Episode 106

On the heels of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we turn our attention to something that needs the spotlight more than it actually gets: adoption. The picture of adoption is most vividly portrayed in what God accomplished in salvation. Every single person whom Christ has saved is adopted into the family of God, made co-heirs with Christ. What a beautiful picture of adoption! In this episode of the Removing Barriers, we are exploring adoption in a 2-part interview. Pete and Erin have adopted their son and hope perhaps in the future to adopt again, and they have agreed to sit down with us to give their unique perspectives on the issue of adoption. It is our hope that these interviews will stir us to consider this great work, not only as the obvious answer to many of the ills in our society, but also the possibility of it as Christian duty.

Because it’s an emotional event for all parties, except maybe the Lord. It’s emotional because it should be, because this is a human life that’s being entrusted in your hands.

Thank you for tuning in to the Removing Barriers podcast. I’m Jay. And I’m MCG. And we’re attempting to remove barriers so we can all have a clear view of the cross.

This is episode 106 of the Removing Barriers podcast. And in this episode of the Removing Barriers podcast, we’ll be sitting down with Pete, and we’re going to talk about Christian adoption, a father’s perspective. Pete, welcome to the Removing barriers podcast. Thank you very much. It’s great to be here, and I appreciate being invited. Right. We always happy when someone places in their busy schedule because we know that people are busy.

Hi, this is Jay. MCG, and I would like for you to help us remove barriers by going to removingbarriers.net and subscribing to receive all things removing Barriers. If you’d like to take your efforts a bit further and help us keep the mics on, consider donating at removingbarriers.net/donate. Removing Barriers, a clear view of the cross.

All right, so you adopted a son. Tell us about the process, just the story. How did you go about adopting? Why did you adopt? Sure. Let me start with the last first. My wife and I had always intended to adopt as part of our family. We’ve been married, let’s see, that’s right about ten years. We had been trying to have children, but for a variety of reasons, the Lord was just not making that happen. We were not seeing progress. We were doing a great deal of soul searching. And the Lord just one day I was working nights at the time, but I woke up in the middle of my day sleep cycle. Just the Lord broke my heart. And I was weeping on a level that Erin’s only seen me do it a couple of times. And it was just the sort of thing where either the timing of having kids or it’s one of these indescribable things where Aaron had that look on her face of, this is really serious. Pete’s very serious about it. And so about two or three months later, we did a little bit of research into adoption. About two or three months later, aaron reached out to a friend of a friend. We got the name of a particular adoption agency. We weren’t really particular. We just wanted to go through one that Christians we knew had used before and to get the process started. We got the paperwork and everything done in near record time. It was amazing how fast it happened. I think it started in April. By the time June rolled around, we were starting to get emails from the agency saying, hey, we know your paperwork is not completely done yet, but there’s a child in need. Take a look at this package. What do you think? Do you want to pursue this. And you talk about a punch in the gut to where desire becomes reality, when it’s no kidding. Here’s a picture and a package on a child. Do you want to adopt them with no really specific time frame in terms of if they could come to your house tonight and be your child? And that kind of was a wake up call. But for whatever reason, we sought the Lord’s guidance. We sought guidance from friends and counselors, and we just did not pursue those options. We waited until we got all of our paperwork done, and that was kind of the big reason. And then literally from April, when we started the process, until September when we met our son at the hospital, and within ten days, we finalized the adoption and brought him home. It was just an amazing, speedy event. It was a miracle. There’s no other way around it. And there are miracles compounded with other miracles, which we can make this a three hour podcast or a 1 hour podcast. I can tell you all the amazing things the Lord did, getting us from the decision breaking me down to where, okay, this isn’t just something that we are going to talk about anymore. We’re going to put rubber on the road and take action.

All right! So let’s not rob our listeners of some of those miracles. Give us one or two of those miracles of the Lord work out. Sure. The miracle of the timing. On a Friday, we had a phone interview with a birth mother. She did not know exactly how far along. She wasn’t sure her pregnancy, but she knew it was close. So we had a good phone meeting. It just turned out that I planned a bucket list trip that day. So we were literally in the parking garage of an airport. I was about to get on a flight to go do a bucket list trip, a scuba trip, and then come back within about 36 hours. I planned it for that birthday, and Aaron told me, as soon as you start planning this trip, the Lord is going to put something in your path. And sure enough, I literally got out of the car, went to my flight, flew, and conducted the scuba trip. So that was Friday. Monday we got word from the agency that she had picked us that, yes, indeed, she wanted Peter and Aaron to be the parent of her child. That was Monday. Our son was born the following Monday. Oh, well, within ten days, we went from no kids, no prospect, no nothing to this little wrapped burrito in our hands taking him from the hospital. Like, done. We were walking out. We had a son that were responsible for the care and feeding and protection from everything that comes with being a parent. That in itself is a miracle. How things just compacted together and how the Lord provided the night before. As I said, he was born on a Monday. We saw him on a Tuesday. We got word Monday night at 530. We were on the opposite side of the country. We literally got word at 530 in the evening, baby’s on the way, got in the car, drove all night long. I wish I had known that I was going to be up for 37 hours straight, cause I would have napped more because drove through the night, arrived at the hospital, went to the newborn ward. It was a small hospital. Saw him, and it just hits you. It was all God keeping us safe through the night. As I drove, Aaron tried to drive a little bit, but it was towards the end and we were in a city she wasn’t familiar with. So I basically got a half hour break. I got back on and the Lord just sustained us that whole way, keeping us safe. We were taking some very rural roads is a miracle. I didn’t hit a raccoon. I didn’t hear anything was in our way. The Lord kept me alert. The Lord kept us safe, and the Lord got us there. So we got to hold our son. We got to see our son 13 hours after he was born. This doesn’t just happen because there’s so many other coincidences that it’s not a coincidence, it’s the Lord. And only the Lord can do this.

Incredible. What are some of the blessings of your adopted son? You’re on the other side of the adoption process now, and you’ve had some time to count those blessings. Can you share some of those blessings of your son with us, please? Absolutely. Literally, just the past two weeks, it makes me closer to our Heavenly Father. I’m from a broken home. My parents divorced when I was very young. I don’t know what a dad looks like. At the same time, my own father is near the end of his life, and every time I go visit him, kind of help out around and everything else, I’m just profoundly hit the fact that I don’t know this man. There will come a time where I presume I’m going to have to eulogize them. I’m going to have to get Cliff Notes for what to say. My son shows me my role as a father, and that reflects my understanding of our Heavenly Father’s love for us. I’m working through a fantastic look right now, disciplines for a Godly Man. Relatively short chapters. It was given to me, one of our churches, one of those retreat books that you get to four or five years after. And it just is the sort of thing whereas I grow as a mature Christian, I’ve been saved for about 21 years now. He’s still teaching me. My son is teaching me as he grows older, and I watch him grow in terms of maturity, in terms of emotional maturity. He still got a lot to learn, but so do I, because there’s no master plan, save the Bible for how to be a good dad. And if there’s one thing I want to be known for, because I’m filling it in as I go along, is to be a good dad. And that’s where, again, adopting him has just taught me tremendous things and humbled me when I make mistakes. Yeah, definitely fatherhood, definitely have a way to expose your flaws so I definitely can conquer.

Yeah, I like you, I didn’t grow up with a dad. So we are equally in the struggle. So tell me, how does your son change your perspective or outlook on adoption? What really it has done? It’s opened the door. As I said, we always planned on doing it and Lord Willy, we’re going to do it again. The intent is this time, once our kids kind of reach their teen years, we’re hoping to adopt a group of siblings, keep them together. And the reason why we want our kids to be a little older is so that they have that little bit of maturity to come alongside these kids to reflect the Lord and help them with their own spiritual walk. Because this is a mission field, it’s nothing to say that the church should be leading this. If every church in America took it upon themselves to support one family, only one, not one a year, not one a decade, one, there’s no adoption problem in America. Really? Wow. This is a church issue now. Adoption is an ongoing thing because babies were born today without a home. And now that statistic was true ten years ago. I don’t know if it’s still true, but it’s the sort of thing where it should be the church’s mission. It should be in every church’s budget and every church’s legal framework and constitution that this is a mission field to reach out, and certainly especially into the Fostering area. The church we were previously members of took Fostering on big time in their area and made a huge impact in their region. And that’s just one piece of how adoption has changed my perspective. It simply is the thing you don’t talk about. But as soon as somebody in the crowd hears that you’ve adopted someone, there’s at least one, probably more than one, who says, oh, yeah, my brother’s adopted, or I’m adopted, or yeah, we’re thinking about adopted, and they want to have a conversation about it. I don’t want to say it’s a taboo topic, but it’s just one that for some reason there’s two extremes. People are they’re not sure what to say about it, or they’re fusive and want you to be the poster boy for adoption. And obviously, just like so many other things, we want to be the happy medium in between to where we reflect the benefits of it, the joy of it, the challenges of it, and the reality.

Yeah, so much ways to go and dispute, because if you talk about that, you say adoption should be a ministry, an outreach ministry where these kids can be adopted into Christian homes and hate the gospel and get saved and grew up and to serve the Lord. The first question in my mind is why do you think that more Christians are not doing this? Why didn’t more Christians are not seeing this as a mission field to reach the loss? That’s a tough question and I imagine it depends upon every single person. Each individual has their own reasoning behind it. But I think it comes down to a couple of things and I’ll kind of rattle them off. First of all, just outright fear and uncertainty. Not feeling led, not having information available is on one hand, two, the amount of paperwork, rightfully so, that needs to be done to get a background check, to get a lawyer because it is a legal transaction, heaven help us. We had to go sit in a judge’s chambers. And the judge, His Honor, was absolutely delightful. I’ve sent him a couple of notes and pictures ever since our son was born just to kind of reaffirm because it’s probably the nicest thing he did during that day was to put our son with us and then the rest of the day he’s seen criminals and civil suits and the worst and I dare say that was the better parts of his day. But it’s a simple fact of the paperwork and the commitment in terms of that. And lastly, certainly not lastly, but significantly, is the financial aspect. I’m not going to share the amount that it cost us. It was a lot, but it was the easiest thing in my life to do. Amen. There was never a question that when the time came because Aaron kind of ran all the paperwork and I was working a pretty intense job and she would call me and say, hey, I need to come over there and pick you up at lunchtime. I don’t take lunch. I usually work through lunch. And we need to go get something notarized and overnight something because they need this paperwork immediately. And God love her because the reason why there was a miracle to getting the paperwork done so quickly was she was driving it with a single minded focus that only a godly woman can. Because it takes commitment to get everything notarized signed and everything else. And then more than once we had to go to the bank and write a check, cashers check or money order, whatever the particular institution required. And I tell you, it was the sort of thing where the folks on the other end of the counter gave that hesitant look like, oh, I don’t know if we can release these funds today. Well, yeah, you do because you have my money and I want it. And it’s the sort of thing where even that itself is an opportunity to grow spiritually, to say there’s an opportunity here for me to get grumpy. There’s an opportunity for me to be impatient. There’s an opportunity to not give God the glory, but we need to do this. It’s your job to do this. Can you help me do this and move forward from that? And it was a learning lesson on my part, but that last part again, this is where churches come in alongside with well researched couples, couples that are committed, couples that have a grounding in the Lord, that have a background, that are ready to adopt. Because again, you take my example of zero to kid inside of eleven days. You have to be ready. The phone could ring, especially at fostering because fostering happens at all hours of the night. Hey, we’ve got a kid who’s coming out of a bad home, you’ve got your house set up. Can you please take this child to protect them from whatever the situation is and go from there?

Yeah, I guess the only thing on my mind you talk about protection. The only thing on my mind is the horror stories that probably all of us have heard. A lot of folks maybe don’t want to get into adoption because they feel like the adopted kid is not as loved as the biological kids or the foster kid is abused, or people going the system for the financial gain of whether it’s claiming someone else on their taxes or the state paying them to foster. Dive into that a little bit. And what are your thoughts there? Sure, I have only my own experience, so anything I say in terms of guidance for that sort of thing, we approached this from the perspective of there were going to be our kids, they were going to fulfill our family, they were going to be heirs to everything we have. We have a rich heritage of love on my wife’s family side with praise the Lord. My kids have eleven cousins and two I don’t know what you call children of cousins, second cousins, where we get them with them at least a couple of times a year. We get to run around and play and build and there’s no daylight between my son and everybody else. There’s no stigma. Nobody’s ever mentioned to him about him not being a member of the family. He is our son. When I pass, he will be my heir. He will inherit everything just as a man should, but also as the older man, which kind of puts the whole onus on him if he wants it. In terms of raising someone else’s child and kind of getting other people’s problems, we have not seen that because first of all, we’re geographically separated significantly from where the birth family is from. And secondly, while we do have a method of communication and we do share in this day and age in technology, there’s no such thing as a fully closed adoption unless you go to Antarctica or something because even then they probably find you on Facebook or Twitter or something or whatever’s next, whatever future technologies come out, there’s a way to look it up. At the same time, the birth family is content. We keep in touch. We provide at least annual, if not every once in a while, a picture of him. He’s growing up, he’s doing well, he’s healthy. Hey, take a look at this. Not as frequently as we expected, not as frequently, but we’ve never received any signal from the birth family that, hey, they want to know more about him.

Certainly one of the greatest joys we have, and it’s a great joy of mine. My son confessed to faith in Christ a couple of months ago. So we just rejoice that he has saved he is relatively young, he has a lot of growth to make. But it’s the sort of thing where we long term see this as we hope that when the time comes for him to graduate from high school or whatever, if he wants, we’re never going to force it on him because that’s the sort of thing where we can’t speak for how he feels and I’ll talk to how he feels in a minute about that. But it would be the greatest joy for him to invite his birth family to his high school graduation, to his college graduation, to whatever other major events in his life later down the line. But it’s going to be his decision in terms of how he feels about it. One thing I can understand and one thing I am preparing myself for ever since he was born is a little bit of anger and frustration towards that point. Who are they? They didn’t want me. And that’s where when he answers questions, we always direct, we always frank, we always loving in terms of well, there’s only so much he can understand at this point in his age. We explain as best we can. Here is the situation, here is why you came to live with us. We love you. You’ve only known us as your parents. Our parents are the only grandparents he’s ever known. His cousins, our nieces and nephews are the only cousins he’s ever known. And I don’t say he’s got nowhere else to go. This is us, this is our family. Good, bad, otherwise we worked through it. We understand things. And this is sort of I can understand where he might have some deep seated frustration and anger later down the line that he has to work through. And that’s where we pray that the Holy Spirit helps him to see how we’re all adopted into the family of Christ and that he makes that connection for his spiritual growth. And then he looks back at and I’ll never claim to be the perfect father. And I’ll never claim that we are perfect parents. We make mistakes all the time. But we approach it with an honesty and a love that hopefully he carries through to wherever his family leads. In the future.

Yeah, let’s kind of shift gears a little bit and go into a little bit of a touchy subject in the society today, because, of course, the Bible doesn’t teach that we are different race, but societally, when someone look at you, they will say, okay, you’re a white man, and when they look at your son, they will say, he’s a young black boy. Did you receive any backlash for adopting someone that is of a different, quote unquote, race? It’s an interesting question. I don’t think it is controversial because it’s something we are going to face more and more as he ages. Just days before yesterday, we were at a playground, and my children don’t know a stranger. Someone comes to a playground, my son will organize into a running game, and my daughter will force herself to be in charge of everybody. But at 1.1 of the kids asked, hey, are you adopted? And my son handled it in the best possible way, I mean, better than I ever could. He was frank. He was honest, and it was like, yeah, but you’re black. And I mean, my family is from a Norwegian background. It would be difficult for me to be any more white, literally. And that’s not a problem because we bleed red and we love the same father. Has there been stairs? Sure. But usually it’s been kind of, this is different, what’s going on? And then there’s usually a smile because my son doesn’t pick up on it. And my wife and I, we are just tickled to death that people notice us as a reflection of, look how good we are. Never that we were blessed to be put in this position. We’re honored to have been selected to be our son’s parents. It took a lot of work. It’s going to be more work as he grows older. There will be hard questions asked. There will be hard questions answered. There was one particular time where there was an individual selling his CD. I always admire people who have enough hustle to record music, and they go literally right outside a shopping mall and, hey, I’ve got this great CD. You want to buy it? You want to buy that sort of thing? And he came up to me and he wanted me to buy it. It’s not the kind of music we would have in our home. But he said, oh, well, your son, when he grows up, he’s going to love this music. He kind of said it to me as I was walking away, and I turned around and said, hang on a second. Now, again, you may not get it from looking at me, but I used to be something of a dancer. And I said, hey, wait a minute. What makes you think that I don’t want to listen to it? And then it’s blood, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at that point, my children were starting to pay attention, and we say to God, he’s just like, okay, have a great day. Thank you very much. We will not be purchasing your CD. Thank you. And we walked off. And it wasn’t that it was a negative consequence and there was nothing problematic about it. It was just this is something, it’s different. It raises questions. I’m not naive enough to think that the questions won’t get more pointed and potentially more hurtful towards my family, but the Lord has given us wisdom to face things like the stare, like the random question that we see is good natured. And we always want to assume the best when people ask these questions and share. Let me tell you what great things God has done through my son. My gosh, he’s keeping me young. He’s smart, so smart that my wife and I with homeschooling, we look at each other and go, what do we do about a gifted program for home schoolers? We could have a young Einstein or George Washington harbor on our hands. What do we do? What do we do to enable his gifts? And that’s why, as recently this morning, I said, he’s in the second grade. He will have time for his gifts and talents to emerge wherever the Lord leads him and wherever the Lord leads us. We just hope and pray to reflect that love for his glory from our family and beyond anything else. Hey, this is touchy. We’re doing this to relieve ourselves of some kind of burden. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Well, praise the Lord, because we know that there are a lot of people in the world today who they don’t share your same skin color. And they seem to think that because they share such a superficial trait with your son, that somehow they know what your son needs or what he’s really like. It’s in his blood, that type of thinking, that tribal sort of thinking. And adoption is such a picture of the grace and the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ in our lives that we can use that as a springboard to share with these people who have a warped and faulty understanding of what people fundamentally to show them Christ and to show them the gospel. I’m thinking of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who has adopted children into her family. And now, I don’t know if they put her through the wringer in terms of her adopted children because she’s conservative or because they simply don’t like the idea that someone of her so called color would adopt someone that is of darker complexion from a different country. And so many people were saying hurtful things such as, oh, you’re only doing that to, I guess, to virtue signal or to put on a front as though you’re a good person when you’re really not type of thing. And that can’t be further from the truth because the benevolence of our God in adopting us when we were wretched and sinful and making us a part of his family, granting us his riches and his righteousness, and he traded his beauty for our ashes. And adoption is a magnificent picture of that. And for people to either overlook or just not be able to see that is just incredibly sad. What an opportunity to show them what Christ’s likeness is the heart of the Father, what the true gospel message is. I’m just so thankful that the Lord worked on your heart and brought you to your knees and caused you to open your heart and your family and all of your riches. Everything that you have to offer, you’ve opened up to your son as well as others down the line that perhaps you already mentioned that you want to adopt as well. So praise the Lord for that. Now, in light of everything that I said, how adoption is such a picture of the mercy and the grace of God in our lives, was it your intention, both you and your wife, was it your intention when you adopted to make that statement or was it more just wanting to show the love of Christ to the least of us, those of us in need?

Sure. And that’s where it needs to go. A little bit back into the process of the adoption, the agency we went with had us fill out. It was a voluminous questionnaire, and it’s the sort of thing where if you are not going into it with a positive attitude, with eyes on the Lord, that you’re doing something beyond just what the laws of man are governing. It would be really easy to get offended. The level of specificity they were asking, do you only want a newborn? Do you only want a newborn of this color or that color? I mean, it goes down the line. And then afterwards we had this is, again, one of those lunches where we sat in my wife’s car the entire lunch hour. I just came down and we had this teleconference with the agency where they were going through every single question, and I think it was more like 90 minutes than 60 going through it. And at the end, they basically said, now look, if you say that, you’re open to any color and we basically said we wanted a newborn and we were okay with up to a year, I think is what we said. But they basically told us, now look, if you say you’re open to any color, you’re going to get a black child. They basically guaranteed that. And they said, now listen, people who are adopting one, if they leave it open, it gets placed quicker. The more specific you get, the more refined. Again, it can be a little offensive, but I’ll just share one of the questions. Where would you require the mother to attest and submit to drug tests for and literally specifically which hard drugs? And they literally went out of their way to. Specify that we have to assume that they’ve all done marijuana. And I’m just saying what a terrible thing to assume that, because, one, they’re not going to request that because it’s going to turn off the young mothers, and two, it’s not really verifiable to where they could be comfortable. And anyway, it’s a longer thing. But one, we’re pretty sure, just based upon what the adoption agency told us, again, this wasn’t a Christian adoption agency. It was an adoption agency that Christians had used and recommended and we had prayed over it and literally, the Lord knows exactly what child we’re going to get and what their health conditions are or not. The Lord has them all picked out. For us to needle into the details was limiting his glory and what he could do. And we went into that fully understanding that we very well could have a special needs child. We understood fully there could be some kind of medical issue from birth, from the day we took custody, we understood the spectrum. And it wasn’t just their color, it was medical history, hereditary issues, everything else. Obviously, one of the things I have to become familiar with is sickle cell, and that’s later down the line, but that’s now a reality. That would be something. But it’s just a matter of if there’s a statement to be made, it’s a proclamation of our Lord’s grace and glory that he accepted us, that for all the things that I’ve done wrong and I’ve done some horrible things in my life, that he sees past that and that he gives me an opportunity to still be his son again. It goes back to kind of the naive point of view where we just didn’t want to get bogged down in the details for what we did and didn’t want for we don’t want a cookie cutter child. We wanted our child, whoever that would be.

You are listening to the removing barriers podcast. We are sitting down with Pete and we are getting in a father’s perspective on Christian adoption. We’ll be right back.

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How does adoption work in the US? What are the requirements? What is the process? Can you explain to those listening, those who may be interested in adopting or perhaps those who are just curious about the process of adoption. What is it like to adopt a child? As an American citizen living in the US. What’s the process? How do you qualify? How do you adopt a child in the US. Sure. And it’s a long question. Please correct me if I don’t hit all your points. Okay. The biggest thing is to be prepared, and there’s all kinds of books to be prepared in terms of emotionally. There’s great books on helping financially. There’s a great book on my shelf. You can adopt without debt. The initial requirement is it’s a tremendous gut check to make that decision to commit to the process, because it cannot be done halfway. Because right up until I walked into the hospital, it was all like, oh yeah, this is really nice. Oh, this is really nice. And then when I walked in the hospital, I looked at my son, and this is real. And it was, we are taking him with us today. He will be ourselves. We didn’t know medically if he was okay or if he was ready to travel. It turned out he was perfectly fine. My gosh, he’s a tank. But it was the sort of thing where you have to mentally prepare yourself for the spectrum of the goods, bads, and others as you enter into the process. And it’s a gut check just to get to the point where you’re reaching out to an adoption agency, depending upon the adoption agency, depending upon the method by which you do adopt. And I can only speak to direct adoption, not fostering to adopt or anything like that. But I would imagine it’s a lot simpler, yet more complex for the foster to adopt with us. It’s pretty much just filling out all the paperwork, and there’s a lot. There is a lot, and they’re very specific process. And I imagine different adoption agencies handle things better or worse in terms of streamlining the process, walking you through it. We had a specific person assigned to our case where we could call her with questions when the time came for us to take custody of our son at the hospital, the birth mother had her consultant as well. So we had ours, she had hers, and they were both the advocates of that individual. Ours was the advocate for my wife and I. The birth mothers was an advocate for the birth mother, which is absolutely right, because the two of them would get together and have a phone conversation that we were not involved in and then come back to us. And I would say it was a negotiation, but it just made things easier at the hospital to where we got a call from our advocate saying, hey, she’d like to see you again.

I’m jumping ahead a few steps. One of the parts of adoption is what’s called the hospital plan. If you get to the hospital, if it’s a newborn or whatever, I presume that a custody exchange takes place this isn’t in the parking lot of 711, or it shouldn’t be. I would hope heaven helped. But this is a significant step in both parties lives. And that’s where the level of questions again, much like that questionnaire about the kind of child you want to adopt, the age and everything else, how things go down at the hospital. Does the birth mother want to see her child? Does the birth mother want to see you with her child? Does a birth mother, when she leaves the hospital, want to leave at the same time as you? Or does the birth mother not want to see you, not want to see you with the child? And every other permutation that you could possibly think of was asked, and it was so detailed. And even then, we have kind of a curveball thrown at us, just that the next day, we got a call from our advocate, and she said, hey, the birth mother’s advocate thinks that you ought to take her out to dinner or ought to meet her for dinner. And we kind of like, for me, again, my job is the dad biggest job is to protect my family. My son, though, legally, was not yet my son. He was under my protection. So now it’s, okay, what does this mean? And we basically called up our advocate, called up our lawyer. Yes, there’s a lawyer involved, but that’s because there has to be, and said, what’s going on? This is news. We didn’t mind it. But here’s a dumb question who pays? And long story short, it was very simple. It actually wound up being something that advocates had come up with, like, hey, the birth mother might benefit from spending time, and the birth mother spent more time on her phone just texting. She was relatively young, but went out. We had a very nice dinner. She saw our son. Everything was comfortable. We parted ways.

Yeah, but it was the sort of thing where, okay, you have to be ready for curveballs throughout the process. That was probably the weirdest timeline that I could imagine, because we literally our son woke up every 45 minutes to be fed the first night. That was something that we were expecting but not fully ready for. So we took shifts. So we got 90 minutes of sleep at a time and then fed him and then went back. But we were still getting new into the parent process ourselves and then have this piece to it. But also tied to the adoption process is background checks. One, there’s a national agency check in terms of criminal activity, that’s a given. Two, there’s a home study, if I remember right, there were three separate meetings with our home investigator. Two were in their office. The first and last were in their office, if I remember right. And then the middle one was at our home, to where they just check the suitability of the house, make sure everything is good and that sort of thing. So that’s component to it, I touch on the financial piece. The financial piece. I’m really glad that about eight years earlier had got involved with Dave Ramsey and become debt free and got our money organized and had a plan. I didn’t know what I was saving for, but the Lord did, and the Lord got us ready. So there’s a financial aspect and there’s different wickets that you hit throughout the process. It’s not like you write one check and you’re good throughout the process and stuff pops up. There’s the legal process that I kind of talked about where there is a lawyer who doesn’t represent one part of the other, he’s your advocate because he or his client in front of the judge, where ultimately the adoption is settled upon. Of course, there’s the legal process where you go in to see a judge. For us, it was in the judges chambers early in the day. We were asked some questions by our lawyer, which our lawyer prepped us for, which is basically like, tell us about your background. What kind of work do you do? What’s your educational background? Why are you adopting? Kind of the basic stuff. I don’t even think it was 20 minutes that we were actually talking with the judge. In fact, I think we spent more time taking pictures with the judge than we did where my wife and I were. I believe we’re under oath answering the lawyers questions in front of a judge. If I remember, it’s almost certain that there were more because we were allowed to have family members in the room to witness the ceremony, and some had come out to witness the ceremony. And then, of course, everybody wants a picture with the new grandbaby and everything else. So adoption process, the commitment, the paperwork, finding the agency financial aspect, the legal aspect, the transportation aspect. From what I understand, at least, our point of view for us, we adopted in the United States, we adopted the state far from where we were living. So we had to be prepared to one stay in an area where we didn’t know the area. We never been to the area. And then to follow the legal counsel that we had to relocate to a different area just because that was where the courthouse was that we were going to be doing our resolution for our adoption. So there’s a great deal of flexibility that needs to be prepared for, and mental preparation. Ours went as smooth as silk. I don’t know how it could have gone any smoother or quicker. In fact, I spent a great deal of time catching up to be ready myself to become a dad.

I don’t know how anyone would handle it to where they actually have custody of the child and then the birth mother changes their mind. And the only thing I have knowledge on this is in America, different states have different requirements in terms of how long or how short the mother has the right to change their mind. This is where it enters into the legal aspect. This is where certainly anyone considering adoption, if you’re concerned about that, they should talk to an attorney who’s knowledgeable about adoption and in terms of which states have shorter timelines and which states don’t, which states permit the birth mother for signing over parental rights before the baby is born, which do not. Because this is knowable and it’s not that you’re setting yourself up for some kind of legal custody battle. That’s the last thing you want to do when a child is at hand. What you want to do is go into this as ready and as knowledgeable because it’s an emotional event for all parties, except maybe the word. It’s emotional because it should be. Because this is a human life that’s being entrusted in your hands, and you had it. I got it now. I got it now. I’m responsible for 100% of the things in this child’s life. If this child throws rocks through the neighbor’s windows, I’m the one who’s going to pay for it. If this child develops a better mousetrap, I don’t know. Here’s cancer. Great. That’s to the glory of the Lord, I’m just a sultan. If our child leaves another child to Christ at camp, hallelujah. It’s an open book. All we are is enabling opportunities. And the Lord has been so good. He’s been so good in so many ways, and he’s not done. And it’s been a tremendous adventure, and it’s been a roller coaster. The adoption process. And I’ll pause for additional questions for clarification. I’m running my mouth at this point because I could go on the process itself. It was humongous at the time. But as soon as we left the courtroom and got in the car and drove back to where we were going to with our son and we had so many fun things along the way with him when we were kind of waiting for the appointed amount of time to be resolved. Made the first Walmart run for clothes. Took him to the first Waffle House. Watched a professional football game. Basically. I scared him quite a bit when a specific team made a touchdown and we need no enthusiasm. I’m telling him I got a picture of me kind of looking over and pointing at them. But it’s that spectrum of emotions, that spectrum of challenges, that spectrum of things that you need to mentally prepare yourself for. And it’s knowledge. You can make yourself ready, as ready as possible. We certainly could have been ready, but we were fairly well prepared, and that we knew the biggest X factor was that decision timeline. What was the window to where the birth mother could change her mind? If that kind of sums things up. I’ll pause there if you have further questions.

Sorry. Well, let me ask you this. When you say adoption agencies in the United States? For my personal clarification, is there like one government agency and then a bunch of private agencies? Or how would you describe the network of adoption agencies in the US? And I can’t really answer that because we basically went with the first agency was recommended by someone we knew that was a committed Christian, what they used like so often you use a shepherd list, right? Hey, who’s adopted? So how do you do this? What agency did you use? And I don’t want to say we were just very fortunate, but everything seemed to have worked out very well, very smoothly. And in terms of the government adoption, the only role the government had was at the local level based upon where we finalized the adoption for our son. There was no federal government involvement to my knowledge. Okay, so it was purely just in order to make this legal, it needs to be recognized by the state, not the county or the country. It was purely the locality of the state. Now I’m sure there is some kind of nationwide national adoption foundations run by the US. Government. I’m just not aware of them. Same thing goes for states, same thing goes for cities. I imagine Pentagon the size of the city, I just don’t know because we went with a friend’s recommendation. And the Lord blessed our ignorance, our faith in him because everything worked out perfectly smoothly.

So you mentioned some stuff like the cost involved with adoption and the paperwork and getting lawyers involved and stuff like that. Would you say those are some barriers for people or some difficulties of adoption? I wonder if more people will adopt if it was a little bit easier in some sense because I’m thinking I have had four kids and I have not had anyone come to my home and check if my home is suitable to bring a baby. I’ve not had anyone come and check and see if my finances are in order for me to have a baby. But when it comes to adoption, they do all these things. Do you look at it as a good thing, a bad thing, or barrier difficulties? Well, one, some level of rigor I think is necessary for the birth mother. I’m not just giving my child to some person. Absolutely. It’s a barrier. There are barriers that can be streamlined. And this is where individuals or families or whoever wants to adopt should avail themselves first of their church to one, any church worth of salt that supports missionaries should at least be conversant with the adoption process. Any church and I’m not saying it should, I’m just a huge advocate of churches helping to defray the cost. There’s all manner of ways of defraying the cost to adoption. The biggest one is, like I said, utilize the church. Second of all, and of course it depends upon the religion because one organization that I continually hear about in terms of whenever I hear adoption is Catholic adoption charities, which I mean, I don’t know the ins and outs and ups and downs, but I guarantee you they’re not paying the full. They get a volume discount, I guess is the way I would say, because they do it so frequently. And that’s where it comes down to having some kind of administrative support from the local church. Realizing this is as natural as having a kindergarten program or child care or summer camp is, hey, our families want to grow. We should enable that. And I’m not saying they cover the whole cost of everybody who asks because that’s absolutely not possible. What is possible is a screening process to where family person. Whoever who wants to adopt comes to the church or the deacons comes to church pastor and they discuss it to either defray the cost or as I’ve said earlier. This is a church issue and I’m not signing up churches everywhere. Certainly not ours. To fund an entire adoption because there is a certain rigor and you get what you pay for. So the family should be invested in it, but it certainly should be not the extreme expense that it is. Now, I see a meme all the time on Facebook about the pro life movement to where adoption should be as expensive as an abortion. I think that’s apples to railroad tracks in terms of comparison because we are talking about saving a life, protecting a life, cherishing a life, not just to the point of birth, but to the point of forever eternity, Lord willing.

But yes. To get back to your question, it’s a long way of saying yes. Are they barriers? There are barriers. I don’t feel that any of the barriers I had were unreasonable. I did have a little bit of a back and forth with our home study in terms of some of the questions they asked what would I do if my son came home and said this when he was 15? The very simple answer is you are assuming you go from not having a child to their 15 years old, right? Our child will know what we believe because children are lie detectors. Children are God’s spies because they’ll tell their Sunday school teacher, they’ll tell the pastor, guess what daddy said when he hit his hand with a hammer? Guess what they’ll learn? They know more is caught than taught. I’m living proof of the boy. But to that end, that’s where when people ask, what would you do with 15 years old? He comes, he’s like, well, they’re going to know. They’re going to know what we believe. They’re going to know we love them and we will always be waiting to forgive whatever wrong they do. And there’s nothing they can do to not be our children anymore. So let’s get to the brass tacks. What you’re doing is counter to what we believe. You know why it’s counter? To what we believe. You’ve been raised to know that. You’ve been raised to understand that there are rules, but those rules are fences against danger that is outside of the fences because we live in a dangerous world that is just waiting to eat you up. And if you think I’m kidding, we can just drive through whatever part of the city that’s most scary and say, hey, look, you can do and think and follow and subscribe to whatever point of view you want in your life. That’s between you and the Lord. But between now and whenever you’re going to hear my unvarnished opinion on things and Lord willing, it’s exactly what he would have me tell them that makes sense.

You mentioned that you went through an adoption agency that was recommended by a friend and so you don’t have much experience in terms of the different types of adoption agencies and all that sort of thing. But do you know generally, maybe not specifically because I’m sure it varies by state, but do you know, generally rough estimate, how long is a child allowed to stay in the system as they wait for adoption? Or typically, how long does a child wait in the system to be adopted? Sure, I don’t have that information. Okay. Because we signed up for a one year old or less for a baby. That was kind of a zone. And like I said early on in the process, we’re given a couple of opportunities that we did not select for a variety of reasons. But in terms of how long children are allowed to be kept in the system, I presume until they’re I mean, this is only what I see in media until they’re 18 in which they’re aged out of the system, which heaven help us, we have foster care. I mean, people coming out of prisons for shorter prison stays are given a halfway house to where they’re prepared to enter society and given the tools and everything else. But from what I understand with foster kids, if they age out of the system at age 18, hey, good luck. Wow. Which to me is I don’t know that for sure. But beyond that, in terms of how long people stay in the system waiting for adoption, I mean, it could be a long time and I just don’t know. And that’s where, again, kind of circles back. My wife and I, hearts are burdened for these kids who are older, and that’s where we’re seeking the Lord’s wisdom and guidance and preparation for expanding our family again, when the time comes, and that’s not going to be for a while because we want our kids. And again, this goes back to my job as protecting the kids. And my wife and I have a different point of view. My job is to leave, protect and provide for those that are in my house, my family, in my family, those that we’re considering to add until they’re in the family, foster kids. If we foster, however things work out, if it works it out at all, they’re going to come in with experiences that need to be reconciled with our beliefs, right? And I’m not talking about the first night. I’m not talking about the first week. I’m talking about three months in, and there’s a toy that one of them wants to play with or something. Somebody gets on somebody’s nerves. I want my children to be able to come alongside them, to reflect them, but also react in a way that is going to be safe, that is going to be nurturing, because they’re going to be part of this ministry as well, of expanding our family. Again, Lord willing, and God is able, and we certainly don’t want to limit Him, but it’s the sort of thing where, for now, as we walk forward with that and we start thinking about having that conversation at the appropriate time, we’re waiting on the Lord, and I’m confident because he’s done it enough times. He’ll whack me over the head clear enough with something so obvious as he did when he broke me, when I just had this unbelievable emotional response and feeling that it was time and the need and the clock was ticking and we were missing an opportunity. And I know that was to the Lord, and I know the Lord will lead us here. And that’s where, again, it goes to.

How long kids are in the system, I don’t know specifics, and I certainly hope to reduce it just a little bit more. My heart goes out to families that have kids at homes where they’re taken out of a situation where it’s not good for the kids and then having to return them. And we had a family at our last church that did it all the time, and they had four or five children, as I recall, and the mother’s heart just broke every time, like, for days. And it wasn’t going back to a bad situation. It was just letting them go because you can’t do it and not have this person to remember your family for, however briefly on in the house. And that’s where, again, it goes back to the state where you’re legally responsible for whatever the state financial induce they have for you to become a foster parent. I would imagine that however much they give you is nothing compared to what it emotionally costs. Right? But the bigger thing in terms of why churches don’t this just goes by a little bit of, I want to say ignorance, but it’s not part of our normal vernacular within churches like, hey, we have a missions conference. Hey, we’re having a vacation Bible school. Well, family over in the corner having trouble having kids, been part of the church, grew up in the church. And I’m not saying somebody shows up and, hey, okay, here’s a check to be apparent. I’m saying folks who are dedicated members of church, want to have kids, love kids, active, well known, and I can’t list all the criteria. Only God can lead a pastor to the other shepherd to make that call with the support of the deacons or whatever the decision body to say, we’re going to come alongside you, we’re going to help you if you would like, or at least just let the program be known. Hey, we’re going to. And I can understand how that might cause some discontent in the church where there would not be any secrecy about which family got the support compared to other families, because there you go. But I would hope that any church in America could be big enough to realize and appreciate that this is a miracle that we have made. And nothing against supporting missionaries. We vigorously support missionaries. But the big reason why we adopted here in America is because there is a need here in America, and I’m not talking about any other thought other than there’s a need next door, there’s a need in our neighborhoods and go from there.

Yeah, definitely. All right, Pete, let’s sum it up and tell us your heart in the entire matter. Think of your son. Think of the entire processing that we have been talking about during this episode. You have potentially giving your son a life he otherwise would not have had. Compare that to what the survey has done for us upon the Cross of Calvary. You know, the Bible says in Galatians four to seven, but when the fullness of time was come, god sent 40 sons made of a woman, made on the law to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because he has sons, god has sent forth the spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, therefore dawa no more a servant, but a son, and if a son, the ear of God through Christ. And of course, Romans eight, verse 1415 says, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For he has not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but he has received the spirit of adoption whereby he cried above Father. The point there in terms of me giving my son life, he was going to have life irrespective of whether or not my wife and I played a role. We are privileged to play a role being a parent. Honestly. Especially this last year or so. Probably more since I was able to work from home during COVID. Which was just one of those great things where for 14 months I got to wake up. See the kids. Go to work. Come down every ten minutes. Drive my wife nuts with home schooling. Interrupting. Hug the kids. That kind of stuff. And then go back to work. Sure, my son is having a life different from what he would normally have. But that is not going to diminish what God has planned, because as I teach them in Bible class, god has a plan. And it’s perfect. And I’m not a predeterminalist or whatever it is that I’m going to stub my toe tomorrow. And God sees it. He just chooses not to stop me from stubbing it. We get to play a role in his life. We get to see how his gifts unfold. We get to be a part of that. We were chosen to be my son’s parents. And again, it kind of goes back to a little more simplistic, naive role. But it’s the job God has picked me for above my professional job. It’s the job God has given me tools with Christian families to help us navigate through not the big decisions, but the little decisions, the little niceties of being a Christian parent, hey, we did this. You should do this. Or hey, you might think about this, or do you have any idea where to go for this? So, on one hand, yes, we’re giving our son a life as God gives us a life, but at the same time, he’s giving us a life anyway. It’s an amazing experience. Does that answer your question? I’m sorry.

Yeah, definitely. All right, Pete, thank you for joining us on the Removing barriers podcast. It was a pleasure. It was absolutely my pleasure. Thank you so much.

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