Alex and Emily began their adoption journey the winter of 2020. While it was easy to assume their adoption process would be smooth, little did they know a global pandemic was about to rock the world. In the last two years, Alex and Emily learned new ways to embrace patience and trust God's timing for their family. Today Emily shares the story of how they welcomed their son into their family!
Our journey to adopting our sweet little guy is nothing short of a miracle and leaning into God's timing (which is never our own!). We began the adoption process in the Winter of 2020 and went active with an agency March 2, 2020. Yep. You read that right...just 11 days shy of the world turning upside down! Even in the midst of uncertainty, we held onto hope that the Lord would sustain us through this process. We were shocked to match just a few short weeks later, but were heartbroken when the due date approached a few months later and it turned out to be a scam. After almost another year of waiting we matched again with a young couple and walked through the pregnancy with them offering encouragement, support, and prayers along the way. Ultimately, right before the baby was born they decided to parent and while we were heartbroken, we continued to pray for the Lord to strengthen their little family throughout the baby's life.
We began to feel like adoption would maybe never happen for us, but clung onto our family's verse; Jeremiah 29:11-13: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” We strive to remember the Lord’s promises for our family and to seek Him throughout every rise and fall of the adoption process.
At this point in our adoption journey, just shy of two years in with two failed matches, we decided to try an alternate route and looked into an adoption consultant. We interviewed a few agencies and were thrilled to meet Susan with Christian Adoption Consultants. She answered every question we had, listened to our fears and hopes from our previous experience, and explained all the ways a consultant can help to "cast our net wider." She also helped us create the most perfect adoption profile book that truly captured who our family is, and that ultimately aided in connecting us with our son's birth mom!
In December of 2021, in a local foster/adoptive mom Facebook group, a fellow adoptive mom posted about how her daughter's birth mom was pregnant again and looking for an adoptive family. Following a nudge from the Lord, we reached out and eventually connected with our son's birth mom. We emailed and texted for two months getting to know each other and before any lawyers or adoption anything began to shape up, we were surprised to get a call that the baby was born in an emergency situation seven weeks early! We dropped everything and headed down to Tennessee to be with her and our little guy. He was born at just 2 pounds 2 ounces and stayed in the NICU for a month growing stronger. After a whirlwind of a month away from home and our older son driving down with our parents to visit, it was the best feeling in the world to drive the ten hours back to Virginia with both boys in the car!
When we began the adoption process we naively thought we would be the story of the family who matched quickly and brought a baby home within a few short months! But what it didn't leave room for in that "picture perfect plan" was all the ways the Lord was going to continue to push us out of our comfort zone, leading us to become a foster family, grow in compassion for others, serve our community, and wrestle with patience when there seemed to be a lack of forward motion. Our son's adoption paperwork was filed on March 2, 2022, exactly two years after we began our adoption journey. Had we given up, we never would have brought our beautiful son home. We look forward to raising our son to know the Lord, be an important member of our family and his biological siblings and family, and to serve all in love. He will do mighty things this side of eternity - we just know it!
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