AND BABY MAKES 4!

Today is National Adoption Day and because of it Stephen and I wanted to use this day to announce…. We’re expecting a BABY through adoption on May 25!!  ::happy dance:: We don’t know the gender until December 21, and I’m so excited to find out right before my Christmas Birthday!  I can’t imagine a better gift!

After what has been a looooong journey to parenthood these past 4.5 years, behind the scenes, we have been in the adoption process and in mid October we were matched and chosen by amazing birth parents who we have come to love to and adore through each step of this process.  The friendship we have developed with them has become such an unexpected beautiful part of the process, and we are so grateful for their trust in us to be the ones chosen to love their most precious gift when it arrives!

But through all this excitement, I want to share a little bit of background of how we got to where we are today… and make a confession to you I just need to get off my chest.

In being real with you, I just need to say… prior to all of this…. I didn’t want to adopt.

I fear writing that statement above because I don’t want it to be misperceived the wrong way, but I want you to know how I got to this point of being so excited to do that which I never thought I would. If you ask me circa (any date prior to this year), I will straight up tell you, adoption was not for me.  I knew adoption was a beautiful and biblical thing, but adoption always seemed like that thing that was for “other” people, like my girlfriends who grew up with this deep passion in their hearts to want to adopt, which I never quite connected with.  Or the stories like this one where we all get to witness their passion in every picture fighting for their children in another country.  That was nice for them, and while I contributed to their fundraiser to help them, adoption just wasn’t a desire in my heart at the time.

As it goes with most couples struggling with infertility, I was determined to have my “own” biological children. Though technically, 11 years ago, I had already experienced adoption through my #poodlechild and had seen through him how big my heart could grow for a living being not of my own blood.  But, still, I just questioned along this journey if it would be the same with a “real” human child not of my own.

Year 1, at our first fertility doctor’s appointment early on in our marriage, we had a doctor straight up tell us, “You can either try this treatment, or adoption, that’s pretty much your only options.” I was so taken back. How dare he suggest adoption?  Wasn’t it his job to do the science and make this biological thing happen?  I mean, with all the modern day technologies people fork out their life savings for, there had to be some kind of guarantee that the treatment would work? But as he told us that day, there are no guarantees, and we left the doctor’s office feeling defeated and hopeless.

Year 2, we began to learn more about adoption through our church and decided to open a door to give it a try.  We tried for about 6 months to pursue adoption through the state foster system.  After one continued roadblock after another, I’m choosing to keep my mouth shut on all the frustrations involved with how hard the state makes it for all the children in need to be adopted.  But, more so, with all the continued closed doors in our faces on that path, we took it as God said no, again feeling defeated and hopeless.

Year 3, we tried our first fertility treatment, and it didn’t work.  Though all the science played in our favor, God intervened and again said no.  And I spent months after grieving the baby we couldn’t conceive and again feeling defeated and hopeless….. All of this happened right before the holidays, and I spent much of last year’s Christmas season horribly mad at Jesus…  as in “Do not speak to me right now because I prayed about this, I had the faith believing, I even held my Bible in my hands during the procedure, and You didn’t make it happen, and I’m just crushed and don’t know what I believe right now.”  I knew what Jesus went through on the cross, and I knew my attitude in the midst of disappointment was something He of all people could take as I worked through the stages of grief.

Yet…. there’s always a yet…. His grace interceded.

Year 4, I used 2015 to heal.  Not so much my body, but my heart.  I knew God needed to piece together the broken pieces of my heart before I could consider any other option to pursue again on what felt like this awkward middle chapter of our story.  I knew God knew the desires of my heart to become a mother, but I also knew He needed me to simply be still through the waiting and know, know, know that He above everything is God (Psalm 46:10), especially when we don’t get our way, when we want it. He used this past year to teach me to know He is enough, even if I don’t end up with children in my arms or womb.  I knew God needed me to let go of trying to control the situation in this marathon race toward motherhood and start to let down walls around my heart to begin to hope in other possibilities that just might far exceed my own desires.

As Stephen and I moved months forward, and began to have “those” talks again about when and what we wanted to do option A, B, or C again, we considered trying another cycle of the fertility treatment… yet… there’s that yet again…. I started to feel a nudge in another direction. I knew we were at a crossroads of two doors in front of us.  I knew what door I wanted to go down, trying another cycle, but I felt that loving nudge from Jesus saying:

Just open the door to private baby adoption.  Open the door and give me room to move to see if THIS door is the door I want to move through, and possibly have been waiting to move through all along.

I straight up told him NO at first.

After all our frustrations and let down through the state system to try to adopt an older child out of the foster care system, and over and over having that door slammed shut, I just didn’t think I could handle going through frustration like that with adoption again.  So when He asked me to open the door to baby adoption this time around, I was, like, straight up, yeah, not going there again with this adoption thing again, even if it was a different path of adoption this time.

Yet… He continued to nudge.

“ButIdontwanna” I would say under my breath like a whiney kid for fear that my heart would get broken again.

Yet… He continued to nudge.

“Butitsofreakinexpensive” I would remind Him as if money intimidated the Creator of the Universe.

Yet… He continued to nudge.

And in the midst of this constant push and pull, my mom sent me a link to an adoption agency. Really, Momma?  Really?  I mean, I guess if God used her to send me a link to an adoption agency, I guess, I mean, I could maybe sorta look into it and ask around about it. So I did.  And I searched several other options.  Meanwhile, Stephen and I started having those talks about choosing adoption vs more fertility treatments, and we ultimately decided, if adoption IS the path God wants for us to have a child, we want them to know, we absolutely chose to bring them into our family, and not that they were just a back up plan because more fertility treatments didn’t work.  So we laid to rest moving forward with more fertility treatments, and it wasn’t until I was recommended by someone else about another adoption agency here in Jacksonville that I no longer felt the nudge, I felt a huge push.  And within two days, next thing I knew, we were signing up with the agency.  And within a few weeks we were already getting calls about potential birth moms.  And I stood amazed at how quickly Jesus took the wheel, now that I gave Him the opportunity to do so, and drove us down this road to where we now are.

Just two months after telling the Lord I was willing, just TWO MONTHS, we got chosen by our birth parents. (And y’all, can I just brag, I have the most amazing birth mom ever! She has already grown to have such a huge place in my heart!) I didn’t expect it to happen THIS fast after all the stories I’ve heard about how long it takes others.

But here we are.

We. Are. Actually. Adopting.

And Stephen & I couldn’t be MORE excited!!!

There was one particular thing that played a huge turning point for me along the way of my prior anti-adoption campaign in my heart.  Back in June when I finally mustered up the courage to open up here on my blog about our infertility struggles, God intersected my heart with another who He knew I needed to meet.  In that blog entry, which I almost didn’t publish for fear of opening up about our private struggles to the world, I posted a random video that Stephen randomly saw on Facebook and when I watched it, I sobbed… and sobbed… and sobbed… because, their story was our story, down to the very detail that years ago God gave me a vision with a promise He would create a child for us and a specific name for a baby girl just like He had done for them (which leaves me real curious now if our child will be a girl or a boy, ha!). Finally, finally, as I watched the video, I could see in front of me, someone who “got” the pain and grief infertility has been in our lives and marriage and faith. And I sobbed because their happy ending was… they adopted.  And I knew, watching that video, God was calling me to something higher than I was allowing myself to hope in.

Then the miraculous happened.  Out of the blue, the following day after publishing that blog entry, I received an email from the mom in the video.  What?  How?  Wait a minute, THE mom in the video that made me sob so much?  How in the world did she find MY blog entry?  I still to this day don’t know that answer, but I do know that was a miracle right in front of my eyes. Only God… only… God could have allowed our heart strings to connect on this huge world wide web.

And her email… y’all… I’ve received some amazing emails in my life, but this one particular email was the kindest, most compassionate example of Christ.  Here I was, this perfect stranger to her, and she had volunteered to be a new source of support should I need it. Again, I sobbed. And boy, did I ever need the support.

So our friendship began.  And I began asking her the hard questions, you know, the ones you are kind of embarrassed to ask about adoption like “How do you love another woman’s baby? Do your children really feel like ‘yours?’ Does it feel like you are ‘sharing’ a child with someone else? Do you still struggle with the pain of infertility, or does that fade now that you’ve adopted?  How do you get to that place of knowing it’s the right time to stop believing for your own biological child and pursue adoption? How did you raise money to fund it all?”

And question by question, answer by answer, God used this new friend, and many others along the way, to tear down the walls around my heart about this topic I knew He was ultimately calling me to.

Another cool thing I discovered along the way.  Once we found out the due date our baby, I started doing the math out of curiosity of when God chose to create our baby.  Looking back over the calendar, from the time I told God I was willing to adopt and took the step of faith to sign up with the agency, exactly 5 days later He created our baby.  And what’s amazing is I remember that day very vividly because it was the day my friend’s own miracle baby was born.  As I walked into the maternity ward that day, I remember seeing the most beautiful rainbow covering the sky above.  At the time, I thought that was a beautiful gift for my friend’s baby’s arrival, but as my friend pointed out later when I told her how the dates coordinated, she said, “Maybe that rainbow was a gift for both of us.” (And cue the tears.) After all, God told Noah in the Bible that the rainbow was a symbol of the end of the flood season, and a reminder of God keeping His promise.  And He sure knows the flood of tears that have fallen from my eyes over the years up to this point.  I am blown away, yet not really surprised, at what a mighty Creator we serve. When I finally surrendered to His will over my own, it then gave Him room to perform our miracle.  And though for many years I was foolish thinking our miracle would only be by conceiving our own biological child, seeing God’s hand in all the small and big details of this journey, I’m realizing adoption is still just as big of a miracle.

So here we are… adopting!!!! It still feels so surreal to say.  It’s the last thing we ever expected to be doing, yet God knew all along this is where our path to parenthood would lead us.

And now we need YOUR HELP to bring our baby home.

In taking this step of faith, we also face the reality that we have a large sum of adoption fees, legal fees and home study fees all due in full before May 2016.  It feels overwhelming, but we are believing for God to provide through the generosity of loved ones and friends here on the world wide web. I know through witnessing other people’s adoption journey’s, God has a special place in His heart for adoption, and I am trusting Him that He will provide the financial resources to make this happen.

Stephen and I invite you pray about whether God is leading you to help us bring our baby home through a financial gift.  Even if you are not in a position to give a big amount, we cherish every contribution big or small, and we cherish every share of this blog post to help spread the word. We look forward to sharing with our child about the random act of kindness others gave to help bring them into our family.  We also plan to make a special book highlighting every one’s names and comments who helped to make it possible so they can know from the beginning of their life how powerful their Heavenly Father is as their greatest provider in life.  If you have any further questions about how your gift will be used, I am available by email here.

Thank you for being with us on this journey and partnering with us to help make this all happen through your prayerful consideration to bless our baby!  Due to agency regulations, we have to keep our fundraising page private.  If you feel led to contribute, please email me or direct message me on Facebook and I will provide you the private link where you can securely submit your gift.

Above all else, we cherish you prayers for this continued journey.  We ask for prayers for our hearts and all the emotions that flow along the way.  We ask for prayers for our birth mom’s day to day courageous own personal journey, and for the health of the child she chose to give life to and is so graciously carrying for us and trusting us with to raise and love. And we ask for prayers that by sharing our story, it can give hope to others struggling to expand their family who might also feel hopeless and defeated.

For those who have reached out privately over the years sharing how you have already been praying for us, our hearts continue to overflow with your love and compassion and friendship.What a journey of walking by faith this has all been, and continues to be….

“Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it.” -Hebrews 11:1

With love,

Scarlett & Stephen