***Part 3*** We stared at the children on Reece’s Rainbow for almost a year with hearts longing to bring them home but weak with fear.
During this time, I began to read the blogs and follow others on Instagram who had adopted children with Down syndrome. Among those, I followed Kecia @lovemakesmiracles_ story of adopting Noah. As I scrolled through Instagram one day, a picture popped up that Kecia had posted of a baby boy, “Domenic,” from Reece’s Rainbow waiting in an orphanage for his forever family.
I cannot explain how or why, but at that moment I knew Domenic was our son. I showed the picture to Jim and the kids. This was the first time we seriously considered moving forward with adoption.
Every one of our children wanted to adopt and eagerly volunteered to make the necessary sacrifices that would go into it.
God had already given us His answer in James when He told us to look after the orphans and when he put the desire in our family’s heart to adopt and gave us the home to bring a child into.
We just needed the courage.
By that I am not referring to the courage to adopt a child with Down syndrome. We never thought twice about the issue of Down syndrome. We know that there is nothing scary about it and many others don't realize this. People within these children’s countries will NOT adopt a child with Down syndrome so if others from outside do not do it, they have no hope. This made us feel even stronger that our family had been called to this specifically.
We discussed the fact that if a child with Down syndrome was dropped off at our house needing to be adopted we would do it in a second. But this wasn’t a happy, cooing child being dropped off at our door in a cute little basket.
That is when we realized we would cross the ocean or give our lives for every single one of our children, and the only thing holding us back from doing the same for a child, ‘our boy’ in an orphanage in Ukraine, was fear, and God is so much bigger than any of our fears. He determines the number of stars and gives them all their names. He is powerful and faithful and we needed to trust in Him with the details of the plans.
"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us."
Ephesians 3:20