Okay, the day for soapboxing has finally arrived. There is a documentary currently on tour throughout the US called Stuck. To recap Stuck in the simplest way possible: it is a documentary about the need for reform of the current international adoption process. I use the word reform here loosely; it needs to be bulldozed and rebuilt from the ground up!

According to the information presented, the average international adoption will cost $28,000.00 and take 3 years! THREE YEARS! Three years for waiting children! This isn’t waiting on a private domestic adoption list for 3 years as birth mother to carefully and methodically browse through thousands of potential adoptive parent profiles in a last effort to supply her unborn child with the best family possible. No, this is three years of waiting for a child who is already waiting! Does this make sense to any of you? Me neither!

I did not want to be the that girl how shares too much too soon in her blogging career, but I have no choice (and I’ve sort of already spilled the beans on my Etsy shop). Husband and I will build our family through adoption. We feel that this is God’s plan for us. (At this time I will not go into the details of why we can’t have biological kids). I share this only to explain why I was so impacted by the film.

We’ve known for about two and a half years that we would adopt. After doing extensive research, reviewing our finances, and discussing our desires in great length we decided that we would adopt through the the County of San Diego; basically adopt through the foster care system. We were interested in adopting an already waiting child or a sibling set. So, this past summer Husband and I spent 3 hours twice a week for 6 weeks taking the required parenting classes through the County. Isn’t it funny that any 15 year old on the street can become a parent without government involvement, but here we were a married couple of 6 years (at that time), home owners, college graduates, responsible citizens in our late 20s and early 30s; and there we were learning how to become parents. Oh, the ironies of life!

By the end of our 6 weeks I felt uneasy. I wasn’t against the idea, but something just didn’t set right with me. Over the next 3 months, that uneasy feeling kept growing. I finally told Husband that I wasn’t sure that I was cut out for the foster-to-adopt route and that I was beginning to lean towards a private adoption. This, of course, would mean increasing the cost of our adoption tremendously but some times you have to do what you have to do. We both have a strong desire to become parents and this looked like the route that we would go. And our baby would be born in the USA, I had no desire whatsoever to adopt internationally…. until I heard about Stuck! I don’t think that I have ever been as immediately impacted by anything in under 2 minutes as I was when I watched the Stuck trailer (below). Right then and there I had a change of heart and felt something stir in my soul.

I then became obsessed with researching as much information on international adoption as I possibly could. I knew that I would need to be well informed before presenting this radical change to Husband (and our families). I felt as though I was being drawn to China and after watching many, many documentaries on China’s one-child policy and the affects of heavy coal pollution (which causes many diseases and deformities) I was sure that China was the country for us. My web-browsing also led me to an organization called Love Without Boundaries (http://www.lwbcommunity.org/) where I fell even more in love with the orphans of China. I plan on engaging in an embroidery fundraiser for LWB in the very near future, so stay posted.

The Stuck tour reaches San Diego today and I am proud to say that we will be attending the screening along with several of our family members and a few friends. This is an exciting time, a nervous time, and a time for us to seek exactly what God’s will is for us as we attempt to build our family. I encourage you to visit the Stuck website (https://bothendsburning.org/) and to PLEASE sign the petition; it literally takes 30 seconds to do so! And, if you’re able to, please attend the screening today in San Diego or download it from the website. Prayers for these children are greatly needed!