Adoption Story: Ben and Michelle

Adoption is full of waiting. Waiting to know if adoption is the way to grow your family. Waiting for the home study to be completed. Waiting to know if you were approved for grants. Waiting to see situations. Waiting to hear if you've been chosen. Waiting for a baby to be born.

But what do you do when the wait is much longer than you anticipated? What do you do if hurdle after unexpected hurdle comes up and you wonder if adoption was really the right way to grow your family? What do you do when you wonder if this was really the best path for you?

Today Michelle shares their long journey of waiting. How she wrestled with never having a promise from God that a baby would be at the end of the wait. And how she learned that following God and being obedient in the midst of it was exactly what her heart, and her family, needed.

Photo credit: Jen Moore Photography

As I sit down to write our adoption story, I wonder where to begin. Do I begin in third grade as my best friend of the year, Angela, told me about living in foster care? Do I begin as Ben and I sat at Cedarville University in a lounge talking about how many kids already needed homes? Or do I begin seven years ago when, after Nathanael’s birth, I had an emergency surgery that reminded me that I didn’t need to get pregnant again to have another child?

All of these are great places to begin. They are all part of our story. There are countless other moments that we considered adoption before acting on it. Ben once answered a survey saying if I were famous it would probably be for running an orphanage. Our hearts have been willing for a long time. However, I think I should start with the first adoption I really knew; being adopted by God. You see I was born into a sinful world, with a sinful family, and with a sinful heart. Jesus came and lived a perfect life and laid down his life so that I may become part of his family. He died to pay for my sins and adopted me into his family. Feeling love from someone who chose me and sacrificed for me, they are the real reason we could keep trying. If I didn’t tell you about this adoption, our perseverance wouldn’t make sense. 

We actually began the work of adoption four and a half years ago. We signed up with Susan at Christian Adoption Consultants, to help navigate the process of adoption. Four and a half years is a long time, but we didn’t get far into the process before deciding to pause it when several traumatic events happened. We needed go through some healing first before we would have time to work on the adoption. Through my own healing I decided to become a Biblical Counselor along the way. We decided to stop putting life on hold for tragedies or hardships and just pursue adoption in the midst of life.  

The next year and a half of waiting held more trauma with extended family divorce, a sibling having a stroke, a near adoption, a failed adoption, and family members’ still birth. And in the midst of it all a world wide pandemic and race protest going on in the background.  

Through all of this I had decided to try to breastfeed an adopted baby for the sake of bonding and for the best nutrition available for him or her. This itself was a hardship. My body took a while to adjust to the medicines and I had some unpleasant side effects along with other struggles. What I didn’t know was that  I began pumping the very week our daughter was being conceived. I pumped five to six times a day for the next eight months without being matched to ax expectant mom and baby.  I struggled on and off wrestling with if I was even supposed to adopt. Every time I prayed and was really down, I felt God assure me to ‘keep going.’ He never promised me a baby or assured me that the end result would be nursing, but he asked me to walk this road. Learning to walk a road without a known destination is hard.  

Finally we got a call that we thought was "the" call.  We were matched with a baby boy already born. I was so excited!  We packed in a hurry waiting to hear a final go ahead. But we never got that final go ahead. The mama had decided to parent. We prayed for her and accepted that this was yet another no or not yet.  

This is when I really had to surrender my plans. I no longer had hope we would adopt, but also did not feel released from the daily work of pumping. I cried out to God about it and once again said, "I will follow where you lead." I wanted assurance that we would adopt and that this pumping was for my baby, but I didn’t get that. I learned to do everything unto the Lord. My pumping, my paperwork, my daily task… their results were up to God. I am just called to follow and obey. We really don’t have control of the future. The Coronavirus has proven that to the world.  

We got a second call just two months later telling us “this is not a drill, pack your bags.”  The birth mom had already signed final papers and we needed to travel right away! Our baby girl was born at 35 weeks gestation, but perfectly healthy. We had our bags packed and were driving to the airport three hours later.  

We traveled during a surge Coronavirus cases in Florida, but once again it became background noise. We had a baby girl. Our three other children travelled a few days after us and joined us in Florida. We had a nice Airbnb and our seven year old even mastered swimming in Airbnb pool. We have some sweet memories in our daughter's birth state stay. All our kids adore her and they line up most mornings to hold her. 

As I finish writing this story we are mere DAYS from finalization. Our daughter is five months old and I'm unpacking the Christmas decorations.  I bought a fourth child stocking that last year and I hung it with hope. There were so many days that empty stocking caused sorrow and longing, but no longer. I get to hang a beautiful stocking for my beautiful girl.   

To those of you waiting… this is what I would remind you: God can do immeasurably more than you ask or imagine. You are not called to a destination, but a road. Walk it well.  

Adoption Story: Danny and Courtney

They were so sure.

I remember talking to Danny and Courtney for the first time and they told me they felt called to adoption. And that they felt like they would welcome twins. We had conversations about the process of adoption and holding loosely to any expectations. I watched them slowly release their dreams and desires to make room for God's perfect plan for their family.

Then we all stepped back and watched God do a miracle. Two miracles to be exact.

Our adoption story has one theme that continues to ring true: God's way is better than ours.

We get to pick and choose a lot of things in life and even in adoption. With adoption, we got to go through a check list of preferences. However, we found that God wanted us to be open to His plan. He is asking us to say yes; yes to his plan. Yes to His children. We had to get to a place where we let go of how we thought our adoption was going to look like and just say yes to God and whatever that looked like. 

From the beginning of our adoption journey, we believed we were called to adopt twins. We felt like one was going to be a boy. There was a time we felt like God said present to this single baby situation. So we did. That wasn't our baby, but God got our yes. Then he had us present to a born baby girl. Again, she wasn't our baby. God was slowly taking us away from our ideas and plans. He just wanted us to be willing to say yes to whoever he had picked for our family. I had to continue to remind myself to give up my dreams and my will and go after whatever God wants. We presented to single babies, we presented to born babies, we presented  to a sibling  group, and we presented to three sets of twins. All of those situations were clearly not ours. All of those "not yets" were really hard. Nobody really prepares you for the emotional roller coaster the adoption road can be. But let me tell you this: God never left our side. 

About six months into our journey, we felt like the Lord laid a song on our hearts to help us get through  the "not yet" situations: "Way Maker" by Leeland. In the song there is a part that says "Even when I don't see it, you're working. Even when I don't feel it, you're working. You never stop, you never stop working." We held tight to this song when we didn't have the words to pray anymore. We knew God is a way maker and a miracle worker. We just had to trust Him and His timing. 

In the process of completely giving our adoption over to God, we got a text from Susan from Christian Adoption Consultants. On March 11th she got an email about twin boys in the NICU and wanted to know if we were interested. We presented and a week later we got a message saying  the parents had chosen us! We quickly  jumped on a plane and headed to Connecticut the next day. Due to the pandemic that was just beginning, we were not able to see the boys in the hospital. Then because of covid the hospital released the boys early into state custody. This was one of the most nerve racking weeks we had to wait, not really knowing if the adoption would even happen. At this point the boys were three weeks old, we still hadn't met them, and we weren't even sure if they would be ours. After many days and much prayer, on March 26, 2020 the boys officially were released to us for adoption.

We were overjoyed, blessed, and completely in shock. Exactly one year and one day previous, in 2019, we had announced to our family and friends that we were taking a huge step in faith to adopt twins. What a year this was! There were things we were worried about like bonding with twins that were already several weeks old and traveling with the pandemic. But God had that too. The boys bonding has been amazing and we are eagerly waiting for our finalization court date.

Through all of this we are reminded God's plan far exceeds ours! It is far better than ours will ever be. I would encourage you, wherever you are in the adoption process to give the unknowns to God. His plan is better than anything we can dream up.

Adoption Story: Matt and Megan

Matt and Megan started working with Christian Adoption Services last summer. They spent the Fall completing their home study and were approved by Thanksgiving. Then the process of waiting began. Six months later, after a call that changed their life, they heard about the baby that would someday be their son. Almost one year to the day that they began their adoption journey they welcomed this sweet little guy into their family. Megan shares their story, their wait, and her advice today on the blog.

The number one piece of advice we would give someone considering adoption would be to remind them the adoption process is 100% in God's timing and control. 

With Susan's wonderful guidance, we tried to be very timely with getting our documentation and home study ready. However, at the end of the day, it was God's plan on when we would have our baby. There were many times where it seemed discouraging, but we would turn to prayer to help us through those tough times. I always knew adoption is in God's hands; however, when we were matched I truly believe now more than ever that God has his hand in the adoption process. 

We always thought we would be matched with an expectant/birth mother through an agency. However, when a local OBGYN reached out (she knew we were in the adoption process) with a potential expectant mother who was 29 weeks along, we were so thrilled and nervous to meet both the doctor and mother. We were extremely lucky to have the opportunity during our adoption process to not only attend the rest of the doctor appointments (our son's lovely birth mother invited us to each appointment) but we also had the opportunity to get to know our son's birth mother on a more personal level. 

We are not only extremely blessed to have our beautiful son, but we also have some wonderful stories to share with him as he gets older about his amazing, selfless birth mother. 

Patience really is a virtue!