I must turn my attention to the east tonight. My amazing friend Carissa, and her family, are in the process of adopting a darling little boy in Ukraine. Her paper process was very smooth and fast. I attribute the ease of her process, thus far anyway, to the fact that she kept the whole thing quiet.
That is so very difficult, to go through the anxious home study preparation and the nerve wracking, nit picking dossier assembly virtually alone. She did not get to share her joy, her updates, and her fears with the adoption community. It should have been a time of happiness and hope. You see, Carissa has been a well known and effective advocate for many children and families over the past four years. She even worked very hard to raise funds for other adopting families over the summer when she could have been raising funds for her own.
Now Carissa is in country facing some unexpected expenses. I am calling on the community of orphan and adoption advocates to rally around her family. They have only raised $1500 during their entire process and their new child has some medical needs that will require them to have room on their credit cards when they arrive home. We can do better for them.
My original goal was to help them raise $2000 in the next ten days, but I have a feeling that we can do much better than that!
In the words of Derek Loux, "My friends, adoption is redemption. It's costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him."
I can hardly read those words without tearing up. It's the gospel boiled down to the bone. With permission, and with the help of the talented Heather Schlitt, we have put these words on a shirt. This shirt will be yours with a donation of $30 or more to the Lanning family.
