God is Bigger!: National Adoption Month

While there are many ways to adopt, the particular focus during the month of November is the adoption of children from foster care, which happens to be the way that adoption touches my life as a foster-adoptive parent.

Our first "Gotcha Day", November 14, 2005

AdopUSKids shares that of the 400,000 children in foster care in the United States, more than 100,000 of them are waiting to be adopted! They break it down by state and share that in Missouri alone, there are over 13,000 children in foster care, and 1,500 of these children have no identified adoptive parents.

For information about how to foster or adopt, what it costs, support groups, who to contact and how to get started, AdoptUSKids has information, broken down by state. If you're not in the position to foster or adopt, but want to help, there are still steps you can take to help.

My favorite website about adoption is The MissouriHeart Gallery. It was created to allow children currently in foster care, hoping for adoptive “forever families,” to step from the shadows into the light. I love to visit there and look at the faces and information of some of the children currently waiting.

I find it meaningful to look at the faces of these children and pray for them by name. I probably won’t adopt again, but this is something I can still do that will impact their lives. Consider visiting the waiting children page, learning more about these children and lifting them up in prayer.

AdoptUSKids also has a video of young people, who have made the leap from foster care to adoption, discussing the noticeable improvements in their lives. The love and stability provided by their adoptive families made all the difference.

Christmas is coming up soon, so I wanted to share one of my favorite songs about adoption. Here's "All I Really Want for Christmas" by adoptive parent, Steven Curtis Chapman.