When I met Ryan and Kelly for the first time in a busy coffee shop, I was immediately struck by their hearts for adoption, their strong faith, and their unwavering commitment to follow God's call for their family. I especially loved watching as they faithfully prayed for every expectant mama they heard about. Today Kelly shares the story of their adoption, their family, and God's faithfulness.
When we felt God calling us to adopt in the summer of 2013, some friends of ours were adopting through Christian Adoption Consultants. After our research, we felt that it would somehow be less expensive to pursue adoption with a local adoption agency. We finished our home study in about 4 months and then waited. And waited. And waited. We did not hear anything from the agency. Not a single word. We would check in with them about once a month to ask if our profile was being seen or if they were currently working with any expectant mothers. After roughly a year of our monthly check-ins, we were ever so kindly told that it would most likely take a very long time or a miracle for our family to be matched with one of their expectant mothers. We are a slightly older couple with three biological children and most of their expectant mothers were choosing young childless couples. The agency in no way deceived us or gave us false hope; we just didn't realize the limited amount of expectant mothers that the agency would be working with.
After talking with our friends who had signed up with CAC now a year before, we decided to meet with Susan face to face so we could get a grasp on what their organization was all about. We shared our hearts for adoption over some coffee and we realized we were so sad that we did not choose to work with CAC from the beginning. Once we had the facts, we soon realized that using a local adoption agency was in no way less expensive than working with CAC. Because our home study was current, there was really nothing for us to wait on and we began receiving situations to consider the very next night after signing up with CAC. What a difference from hearing nothing from the agency to having expectant parents and an unborn baby to pray for!
We received information about many expectant mothers during our time of waiting to be matched. We felt so honored to be able to be made aware of these situations and to pray for these women and their unborn babies. Such a privilege! We were presented to many expectant mothers and we were matched with an expectant couple after about 3 months with CAC. That couple ultimately decided to parent this little girl. We were heartbroken, of course, but we love the fact that the little girl was prayed for so fervently before she was born and we will continue to pray for her and her parents.
We decided to start seeing situations again fairly soon after our failed match. We were made aware of many situations. Some we asked to be presented to and some we did not, but we prayed for them all. We heard several no's during this second time of waiting. Not knowing what God is doing in our lives behind the scenes is always so hard, but we continued to pray for these women and babies, knowing that was our role for now in this world of adoption. And Susan was always there to remind us that God is in control when we were in the trenches.
We were matched again about 3 months later, this time with a little boy. We were able to build a wonderful relationship with the expectant mom and her family over the course of the pregnancy. We were thrilled when she asked us to be in the delivery room with her. After sitting in a hotel room for 2 weeks after false contractions, our little Griffin Jude made his appearance on our 16th wedding anniversary. We spent the next two days in the hospital with the birth mother and built such a special bond with her.
It's so awesome to see how God has written this story in our lives. He really has been in every single detail. We don't feel that our time with the local agency was wasted time, as it was all part of God's plan to bring us together with Griffin. But if you are having any doubts at all about signing up with CAC, please take our advice and just do it!
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