"...Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it." Malachi 3:10
I think my earliest introduction to adoption was in the fifth grade when I met a girl named Ruth, who quickly became my "BFF". She had been adopted from India as an infant. Her family was, and is, so solid - solid in their faith and solid as a family unit. Knowing them has been a real blessing to me, and set a positive impression about adoption in my heart.
Around age 20, I was attending a Bible college on the outskirts of Dallas. I learned a lot during my time there. Mostly outside of the classroom. I grew immensely in my faith and in my awareness of people hurting- next door and around the world. While I was there, God placed an inner desire in my heart to adopt, and as I moved on to grad school in Minnesota, I was sure I would mother children not born to me.
I met Bryan via a christian online dating website the summer before I started grad school. He agreed to building family through adoption, and I agreed to marry him! I'm so glad God placed just the right man in my life. Not only is he extremely loyal -to his faith, his family, his Packers, but he is an honest, hard working, intelligent man. He is always thinking of ways he can serve those around him. And, while sometimes it comes in the form of conflict, he balances me out in a lot of ways.
I have learned through experience that when you leave the gory details out of a story, people make up their own. So, here are the gory details. It's not that we couldn't get pregnant, just that we didn't. (Obvious, now.) We tried for a little over a year - which seems like a long time to couples who get pregnant on the first try, but not long at all to couples who have undergone years of treatment for infertility. We were never given a clear answer as to why we weren't getting pregnant, nor were we given any sort of "your doomed" prognosis. It stopped being fun, so we decided to pursue our desire to adopt. The part Bryan and I chuckle about now is we will probably never know if it was a fluke that we didn't get pregnant, or if it was a fluke that we did! And, wholeheartedly, it doesn't matter to either of us.
We are just so grateful for our three little miracles.
We had been praying, saving money, and researching adoption for nearly a year when we turned our application for a home study in to Summit Adoption Home Studies on April 25, 2007. We were skittish about this trend of "open adoptions" and believed a lot of myths out there, so we turned our hearts towards international adoption - and more specifically - Africa - and more specifically - Liberia. We completed our home study, turned it in to the placement agency that we intended to work with, paid a bunch of money, and even got permission from the US government to bring an immigrant into the country. And that is when we started to see very dark clouds moving in. It was looking like adoptions in Liberia were going to be shut down, so we bailed.
We explored our options. There was Ethiopia that was going pretty strong at the time. But we have good friends who introduced us to the reality of domestic minority adoption - that healthy black babies were considered "hard-to-place". We updated our home study in October 2007, and on November 1, working with An Open Door in Georgia, we officially started waiting for "the call".
Typically, in a domestic adoption, you wait for an expectant mother to choose you from a pool of families hoping to adopt, then you wait for her to give birth, then you wait for the revocation period to pass, and then you get your baby.
Not so with us! We learned about Brett on December 14th and on December 15th, we were on our way to meet him. Brett's birth mother did not have a plan in place prior to giving birth, nor did she elect to choose a family for her baby. Therefore, the baby was presented to the family (us) who had been waiting to adopt an African American boy the longest --only 6 weeks.
Brett Theodore was placed in our arms December 17th, 2007, less than 9 months after we had started our adoption journey. He was 15 days old. He has brought a smile to my face every day since. He is content, peace-loving, tenderhearted, and clever. While we are not extremely proud of our reason behind choosing "Brett" as his first name, his middle name meaning "God's gift" could not be more fitting.
Three and a half months later, Bryan got the surprise of his life on his 30th birthday. I was pregnant with #2.
Lydia June was born on November 28th, 2008, the day after Thanksgiving, and four days shy of Brett's 1st birthday. I went overdue about a week, making it the longest we have "expected" any of our children! Lydia has been the blessing - the little girl - we didn't know we could adore so much! Her little laugh is just irresistible! Named after her great-grandmother, we pray that she will have the same servant's heart. We already know she is determined - another trait of my grandmother's!
And just when we start to get into the swing of things...not even a month after Lydia starts sleeping in her crib, and only a couple weeks after I had finally gotten the kids to nap simultaneously, the phone rings...
While we were enjoying a family vacation in Wisconsin, Brett's birth mother gave birth to another baby boy and decided to place him for adoption. An Open Door contacted us to see if we would open our hearts to another son. I can't say it was an instant "Yes". It actually took us six days to overcome our weariness of having another newborn after not even fully recovering from the last one. But through much prayer, many people speaking into our lives, and a number of not-so-random circumstances (the big one being that with the busyness of summer, we had neglected to make that large extra payment on our mortgage we had planned to do with our big tax refund -due to Brett's Adoption Credit- and therefore just had the money sitting in our liquid savings account) we came to recognize that this baby boy was our third miracle from God.
Reginald David was placed in our arms on August 26, 2009, when he was 20 days old. If you count from the day we said "yes" to the day Reggie was in our arms, we were "expecting" Reggie for 12 days. Reggie is named after Reggie White, Packer's Hall-of-Famer Defensive End, and also an ordained minister, who died an untimely death at the age of 55. David means "beloved" and is Bryan's late Grandfather's name, and also my Dad and brother's name. Reggie fit right in with the family, and we have learned that some of God's greatest gifts come in the form of interruptions. We sure are happy we didn't miss out on this one!
Since the beginning of our blog, I have had Proverbs 16:9 "In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps" in the margin. We didn't know what God had in store for us, but we are overjoyed with where we are and how we got here!
It is just as we had hoped, but not at all as we had planned.
