country and other countries.  Our agency helped us look at which countries we could qualify for and what the process would look like.  At that time, we ruled out domestic adoption because we don't feel called to adopt an infant or an older child (and those two categories would be the options domestically).  From there, we narrowed it down to two countries.

One of those countries was China, which thrilled us, because we love China!  However, to adopt a "healthy" child from China right now is a 5 - 10 year wait..... but to adopt a special needs child is 9 to 12 months.  We had not considered special needs and wouldn't have chosen it on our own, to be honest.  But, as we looked over the list of special needs, talked to friends, prayed, and searched our hearts, God was at work.  Our hearts broke for the children... alone, and not wanted because of a "special need" they have, a special way their Creator made them.

To be honest, it has felt heavy and hard as we have considered caring for a child with extra needs.  He may need surgery.  He may need therapy or extra care we weren't planning on.  That extra care may cost more money.  He may not immediately be running around our backyard with our other three kids and those are sometimes hard thoughts.

Yet this boy will be ours!  He will be a Harmon.  And that is a picture of the Gospel (the good news) - that we weren't lovely or perfect (or even close to that), yet Jesus came for us, bought us, and welcomed us into His family.  Adopted as sons.

We believe God is faithful and that this is where He has drawn our hearts.

We can't wait until the day we get to bring home our son and make him ours!!