Families in Transition, Nicaragua

When this ministry first began, a lawyer advised us to select a name that had nothing to do with adoptions. Even though we were providing support for adopting families, she wisely encouraged us to steer clear of any formal associations with the legal aspect of adoption. Our goal has always been simply to serve the families, leaving the legal work to the lawyers and other adoption professionals.

So we thought about how we might describe families when we typically serve them, and the best phrase we could come up with was “in transition.” They are on their way from being a family of two or three, for example, to becoming a family of three or four. They are growing, “in labor” even, on their way to where they want to go. Transition, and all the messiness that accompanies it, seemed the most accurate way to describe it. Thus, we became FIT Nicaragua: Families in Transition.

At the time, the name felt “good enough” to make us legit. Five years later, we’ve come to realize just how perfect the name is, as our work as grown to include families of all shapes and sizes who are in some state of transition. This might include the more traditional adopting family, as well as…

• a single mom trying to raise her daughter in a world that seems stacked against her
• a family with one parent in jail and the other barely making ends meet
• a couple fostering a little boy for months before losing the chance to adopt him
• a woman who desperately wants to permanently parent the child she has loved for years, but cannot because she recently lost her husband to cancer and the country does not permit singles to adopt

These are all families in transition, worthy of our love and service.