A Family For Makayla

First, a formal introduction -
We are Todd and Susan Booth. We have been married for over 15 years and have three biological children and one grandchild. Our 15 year old daughter, Amanda, was born with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy. That tidbit of info comes into play later in our story below. ;-)
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Many people have asked us why we are adopting, so here it is, our story... I hope it inspires you to make your own decision to adopt, whether locally or internationally.

It all begins with me, Susan, as a child about the age of 10 years old. I decided I wanted to have three children by birth and one child through adoption. That was quite a decision for a tomboy who never played with dolls but it stuck with me for the rest of my life.

My husband knew of my desire to adopt our fourth child long, long before our third child, Keegan, was born in 2006. I'm not sure if he ever took me seriously (he does now, LOL!) but about 3 years after our son's birth I began looking into adoption. For two years I looked at children locally available for adoption. Though my heart broke for each and every child I saw, my husband and I were never moved to adopt one of them.

In November of 2011, I received a complimentary issue of a home school magazine. I'm not one who reads magazines...ever. I find them to be nothing but glorified booklets of advertisements that I pay for (FYI: I prefer books). But for some reason I opened up this magazine to see what it had to offer. Well, about three pages in, there was an advertisement...for Reece's Rainbow. For those of you who might not know who or what Reece's Rainbow is, it is a fundraising website dedicated to the international adoption of children with special needs. Well, I was looking for a child to adopt, but NOT internationally. Either way, I decided to check out the website because I wanted to sign up for their Angel Tree program to support a child up for adoption and to pray for the children. I started out looking under a section entitled "available to large families". About six children down was the little girl, Makayla. Oh my she was beautiful and her disabilities were akin to my own biological daughter with disabilities. I prayed for her and I continued to scroll down and pray for other children. I didn't go far before my heart was drawn back up to little Makayla. She looked so much like my Amanda! This really played big on me because I always said I wanted to adopt a child that would fit right into our family and no one would be able to point at the child and say "oh, that one was adopted". Now let me say, I have nothing against adopting children of different looks, nothing against it. It's just not what I wanted. So anyway, Makayla broke my heart. Ripped it to shreds. She stood there alone in a crib, age ten years old and weighing a mere 22 pounds. The HORROR! This little girl was as tall as my 5 year old son but weighed 20 pounds less than him and he is of average weight for his age! My heart was dying. I had to close out the website and walk away. I was in tears.

I felt so helpless but I prayed and prayed for God to give me peace and direction. In the two years that I had been looking locally to adopt, I never moved. This was it, time to move. Every fiber in my being was screaming out to me, this is your child! I had no idea what Todd would say. After all, we were only planning on adopting locally. Something that would of cost little or no money. We didn't have money laying around for an international adoption that was going to cost $19,000. I prayed some more.

That evening, my husband and I were going to a Bible class with our Pastor to evaluate it. Todd wants to study the Bible in depth because he has a desire to do something in the area of biblical teaching. As we sat there, my mind was adrift. Though I heard one scripture and it said it all to me. Mark 11:22 And Jesus said to them, "Have faith in God". That was it. I need to rely on God, not myself.

After we got home that evening, I showed Makayla to Todd. I had no idea how he was going to react to my telling him that she was the one. Well, he about went into shock! A lot of praying went on! We even had a meeting with our Pastor to discuss it. We prayed more. We searched the Bible. Then we came to the decision, yes, Makayla is our child.

We praise God as He opens the right doors and leads us on our path. May God's will be done! Amen. Glory to God. We trust in His only begotten son, our savior Jesus Christ.

Praise God,
The Booth Family

P.S.
Check out http://reecesrainbow.org/