And the journey begins...

We have had the issue of adoption on our hearts for years.  It was just always something we were interested in.  James' brother Paul is adopted, his cousin adopted a beautiful little girl to add another smiling face to their family, we have watched many friends struggle with infertility, James' sister and her family have fostered kids...the list goes on.  Adoption just always remained something in the back of our minds.  Thanks to God, we were able to conceive with no trouble at all.  We were staggered a bit by a miscarriage in the midst of bringing home three wonderful children.  Aside from that we were blessed and content.
That is, we were content until a few months ago.  We hadn't really ever thought that much about adoption from the Biblical perspective and had only really started thinking about it from the environmental sustainability perspective.  But sometime in November/December, God gave us the kick in the pants that got us on our journey to adoption.  Within the span of a single weekend the concept of adoption came at us on just about every level in our life.  From friends talking about it, to the topic coming up in plot lines of movies or TV we were watching, to a seemingly out-of-the-blue message about it from our pastor at church that Sunday, we got the message.  We needed to look more into adoption as it related to our family.  Before we left church on Sunday James actually told a friend, "God has done everything but take out a billboard to tell us we need to investigate adoption further."  Our friend's response..."You haven't driven home yet."
One of the things mentioned that Sunday as part of the sermon was a class that some members of our church were hosting about adoption.  It was a one-day, all-day class about adoption from a Biblical perspective.  So we signed up, and a few weeks later we took part in the class and learned a lot more about adoption.  We got plugged into the adoption community at our church.  We started reading books, talking to friends and family, doing research online..anything we could to learn more. 
With all that initial momentum you would think we were off to a running start, but after the holidays we just felt stuck.  We had a lot more information, but didn't really know what to do with it.  We prayed about it a lot.  We asked others to pray with and for us.  We talked about it, then we avoided talking about it, then we started talking about it again.  We set up a meeting with a local agency that does home studies and also facilitates local adoptions.  We met with the wonderful owner of Adoption & Beyond here in Overland Park.  She was a font of information and exerted no pressure on us to sign up for anything we weren't ready for.
We solicited information from several local and national agencies, including an adoption facilitation agency (different from a traditional adoption agency).  The people I spoke to at the facilitation agency were extremely gracious and honest.  They ultimately decided that our family dynamic didn't fit with any of the birth mothers currently on their list so politely declined to take us on as clients.  More on that in another post...
After all that, we were still stuck.