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.