Expecting Miracles

(An email Sonja sent to her coworkers.)

As many of you know, my husband and I embarked on our adoption journey at the beginning of the school year. It was an exciting, but very scary time in our lives. With adoption, there are so many emotions, unknowns and circumstances that are completely out of your control. The adoption experience is, quite certainly, an area where you need to completely rely on God and His plan.

We officially began our adoption journey on September 8th with a rather overwhelming phone call with our adoption liaison. We were given the breakdown of the total cost of bringing home a baby…and we thought that this journey would be completely impossible. I mean, who really has an extra $40,000 laying around? But, we felt that God was leading us, and we put our trust in Him and moved forward…and felt the call to pray for twins. God led.

In October, we began fundraising. Our goal was to raise $10,000, which felt completely out of our reach. Yet, in just over two weeks time, we raised over $13,000 to bring a baby home. God provided.

In January, after a successful home study and PILES of paperwork, we created our adoption profile; a place where expecting moms could browse waiting adoptive families. And then the waiting started…

…and waiting is hard. As with any waiting, your faith is tested to its limits. All the insecurities, doubts and worries creep up. It's easy to doubt God's timing, His plan, and sometimes (if I'm honest) His goodness. Yet, through it all, God sustained.

Well, on Thursday, after waiting almost exactly 4 months to the day of our profile going "live", we received a phone call. The call. The one that we were praying for all the way back in September. We are going to be parents….of twins! We'll be in the delivery room and bringing our our little boy and girl in October. What seemed impossible to us, our families and even our liaison was made possible with God. God answered our prayers even more perfectly than we could've imagined. God is faithful. God is good.

I apologize for the lengthiness of this post, but so many of you have walked through this journey with me, day in and day out. You have been ears to listen, shoulders to cry on, and arms to hug. You've prayed with me, cried with me, and celebrated all along the way. I'm afraid I just don't have the right words to express my gratitude, but know that my heart is overflowing with joy and thankfulness. Thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Thank you for everything.

Home study=done

Adoption profile=done

Search for our babies=beginning in just a couple weeks!!!!

We are too excited! The search will be underway super soon and hopefully we’ll be holding a couple of precious babies in our arms sometime this year! (Yes, we STILL are hoping/praying/wishing/dreaming of twins. That would be amazing.

In the meantime, we’re getting the baby/babies room ready with fresh coat of paint, a woodland creature theme, and keeping our eye out for funky, practical furniture. After so many years of just waiting, waiting, waiting, it feels so wonderful to be MOVING!

(A post by Mike)

My friend Rob writes a great daily newsletter called “Crushed It.” Every Friday, he turns the keys over to a guest author. Last week, I was lucky enough to take it for a spin.

I wrote about joy and happiness. You can read what I had to say (and listen to some sweet tunes that make Sonja and I happy) here.

I picked the topic thanks to a Radiolab story about a guy on a solo trip to the South Pole. In the piece, they played a video of the man shouting for joy as he dug through a cache of supplies near the end of his 90-day journey. He’d forgotten that he had packed himself cheez doodles, chocolates and other treats in stash.

In the interview, the man (Aleksander Gamme) talked about how we sometimes  need to experience the most difficult things -- in his case a grueling 3-month journey across a frozen continent alone -- to then experience true joy. Sure, everyone loves cheez doodles... but you need to experience the absence of anything like them to genuinely and deeply appreciate the hydrogenated orange crunch as an explosion of joy.

Our infertility-to-adoption journey is like that. We’ve gone through some dark times and some crushing loss. There has been pain and tears, struggles and bargaining. But we’ve also experienced deep and profound joy as we’ve seen God’s hand at work, whether it’s in a two-hour prayer session with complete strangers, watching Evenson dance in the kitchen with Sonja or make a snow angel (photo below), celebrating the completion of our fundraising campaign (thank you, thank you, thank you!) or launching the next step in our baby adventure.

We’re not all the way through yet... but I don’t think these moments of joy would be as special or as profound were it not for the struggle.

(A post by Mike)

When you’re thinking of having kids it’s natural to think about what your baby will look like. Will she have dad’s eyes and mom’s smile? Will he be dark haired or fair? It’s easy to combine all sorts of family traits, putting together the perfect child, but it’s all a just a mental picture until you see your child for the first time.

Before we started researching domestic infant adoption, I had no idea that part of this process would include the chance to design what we wanted our baby to be like.

It’s called the Adoption Questionnaire and it’s several sheets of paper adoptive parents fill out for their agency. These simple pages carry some pretty significant consequences.

On our form, there are boxes to tick for different races, indicating what ethnicity we wanted our child to be (or not). African American, Asian, Caucasian/Indian mix, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander -- there they were, singled out and in every combination imaginable. As we looked across the sheet, images of baby faces in every color flashed in my mind along with pictures of toddlers with braids or afros, kids of all shapes and sizes.

It was up to us to choose which we wanted. (For the record, it was a quick decision for us to check the “open to all races/ethnicities” box.)

It sounds a little crazy, but it makes sense when you think about it: Adoption agencies want to match adoptive parents with the babies they’re looking for, plain and simple. Agencies use these checklists to gauge the type of child who would be the best fit with our family.

But the questionnaire doesn’t stop at color; there are even more aspects of the “design” process: We get to choose our comfort level not only for the baby, but with the birth parents, as well.

We had to choose… Would it be okay if the birth mom was schizophrenic? What if she had an STD? What if she was a smoker (How much?) or used drugs (Which ones?) or had a learning disability? What if they didn’t know the father? What if the child was the result of rape? What if… what if... what if?

These are questions you don’t have to consider if you have a biological child. You know then what you’re bringing to the table; it’s a controlled experiment, one in which the outcome is more or less as expected.

Or is it?

You see, as much as we try to plan our lives and line everything up (get married, get promoted, buy a house, decorate, have 2.5 kids, a golden retriever and a 401k), we are ultimately not in control. Even if we’re not worried about what our children look like or who their biological parents are, we still don’t have control over what our kids will become, whether or not they’re born with an unplanned defect or difference, or how their personality will influence their future. No matter how much we try to plan things, we don’t control things like the loss of a job that affects family finances or the cancer that spins life out of control. We simply can’t predict the curveballs that will come our way.

We’ve come to realize in the infertility and adoption process that no matter how detailed a checklist we fill out, we are not anywhere close to being the ones in control.

(A post by Sonja)

I knew that I wanted to be a mom from a very young age. I’ve always loved kids, even when I was a kid myself. I love being around little ones (yay for teaching first grade!). I’ve had lots of experience with kids...nurturing a child always seemed to feel natural. I just assumed I’d be like everyone else and have a nice little family of my own when the time was right.

Mike and I were married for about 3 years before we decided to start a family. I had been bugging him for, oh, 3 years to have kids (sorry, love!), and I was thrilled when Mike finally agreed that he was ready to add more to the mix.

In the excitement of looking forward to being pregnant, I often imagined how amazing it would be to see traits of myself and my husband in our child. Maybe they would have his deep brown eyes and my light sandy hair. Maybe they would be outgoing and chatty like daddy or be painfully shy as a child, as I was. I always imagined our children would be so beautiful. And then, as a complete shock and surprise to us, we found out that we would never know. I think that was one of the most difficult things to deal with. We would never know what a biological child would look like. Ever.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Mike and I traveled to Haiti. We went about 6 months after the earthquake in 2011 with the intentions of coming alongside the people in Haiti to bring some relief. It was overwhelming getting off the plane and stepping out into the hot, muggy air and being in a place so completely different from home. I saw so many people living in tents and makeshift houses, living without clothes, food or water. Children running out of their homes to “the fancy white people” asking for something to eat, or something to play with. I was heartbroken, overstimulated and overwhelmed. I knew that I was so incapable of helping anyone or anything and became angry that I had arrived in the first place. I felt completely inadequate and convicted about the extremely cushy life I came from. By about day three, I wanted to go home. I kept asking God, “Why am I here? I can’t do anything to help these people...I don’t belong here…”

And then, I met Evenson.

Evenson was a scrawny 12-year-old with the biggest, most infectious smile I had ever seen. We met on one of the hottest days while moving rubble from one of the local churches. Initially, he walked beside me while I moved rocks and concrete from one pile to another. Then, he started carrying rocks himself and continued traveling along with me...until he began taking my rocks and carrying them for me. I remember thinking, “This kid is so sweet, but come on! Moving rocks is why I came to Haiti in the first place! It’s my job to help YOU, not the other way around!”

From that moment on, Evenson and I were inseparable. Every morning, he would wait outside our sleeping quarters and wait for us to wake up. Every evening, he would stay with me in the house until he was told to go home. Every free moment I had, I spent it with him. We played patty cake, shared food, drew pictures in my journal, practiced teaching each other how to count in English and Creole, and we always held hands. This little boy that I hardly knew had come to mean more to me than I could understand. Although we could barely communicate and had known each other for less than 72 hours, he felt like family.

The night before we were to head back home, I did my best to tell him that I would never forget him, and was pretty sure I could feel my heart breaking. I don’t know that he understood, but we both knew that we had this inexplicable bond...yet we were both certain we would never see each other again. However, it was in those sweet, few moments that I knew my purpose for going to Haiti. It was to meet this boy who, though I didn’t know it then, would become my son.

When I think back on this experience I had with Evenson (who now lives with us and goes to school in the States!), I can’t help but know in the deepest part of my heart that Mike and I were meant to adopt a child. I’ve already learned that parenthood isn’t determined by biological lines, but through the heart. Somehow, all the sorrow I felt about not seeing “my traits” in a child disappeared when I think about the incredible bond I have with a (now) young man who looks nothing like me, speaks in a foreign tongue, and has lived 11 years of his life without us in it. We are connected by something deeper than biology. Deeper than DNA. Deeper than a family name. We’re connected by love that only God could’ve provided. It’s the only way I can begin to describe it. And I know that it can, and will, happen again when we bring this new baby into our home, lives, and hearts.

(A post by Mike)

What is this inexplicable draw we have to starting families -- to create life where there was none? Why do two become one and then feel impelled to add another to the mix?

I don’t have a clear answer for these questions or why this call resounds so deeply. But I do know that I want to be a dad.

What’s more, I want Sonja to be a mom. I don’t know anyone who deserves that joy more -- or who God has better equipped -- than she. I want to watch her hold our babies and kiss them on the top of their heads. I want to see her asleep on the couch with our children in her arms. I want to see her dance and sing and play and laugh with our kids.

I want to play catch with our children. I want to teach them to love the outdoors and show them how to flip a pancake. I want to read the books I read to my kids: the Redwall series, C.S. Lewis, Dickens and Louis L’Amour. I want to be there by their side as I watch them discover an interest that ignites and explodes a lifelong passion.

I want their stomachs to churn when the Bills play and, most importantly, I want their hearts to break at the injustice and lack of love in the world.

I want them to know that our lives mean something and that every day we have the opportunity to take actions that resonate in eternity. And when the time is right, and when they feel the tug on their hearts, I want them to decide on their own to dedicate their lives to God and to pursue Him above all else.

This desire for children is an innate drive, a passion of the human core. And that’s what I want, and that’s why we’re adopting.

We’re adopting! Here’s what you can do to help us out (if you’re so inclined)...

1) Prayer... This is a long, sometimes difficult and stressful process. We need your prayers!

2) Share... If our story has moved you, share a link to this site with someone who might also be touched by our adventure.