The Bean Family Story:
Matt and I began dating when we were in ninth grade and
after 6 years, we finally got married on July 30, 2000 in Ridgway, Colorado. It
was a beautiful ceremony filled with laughter, love, family and friends, and it
was the day that our dreams would begin. Throughout dating and the first months
of our marriage we talked about our hopes and dreams, which always included
children. We agreed that we would like a smaller family of 2 children, so that
we could give them the proper attention and focus at the level we thought they
deserved.
After a year of marriage we decided that it was time to
start looking towards creating a family and began executing our plans. We had
decided that adoption would be wonderful, but we would like to have a
biological child first and see what happened from there. A year went by with no
pregnancy and we decided to seek medical help for our situation. Prayer after
prayer, crying, pleading, trying to make the Lord certain deals, invasive
medical procedures, too many fertility drugs and four years later there was
still no biological child. Originally, when we decided to pursue medical
treatments we felt the Lord’s hand upon us to make a “plan” that we would abide
by. A plan that included a stopping point for the medical procedures. We hit
that point, just like He knew we would, and we gave up our hope of a biological
child and our control over our lives. Up until that point, the Lord knew that
we would not completely surrender our plans for His plans and we had to be
taken to the bottom emotionally and physically beaten down before we would turn
our ears towards Heaven.
We churned the idea of adoption over in our minds and in
prayer for a year before we actually made that leap. On September 27, 2007,
Matt’s birthday, he told me that he was 100% ready to adopt and was ready to
sign an adoption application. The heavenly peace that came from making that
decision seemed natural and peaceful, almost like a peace that I had never felt
before. The decision wasn’t conflicting in any way shape or form. We began praying about where we
should adopt from and led to Asia. Yet, again peace entered our hearts.
We started our adoption journey by talking to a friend that
adopted from Kazakhstan and we
were off, but it wasn’t a blessed move. It was then that we
stumbled across another small country, actually a sister country to Kazakhstan,
while talking to another adoptive parent whom had just adopted their son from
Kyrgyzstan. Just as we had prayed
for direction, the Lord lead us to Kyrgyzstan and the peace returned. We
submitted our application to our agency in December 2007 and our homestudy was
completed by January 2008.
On March 23, 2008 we received our referral of a beautiful 5
week old baby girl. She was absolutely gorgeous and perfect in every way. Some
say that love at first sight doesn’t happen, but we are living proof that it
does. Peace and joy was instantly
granted and we knew that the desire to have a child had been met by the Lord.
I was able to travel over to Kyrgyzstan for two weeks when
she was just a mere 8 months old. Our time together was short, but tremendously
blessed. No one, unless you have had been in the same situation, will ever know
the pain of leaving your only child in an institution. All you can do, is
mentally turn your head and some of your heart off, in order to walk away from a small defenseless child. It is truly not an
experience that I would recommend. Our road has been chalked full of hard
situations and many missed milestones.
Four years later and with a ton of heartbreak, our journey
is not over yet, we are still relying on The Lord to answer prayers. Financially we knew that we would only
be able to do one adoption and that it was possibly our only shot at being
parents. Our dream is still a
flicker and we ask for your continued prayers and support, for us and the rest
of the Kyrgyz 65.
We are clinging to our belief that because the Lord has
brought us this far, He will take us all the way.
~Pamela and Matthew Bean
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