May 22, 2021, I was sitting eating my breakfast on a Saturday morning. All of the sudden I heard my phone ding from a favorites email. I glanced and saw it was Adoption for my Child. We matched through them with our daughter in March of 2020 for a born baby situation. Now I never even had opened these emails from them over the last year because we had zero plans to adopt. My life is just busy and I never would remember to take the favorites notifications off. Although looking back, now I know why I didn’t remove that notification. I normally would see it was an email from their website and just ignore it.
On this particular day, I felt led to open this email that dinged its way into my breakfast time. When I opened it I saw it was our birth mom’s name, (very unique spelling) and Louisiana. It said due with a baby girl July 4th. At this point I couldn’t believe what I had just read. I mean this is the only email I have opened from them since adopting our daughter, and it is her birth mom’s name. My instant instinct was to text all the numbers on my phone from our daughters adoption to verify what I had just read. I didn’t even know who all I was texting because I still had the texts saved on my phone…but I was just going for it!
Sure enough, texts confirmed…it was my daughters sister. This brought up a range of emotions, and I wondered is this something we should even pursue??? Without hesitation, I knew God very clearly said to me, YES. I immediately told my husband, but we both had previously agreed our family of 7 was complete. We have five children already.
But to my surprise he said, “Let’s do it”!
Ummmm what?!?!
I said “really”???
He said, “Yes”!
So I immediately told the agency and Adoption For My Child we wanted to pursue this. They asked us to write our daughter’s birth mom a letter and pour out our hearts, so that’s exactly what we did. We know this is all her choice so we write the letter and fully respect her wishes. We also had to step out in faith and update our home study which is quite the process, but we followed God’s lead and we did it. We so desperately felt our daughter was supposed to be with her sister. After all, I knew God had led us to see this email.
The next several weeks of waiting were hard. The agency hadn’t heard from her at all. I did exactly as I had done with my daughter last year and bought a few baby girl outfits and hung them through the house. I told the kids to pray for her birth mom and her daughter, regardless of what would happen. These little outfits were reminders to pray.I played my worship music non stop and had songs of waiting on my Spotify. Way Maker, God Who Listens, Patient by Apollo, God of the Impossible, they were all on repeat….and when I say repeat…my kids were like mom!!!!! Turn it down!!!
Wonderful friends and family sent us songs and prayers that were just spot on. It was like Gods way of communicating to me through them. I won’t lie though when I say this was the hardest wait of my life. But just when I needed encouragement most, someone would text me or message me a song, a prayer, or words of wisdom. Friends and family were praying so hard for the girls to be together if that was God’s will.
The due date finally comes and goes. We had heard we were not sure if the baby or birth mom were ok. She had stopped communicating with the agency, and they were unsure if our daughters birth mom had maybe went with another agency. But I wondered what did all of this mean? Why did I feel so strongly this was from God?
As time went on, my husband and I decided to adopt again. We thought maybe that was God’s plan for us. Just to adopt another baby. But deep down in my heart I really wondered where her sister was, and was she ok. Was her mom ok? I just couldn’t shake the feeling but had decided it was time to move on.
I thought, this wasn’t God’s plan like I thought it was. My mama friends from our family’s homeschool co op had been so wonderful praying and supporting us. We were out at a lovely outdoor pizza oven dinner in our local town the evening of August 5. We chatted and they asked me if I had heard anything else about her sister. I said no, that I prayed she and her mama were ok, but that I had moved on and we had decided we would adopt again.
The very next day, August 6 rolls around and we had just gotten home from a big Sam’s shopping trip. I received a text message on my phone that our daughter’s birth mom had contacted the agency again, and had asked us to adopt her 5.5 week old sister that was still in the NICU.
Like WHAT?!?!
Then Amy with Adoption for my Child called and started filling me in. I felt frozen in time. I had just written this off and had just said to my friends I had moved on the night before, and that I was waiting to see what else God had in store. Plus when we were asked to adopt her that night, we didn’t know all of her medicals and that made me nervous. She was in the NICU and was a full term baby, so what did that mean? Having five kids we have to think about those things too.
We had until the next day to decide if we wanted to proceed. I spent that night tossing and turning. My husband and I knew we just had to go to Louisiana and get all of the details and we wanted to move forward.
Our kids were so excited.
My nine year old son actually started bawling that Saturday morning, August 7th. I figured it was because he was sad we had found out we had to leave for Louisiana the next day. I was wrong. He said he was crying because he was so happy. He said for the last several weeks, he didn’t think we were going to get the chance to adopt our daughters sister. He held me tight and cried happy tears. I reminded him later that day that we didn’t know what was going to happen yet and it wasn’t a done deal.
At that moment he said, “Hey google! Play Way Maker”. This little almost nine year old boy and his wisdom during my time of doubt.
We dropped our kiddos off with my family that Sunday morning August 10th, and headed for the 10.5 hour drive to Louisiana from where we live. Again, more worship music. I felt sick to my stomach because of my nerves, but the music helped. I didn’t want to leave here without our daughters sister.
I had envisioned them together so many times during our wait, and how incredible that would be for them to have each other growing up.
The next few days would be full of delays and waiting. I so desperately felt for our daughters birth mom signing away her rights. Adoption is hard because although there is happiness, there is such a loss and so much grief. While one or two persons are singing away parental rights, another family is gaining a new family member. Although the relationship that can come from that, is pretty beautiful too.
Finally Tuesday morning rolls around. We still were waiting to hear her full medicals. The hospital didn’t want the original digital paperwork that was signed, so we waited for the physical copy. Finally we got word, we could go and meet our daughters sweet little sister, a moment I questioned many times over, if it would ever happen.
Now, here we were following the social worker to meet her. She had a very very rough start, but from what we were told she was doing amazing. BUT GOD. The moment we laid eyes on her she looked just like her big sister. My husband and I fell in love all over again. I knew in that moment, in my times of doubt through this process, God was saying, “Just WAIT….” My husband had told people, just when we thought it was all over, God said, “IM NOT DONE YET”.
I am telling you this is a story only God could orchestrate. His timing and his plans are perfect.Without hesitation we committed to adopt her and then were able to show all these wonderful, amazing people that had been praying for us, that GOD truly wasn’t done. When you step out in faith and follow his lead, NOTHING is impossible with God.
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. -Jeremiah 29:11