We were actually doing it – adopting! We sat in our agency's three-day adoption seminar with five other couples all aglow with the deepening realization that we might soon be parents. Plus, there were M&Ms! Talk about unmerited favor.
After the seminar we all kept in touch as, couple by couple, were matched with expectant moms each considering an adoption plan.
A few months later, the day after the Lord lovingly led us through a failed adoption match, we received an email that the agency wanted to show our profile to an expectant mom. We said yes! Days later we sat at Chili's after church and I told husband, “I really feel like this is our baby.” Somewhere in my spirit I felt His Spirit telling me so. Alas, we didn't hear back.
Several weeks later, the night before our fourth wedding anniversary, my sweet husband asked me what I would like for our anniversary. I half-joking yet wistfully told him, “A baby.”
The next day I missed a call from our adoption agency. They didn't leave a message, which I thought was strange, so called my husband at work. Without telling him why I was calling, I coyly asked him, “So, what are you doing?” I could hear a slight hesitation in his voice as he lied and told me he was just making reservations for our anniversary dinner! My shoulders slumped as I then fessed up that I had gotten a call from our agency but hadn't received a message.
But he had. A beautiful, petite, red-haired expectant mom and her husband had chosen us to possibly parent their baby. Well, sort of. The couple had first chosen a different family but the match hadn't worked out. We were the dad's first choice, but the mom's second.
Hmmm. Why on earth would a couple in the adoption process turn down a match? We belabored this question as we drove up to meet what would soon turn out to be our baby's birth parents. We met them, liked them, and could not figure out why the other couple had said no. Two weeks and two days later we brought our son home from the hospital.
While we were out of town waiting for Erik to be born, our baby's sweet birthmom told us the name of the other couple. It was one of the other couples in our adoption seminar with whom we had kept in touch. I'm all about openness in adoption, as anyone who has spent any time talking to me about adoption knows, and I felt a stirring in my heart to let our friends know that we had adopted that baby.
There are a lot of things we won't understand until we get to heaven, but God graciously let us in on this mystery. Our friends had met this couple and had liked them just fine, but after a weekend of prayer and fasting they felt like the Lord was telling them this was not their baby. The husband wrote to me in an e-mail, “We were hoping that this was your baby.”
Thousands of miracles occur to form a family. In the case of adoption, not only the division of cells and the development of a tiny human being, but preparation of the heart, will, and spirit of both birth and adoptive parents. Why did our friends say no to this match? Because they were in tune with God's Spirit and He said no. God had planned all along that we were to be Erik's parents. God's plan will not be thwarted. Will you trust him?
Amy is a lover of life, music, and yarn. She is passionate about open adoption. Amy tries not to take life too seriously - she once took a picture of herself wearing a tiara in the fertility doc's office - but she is serious about pointing others to the source of all comfort, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Author Website: Blessed by Adoption & Birth
