Adoption Story: Ben and Amanda

Sometimes songs provide a soundtrack to seasons in our lives. When Ben and Amanda found themselves unexpectedly in a story of heartbreak and infertility, they clung to Jesus and a song from All Sons and Daughters; Wake Up. Within that song, and their faith, they found that God had not abandoned them through it. He was walking with them the entire way...

Testimony. We hear about testimony in church on a weekly basis. God healing cancer, repairing marriages, mending relationships, miracle babies, bringing success to businesses, you name it, God is moving in our lives daily. We hear about these amazing testimonies all the time and my husband and I started to feel lost in the shuffle. We had been trying to start our family for over 5 years. We tried naturally, we tried Clomid, we traveled, we tried IUI, we got a puppy, we tried natural again, we bought a big house, we traveled, we tried IVF, twice, and along the way we conceived and miscarried 4 times. With every positive pregnancy test we thought we would be able to share our incredible testimony but only to quickly realize that again we would miscarry and we had no testimony to share. Was God forgetting us?

WE HAVE SEEN THE PAIN

THAT SHAPED OUR HEARTS

AND IN OUR SHAME

WE'RE STILL BREATHING, 'CAUSE...

We shared our struggle publicly, educating friends and family. We hoped that by sharing our story that it would help others who might be suffering silently to know they are not alone and to help everyone else have a better understanding of this disease. During our journey people would say “why don’t you just adopt?” like it was something as simple as buying a new pair of jeans because the current ones had holes. It felt so hurtful and dismissive – to the infertility community AND adoption community. At the time, we just didn’t feel like that was the way God wanted us to build our family. God was not leading us that direction. It wasn’t time yet.

We traveled the infertility road for five years and decided to take a year or two break after our last IVF and miscarriage. We began to wonder if we were meant to be parents. We started our break in July of 2016 getting back to regular life without injections, meds, special diets, therapy, etc. It was heavenly! We reconnected with friends we hadn’t seen in years and began dating each other again. It was bliss!

Then in December 2016 things started to change in our hearts. My mom learned of a little girl who was urgently in need of a family - her parent were not able to parent - and she needed a forever home. On that call we, for the first time, said yes to learning more about adoption. We wanted this little girl to have a family by Christmas and thought maybe it could be us! But boy 'o boy we were naive. Adoption is not that simple we quickly learned. But instead of shying away I spent days and weeks secretly researching the adoption process. Reading stories that can only be written by God himself for so many families. My heart started to change and I remember getting this overwhelming feeling that we needed to step faithfully forward in God’s plan for our growing our family; and this plan was adoption.  He spoke into my heart that something special was coming and we needed to step forward in obedience. The time was now and it felt so frantic!

WAKE UP WAKE UP

WAKE UP ALL YOU SLEEPERS

STAND UP STAND UP

STAND UP ALL YOU DREAMERS

In January of 2017 I finally shared with my husband that I had been doing endless hours of research and soul searching and my heart for adoption had grown. I shared that God has a plan for our family and we needed to move forward with adoption. My husband was a skeptic at first but as a good husband does - he trusted me and said yes to learning more. 

In February we agreed that adoption was going to be a big journey with many unknown twists and turns but learned that there are people out there that can help you navigate the waters.  After some research, enlisted Susan with Christian Adoption Consultants to help us. CAC has been such a life saver during this process. We knew the infertility world like the back of our hands but this was all new to us. Susan helped us step forward in our faith and we got the process of our home study rolling in March. After delays and frustrating months getting our home study completed we finally had approvals in July to officially become a waiting family.

It didn’t take long to start receiving situations and we actually said yes to our first one in early July! It was thrilling, exciting, and such an adrenaline rush! It felt so right. After a few days wait we learned that we were chosen by the birth parents for a boy that was due to be born in early December 2017. Our hearts were thrilled and we praised God. Excited we shared the news with family that we were finally finally going to be parents. Unfortunately, only 6 weeks after we matched, the birth parents started to feel connected to their sweet baby and they decided to parent. Our match failed and we were crushed. We questioned God. We questioned if we were forcing the growth of our family by pursuing adoption. But somehow we kept hold of a mustard seed of faith.

WE HAVE SEEN THE HOPE

OF HEALING

RISING FROM OUR SOULS

IS THE FEELING...

My gut began to tell me that if that match ended so early it was because something bigger was coming. God gave us a feeling of peace to trust in his plan to grow our family and continue to step forward in faith. So we started reviewing situations again but none of them felt right. Would we ever feel that organic feeling of “this is it” again when reviewing a situation?

We saw about 20 more situations before that familiar feeling returned. I remember I was feeling emotionally drained with this process when I opened the email from Susan that describe another potential situation for a baby in Florida that was due in about 30 days. I got through two paragraphs before I called my husband in tears telling him that I had the feeling again and he needed to review this immediately. We had to present our profile and he quickly agreed. We decided to keep this a secret from our family because we did not want to let them down again if we were not chosen. The emotional roller coaster our family had been on with us over the years was wearing on them – four miscarriages and a failed adoption was not just difficult for us, it was hard for everyone. We decided we could wait a few days before telling them anything.

WE ARE DRAWING CLOSE

YOUR LIGHT IS SHINING THROUGH

Then category 5 hurricane, Irma, happened. And the few days we were supposed to wait turned into two weeks. We didn’t get very much information during this delay and fear of another loss began weighing very heavy on our hearts. It felt so right when we submitted our profile and yet we felt it slipping thru our fingertips again. In isolation because we still hadn’t told anyone. Did we not hear God right? We kept trusting though because we just felt like we needed to see this one through. So we kept waiting.

Then we started to get updates as we headed into the 3rd week of waiting that the expectant mom was reviewing profiles. Hope began to build. The very next day we then learned that she was actually scheduled for a c-section and baby was coming early. So we prepared for a potential life changing call that night! ….but it didn’t come. And we kept waiting. I remember telling my husband that she decided to parent and we just needed to move on and we agreed that we would give it the weekend before doing so. How do you let go of something that feels so right though? Well, you don’t.

ALL THAT YOU REVEAL

WITH LIGHT IN US

WILL COME TO LIFE

AND START BREATHING...

The waiting was incredibly difficult and I cried tears of heartbreak and frustration not but 10 minutes before Susan called us with the most life changing news. Our baby girl had been born, was healthy, and we were chosen by her incredible birth mom to parent her. She picked us. We stood in our kitchen with dinner going cold just crying in disbelief. We still had not told our families this was happening so we began making calls to our parents letting them know that we had been keeping a huge secret and we were heading to Florida to meet our daughter! We took a day to prepare and buy all things baby girl. Then we got on a plane with one way tickets to Florida praying that this really truly was God’s plan for our family.

I remember tears streaming down my cheeks as the plane took off out of our home state praying that we would not come home empty handed. I listened to All Sons and Daughters - Wake Up - on repeat until we hit our destination. Quoted throughout this story these lyrics captured everything about our journey so perfectly.

HANDS UP, HANDS UP

HANDS UP ALL BELIEVERS

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS, CARRY IT ON...

We spent 3 weeks in Florida waiting on ICPC bonding with our baby girl who grew in our hearts for so long. We always wondered if it would feel foreign when we held her for the first time but honestly as soon as we laid our eyes on her our hearts responded with the feeling of “oh, there you are, we’ve been waiting for you.” While in Florida we had the great honor of meeting our daughters brave birth mom and grandfather during our time in Florida. We truly reveled in the feeling that we all already knew each other. To our surprise, conversation flowed so easily and we planned our next visits to continue bonding and staying in touch. 

Looking back, God could not have written our story any more perfectly. While adoption was not our plan A, we left no stone unturned and know in our hearts that our path to adoption was purposeful and led by God. He knew exactly who our daughter was long before we did and he knew exactly how to lead us to her.

God's hands are all over our adoption story. Our daughter’s birth mom and I share the same birthday month and baby girl shares the same birthday month as my husband. She was born 9 months after we stepped forward in faith to pursue adoption. Faith. Such a common thread in our journey so much so that I tattooed “walk by faith” on my arm as a reminder that God is always shaping our lives and we have to trust in Him. Faith is the name her birth mom chose for our daughter.

This is God. This is our testimony. He is always with us.

HERE WE STAND OUR HEARTS ARE YOURS, LORD

NOT OUR WILL BUT YOURS BE DONE.