“Honey, have you ever thought about adoption?”
I asked my precious wife Becca this question 4 years ago this month.
“Nope.”
That was it. We didn’t talk about it again for almost 2 months.
We like most people had a skewed view of what adoption really is. We thought (wrongly) that adoption was for people that were unable to have biological children. We had no idea of the worldwide need that existed around us. After talking about it again, we decided we would pray about it. After all, that was the least we could do, right? God slowly began to change our heart and our address. Soon, God would call us to serve as student pastor to Faith Baptist Church in Bartlett, TN. One of the first things we noticed about Faith was the amount of people who were involved in foster care and adoption. After asking some questions, we knew that it was not an accident that God had placed us here among thousands of other reasons. I called a handful of local and national agencies and God lead us to Bethany Christian Services (www.bethany.org). We made an appointment and went down to meet them. We were blown away by their love for God and children. We were also blown away at the process. It’s not easy. It’s not cheap. It’s not fast. It takes time, effort, sacrifice, and patience. Loads of paperwork, training, and praying later we were approved.
Within 2 months, we had been chosen by a mom! What? Are you serious? That fast? God is so good! She was only 4 weeks away from giving birth to a precious baby girl. We painted, bought pink everything we could find (as parents to 2 boys at the time, we had NOTHING pink), and told everyone. We met with the birth mom twice and fell in love with her. Our baby girl was born while I was at youth camp so I flew home immediately to meet our new daughter. We went to the hospital and met with the birth mom once again before walking down to see this sweet girl for the first time. We were breathless as we took pictures of this sweet gift. On cloud 9, we went home and told our boys (5 & 3 at the time) that they would be getting a new sister in the morning. They were ecstatic! We could hardly sleep that night knowing that we would go pick her up the next day.
Waking up, we knew that all we were waiting on was a call to come and pick her up. The call came around 10:30 that morning but it wasn’t the call we were expecting. ”She’s decided to keep the baby.” What? Complete disbelief is the only emotion that could describe that moment. We were heart broken. We cried at what felt like a huge loss. We cried at the thought of having to tell our boys. Was this really God’s plan? If it was, why? We didn’t understand.
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