We started the adoption process on September 14, 2010. We knew that God was calling us to adopt, and felt strongly that we were supposed to sign up to adopt from Ethiopia. The process was supposed to take just over a year. During that year we did lots of paperwork and lots of fundraising. We had garage sales, t-shirt sales, coffee sales, and raffles; all to save up for the expenses down the road that the process would require. We took from our savings account, used our tax refund, and I started taking pictures and teaching piano lessons all to pay the first part of the expenses. By the end of the year we had everything we would need for the entire process all in an account, but we were also disappointed to realize that the wait for a child would be a lot longer than anticipated. Since then, we have changed up our age request, gender request, and even the number of children we were open to, all in an effort to get matched with a child or children. There have been so many times we have been at the top of the list. I've carried my phone around for weeks a time just waiting for our adoption agency to call. Yet there was never a call. At one point, we even tried very hard to adopt an 10 year old boy from the agency's waiting child list. We bought him clothes, picked an American name for him, started cleaning out drawers in Camden's room, and then at the last minute our social worker decided she wouldn't approve us to adopt a child of that age. That was a very discouraging day.
Twice we have been put on hold with our agency. Once when we moved to Guatemala, and then again when we got pregnant with Logan. Both times while we were on hold, the process would pick up and we would see families below us receive children that would have been ours had we not been on hold. Then as soon as we would be eligible again, the process would halt.
For the past several months, we have sat at the top of the list once again, and once again the phone has been silent.
Then, in late August, on a Friday afternoon, we received an email from our agency letting us know that they were having financial difficulties in their Ethiopia program, and asking the waiting families to help them fundraise. As I read that email, something just changed for me. For so long, I had felt God telling us to wait and be patients, and all of a sudden I felt Him speak to me to pray for a new word from Him. Blake felt the same way after reading the email. Over the weekend, we spent a lot of time asking God to speak to us, and by the end of the weekend we both felt that God had shown us that He had called us to the Ethiopia adoption process to keep us in a holding place until a "divine appointment." We struggled with that for a couple of days. "Would God call us to something that He was never planning to complete?" And the answer we came up with, was that God could call us to anything He wants for whatever purpose He wants. He is God. We surrendered to whatever God had for us, and found a peace that was beyond explanation. We both felt that God was still going to bring us a child through adoption, but we were no longer certain it would be from Ethiopia. In the weeks ahead, we started the process to become Guatemalan residents knowing that we could adopt a child from Guatemala once that process was complete. We thought that, maybe, this was how God was going to bring us our child.
Then out of nowhere, I received a Facebook message on September 11 about a baby that was going to be born in Texas in October that would need a family to adopt him. My heart immediately started racing as I read the email. "Was this our "divine appointment?" "Was this little boy the reason God called us to adopt five years ago?" "Was this why no matter how hard we tried, we could never seem to get matched with a child from Ethiopia?"
We spent the next two days praying, talking to an attorney, and daring to hope that this would be our baby. We were told that we would be the family, but as everyone knows these things fall through every day. I'd like to say I sang worship songs and walked around with the faith of Abraham, but the honest truth is I barely slept, my eyes twitched on an annoyingly regular basis, and I broke out in hives. I was a MESS!! Then last Friday I got a call that our baby boy was on his way. Logan and I left early the next morning, and twenty four hours after his birth I was able to hold Grayson Samuel in my arms.
(the first time I held Grayson)
(Good friends, adoptive parents, notarized one hundred documents for us over the past five years, and always, always encouragers.)
Twenty-four hours after that, he was released to me, and I was sitting at my favorite BBQ place eating a chopped beef sandwich that I was too nervous to taste. I was waiting for my phone to ring to let me know the relinquishment papers had been signed. It was the longest half hour of my life. But the phone eventually rang, and I found out that this baby boy would be ours. And just like I had been told by so many others that have waited for years to adopt, I knew with all of my heart that Grayson Samuel was worth every minute of the five year wait. I still can't believe that we have him. This is better than we ever imagined. Grayson is more than we ever hoped for. We love him so much.
Some of Grayson's story is just that: Grayson's story. We want him to know some of the most intimate details, and give him the ability to choose how and to whom those details are shared. Then there are other details that we will share with those who sit across from us face to face. Details that are more private, but also incredible.
But it is also important for us to testify of the faithfulness of God. There were so many times we wondered if we had heard God wrong. We wondered why God was completing adoptions for everyone but us (so it seemed sometimes). We wondered if maybe we weren't worthy enough to raise someone else's child. God was silent and still, when we felt like He should have been loud and aggressive....parting the sea and fulfilling what He said He would do.
But now we know, God was never silent and still. He knew what He was doing. He knew that we needed to raise the money for this adoption BEFORE we were living on financial support on the mission field. We could not have done all that we did to fundraise for this adoption from Guatemala. And we definitely couldn't have done it in the three weeks between finding out about Grayson and his birth. Because we had the money already sitting and waiting in an account, we were able to say YES without the concern of where we would get the finances. AMAZING! To all of you reading this that helped us raise that money, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You will always be a part of Grayson's story. To those of you who prayed, listened to us complain, heard me be completely unspiritual and didn't preach to me, asked us how the adoption process was going, let us know you hadn't forgotten.... THANK YOU! For us, you will always be a part of OUR story. You are why we didn't give up.
And we publicly thank our God who calls us to things that seem so awesome, but down the road can be so hard...for us it's adoption, but also raising children, homeschooling, moving to the mission field in Central America, fundraising for our support, leading a staff from two different cultures, working with the poor, working with short-term teams, mentoring college students... He called us to all of it. God's calling takes sacrifice, but it's a fun adventure. So listen when God wants to speak, and don't give up when He is silent, and don't despair when it's hard. We can say with renewed faith, He WILL come through!
Our family is FINALLY complete!! Look what God has done!!
