The Almost Adoption

My heart is in that hurting sort of place. I knew these kind of days would resurface, even after coming to a place of peace and contentment with our childlessness. But it seems to be impossible to completely ignore the desire and if I lost all hope that may not even be healthy, I don't know.

Keeping the balance between hopefulness and contentment is where Jesus must come in. 

But in these moments of sadness and wanting, of deepest yearning and tears, I thought I would share with you another portion of our journey down the road of infertility. (This particular story was hinted at in this post all those months ago.) Come with me, won't you, to June 2012? The days were extremely hot and our house was kept shaded by the closed drapes. In the midst of the heat I wasn't exactly thinking about options to expand our family, but then one presented itself. 

A dear friend of ours said she had an urgent matter to discuss with us and asked if she could come over for a visit. Our minds were racing, scrambling through the possibilities. You see, this friend was one of the only people with whom we'd share our interest in adoption. She was most certainly coming to us with a related circumstance. 

Wasting no time, she laid out the situation - There was a 19 year old girl, from a good family, living in a nearby town and attending community college. She had just found out that she was pregnant, eight months pregnant. This young girl, who was likely scared out of her whits, wanted to give her unborn child a wonderful adoptive home to be a part of and she was wanting to do an independent adoption. The baby could be born within the next four weeks, so if we interested in this opportunity we would have to move quickly. 

Before we knew it, Kevin and I were alone in our living room, staring at each other and wondering, "What now?" 

You should know we had done absolutely nothing to prepare for the possibility of adoption. All we knew was this is normally a long, detailed process, and we weren't sure how to begin. For the next four days we operated in turbo mode. We found an adoption attorney (we had never had any experience with a lawyer of any kind), we paid a $2,000 retainer plus the $500 consultation fee, we communicated with a third party who was speaking on behalf of the 19 year old girl and her family, we filled out the paperwork, we contacted a social worker who was willing and able to do an expedited home study (for an increased sum of money, of course), we had references write letters of recommendation on our behalf, we wrote our own letter to the birth mother.

This was the fastest, scariest roller coaster we had ever been on. There were days (hours, really) that felt extremely defeated. There is no way we are going to be able to do this all in time. Then there were moments of hope. Oh my goodness, we have all of our ducks in a row, this could really be happening. 

And in the midst of all of these meetings and this turmoil, we had to decide whether or not we were going to join the Bible Quizzers for a week in Seattle. Ack. It certainly wouldn't look good to the birth mom if we skipped town at this crucial time. But we had heard nothing back from her or her lawyer since moving speedily forward on everything. We were playing a waiting game and had no idea which direction the mother was going to go. We had made commitments to quizzing (and the money had been paid) and we didn't want to back out of our responsibilities if nothing was going to come of this adoption scenario. Does one of us stay and one of us go? 

For a short while I was considering staying in town to work with the birth mother, and Kevin would go to Seattle. But after over a week of no communication from the family or the lawyers, we knew it wasn't looking good. And so rather hear the devastating news all alone, I opted to go with Kevin to Washington state. 

Thankfully this turned out to be the right decision. We finally heard from our lawyer the day we were flying back to Buffalo - The birth mother had decided to go with an agency adoption. The case was closed. The matter settled. I am still grateful for the lawyer we had chosen to work with. She was generous enough to return our $2,000 retainer since she had done no further work on our behalf. And I was able to spend a week not dwelling on the heartbreak and stress and anxiety of the pending situation. I was with my husband and our teens, and the other leaders on the trip proved to be wonderful encouragement to me as well. 

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And here we are, 10 months later. We are still interested in the pursuit of adoption, but we're not Dave-Ramsey-ready for that financial commitment. Our conversations on the subject continue and we are trying to make the choices that will be best for us and best for the child we bring home. 

But, dear friends, in the meantime you can pray. And please, if you know of someone who is looking for a Christian couple to adopt their unborn baby or infant, feel free to connect us to them. We are willing to wait for God's perfect timing in this process. 

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