When I tried to come up with a title for this post, I couldn’t help but think back to when I was a child, riding in the car with my mom and listening to Paul Harvey’s radio program, “The Rest of the Story”. Many of you know that our daughter, Aliyah, was born in September and the long-awaited months of being matched with an expectant mom are finally over. She is a JOY (her middle name) and we thank God every day for her. But her story starts way before we were matched with her birth mom in July. Her story begins exactly one year ago.
On December 20, 2018, I had just gotten into bed and was laying there for only a few minutes when God spoke “Aliyah” to me. It was clear and came without confusion. I was curious and excited and wondered what it meant. I looked up name meanings on my phone right then and found some websites that said the name meant “to rise up to God” and “exalted”, to name a few. It’s origin is Hebrew. I journaled about this the next morning because I wanted to remember what God had spoken to me. I knew there would be a “rest of the story”.
Fast forward to February. (While I will share some detail, I’ve made the decision to not share all of the details of this next part. Mainly because this story is very emotional and personal to us. It’s difficult to write about because it feels as if we are opening a wound, but I also find it healing and am praying that as I type I can have forgiveness and find comfort in moving on from this part of our adoption story. So, I’ll give a slimmer version so you can understand what we’ve been through, even without some of the finer details.) So, at the beginning of February, I received a DM on Instagram from a girl that was just a few weeks pregnant and wanted to pursue placing her unborn child for adoption. She was married but has several chronic illnesses and did not think that she would physically be able to take care of or raise a child. She had been told previously she could not get pregnant so this came as a surprise to her and her husband. This girl, I will just call her “K”, said she found us through an adoption hashtag and she really liked what she found on my Instagram page. She and her husband are Christians, like us, and they too like to camp and hike. K loved that there were so many similarities between us. But, she was really early on in her pregnancy (earlier than agencies usually “match” for adoption) and I told her that we were working with a local agency. After finding out she lived in Ohio (45 minutes from where Casey grew up) I mentioned we were pursuing adoption in the state of North Carolina and not anywhere else. We had really easy conversation over DM, and we left it at if they decided they wanted to continue pursuing adoption in a couple of months, maybe we could talk then.
A little less than two months later she reached out again after an ultrasound and said she was a little further along than she previously thought and she would like to continue the conversation about adoption. We talked about meeting and getting to know one another, etc. After lots of conversation and prayer with Casey, we met with our agency and shared with them our story. They urged us to meet the couple and confirm the pregnancy (knowing there are scams out there), and said they could help us get connected to an agency or adoption attorney in Ohio if we decided to move forward with this couple. (Our agency wouldn’t be able to be involved since they are not licensed in the state of Ohio.)
So, the next day, we were on the road to Ohio(!). K was supposed to have an appointment the following day and said we could go with them. About a couple of hours into our drive she said the appointment for the next day was canceled by her doctor but we could of course still come up. Our excitement was a little deflated but we knew we would just need to continue trusting the path God was leading us on.
We met K and T the next day at her grandparent’s home where they were living temporarily, after moving back to Ohio. Her grandparents were there when we arrived so we all sat in her grandparent’s living room for a little while and chit chatted, then the four of us were off to grab lunch and get to know each other. We learned a lot about their story over lunch and then enjoyed a little hike with them at a park. During the visit it came up that K wanted to do a “gender reveal” for us and take photos (she used to have her own photography business but shut that down when she got really sick). We said we would be okay with that if it’s what she wanted to do.
The next day we got together after lunch and grabbed a local ice cream and donuts, two of mine and K’s favorite things. We loved the little similarities we had! After that was the gender reveal at her grandparent’s house. They have a big yard so we were able to take the photos on the lawn. K had gotten us confetti canons to burst at her count of “3” while she took photos. She took some of us together before, during, and after. T filmed it while K took photos so we could have a video as well. After K counted to three, we burst the cannons and blue confetti sprayed out! Casey and I were so excited because three years before this moment, I had the most vivid dream that we had a baby boy named Luke…so here we thought this was Luke!
Afterward, we went inside K’s grandparent’s home and the four of us sat on the floor in K and T’s room as we talked about names. I shared my dream about Luke and we all agreed we would love it if they would give him his middle name. K also had a box of baby items she picked out for him including ultrasound photos for us. The four of us shared a really sweet moment of talking and praying together before Casey and I said our goodbyes. The next steps would be for us to talk with our agency about pursuing this adoption opportunity with K and T.
About a month later, in May, K and T came to visit us in Wilmington! They stayed with us for a week in our home and while they were here, they looked for places to live. They did not want to stay in Ohio and had previously lived in SC, so they hoped to move back this way. Also, if they lived in NC then our agency would be able to be involved in the adoption process instead of us seeking a different route with an out-of-state adoption. Casey and I liked that they would be close because, from the beginning, we had been pursuing “open adoption” so that we could have a relationship with our child’s birth parents and vice versa. Unfortunately, K and T did not have any luck with finding a place that was feasible within the timeframe they needed. K was due in mid to late September and they wanted to have enough time to settle before her due date.
The visit with them was good but at times, tough. We felt there were still walls they had up when in conversation with them and that was hard on me and Casey because here we were opening our home to them and sharing our lives with them and we hoped they would do the same. However, we knew that this was not easy for them and they were dealing with their own emotions. We constantly stressed we didn’t take this decision lightly and tried our best to have an open dialogue. We wanted them to feel as comfortable as possible and let them guide our conversations.
Something we scheduled prior to their visit, was setting a date and time to have a professional photographer take photos of the four of us, announcing our “match”. It was something K and I talked about and wanted to do. We got all dressed up and took some really sweet photos. Photos that are difficult for me to look at now.
When K and T left our home a couple of days later, we asked our agency to put our file “on hold” at their office because we were going to pursue this adoption opportunity with K and T. (We couldn’t pursue two avenues towards adoption simultaneously.) Our agency helped us get in touch when an attorney in Ohio. I called her and had a great conversation, and the best part was she not only had been doing this for 30+ years and had adopted her own child as well, but she was 25 minutes from K and T and could meet with them at their home. K and T just needed to call her and set up an appointment. For weeks I kept checking in and they hadn’t called her. We were patient as we waited for them to move forward at the pace that was right for them. K and I would send Marco Polos and text every so often. After a few weeks, I started to notice the conversation towards adoption sort of dwindled and the clarity we once had from them seemed to not be so clear anymore. Casey and I expressed to the both of them that if they changed their mind about adoption then that’s okay, just please let us know. We had put our lives on hold, so to speak, when stopping our file at our adoption agency. We desperately wanted to know if we should go our separate ways and continue with our agency. Instead, in our efforts to reach out, we were ignored. It was heartbreaking.
By mid-July, it had been at least two weeks since we had heard from them. Texts and Marco Polo weren’t answered. We were at a loss for words. The attorney in Ohio says she sees this all the time and advised us to go ahead and update our Home Study. If they called us and said the baby had been born, we wouldn’t be able to do anything if our Home Study was expired.
You see, for an out-of-state adoption, your Home Study is good for only one year. For an in-state adoption, it’s good for 18 months. Our Home Study was going to reach it’s one year mark in August, so we would need to update if we decided to pursue this out-of-state adoption.
On Wednesday, July 17th, I talked with a dear friend about our situation. She asked if I would be open to talking with her sister who had also adopted and who had been through private adoption situations that did not come to fruition. The next day I reached out to her sister around 11am and we set a phone date for that afternoon. Meanwhile, our agency had sent us everything to do the Home Study update around 1pm that day. They had put it on their calendar to send us the paperwork mid-July. I saw the email from them after I got off the phone with my friend’s sis. We talked for almost two hours as she shared her experiences and we talked through our situation. She prayed for me and Casey, and the main advice she gave me was to find where our peace was. She said that our God is not a God of confusion (I couldn’t agree more) and that He would show us where our peace was. I left the conversation feeling uplifted, knowing that whatever God had planned would come about and that He would show us where He was leading.
I printed off the Home Study paperwork. I felt defeated. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to think about the $500 we had to spend to update it, or the attorney fees we would need to pay. I didn’t want to have to fill out the pages and pages of paperwork that I had just printed. I didn’t want to have to go downtown and get our fingerprints done again and send them off. But, if our peace was to move forward then we would do it. We would do what was needed to bring our baby home.
Several days went by and here it was, Tuesday night, July 23rd. I was sitting on the couch after dinner, looking at the paperwork on the coffee table. Casey sat next to me and I said, “we have to make a decision tonight. We have to find our peace and know what God is telling us to do.”
I had been in such a dark cloud for months and didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. Several times I just felt paralyzed in my emotions. We would be given little glimpses of hope with this opportunity with K and T, and then we would feel confused. We had no idea at times what they were thinking or feeling and we were kept guessing. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, to say the least. I don’t want to discount at all what they were going through. We had no idea what they were thinking and feeling. I only share how strong our emotions were because they were real. What we went through was real. But, we know too, that what K and T were going through was more heart wrenching than anything we could ever imagine.
Casey and I decided we would reach out to our agency that night and give them a quick update on where we were with things and to ask if it were possible to re-open our file with them, but to also update our Home Study, just in case we heard from K and T at some point. I emailed them at 8:38pm so we did not expect to hear back that night, but we did. Exactly one hour later at 9:38, they emailed us. I just happened to open my laptop and notice I had a new email.
In their email they said we would still need to choose one avenue. That if we opened our file with them, and our profile book was shown, we would need to end the “match” with K and T immediately. They also shared that they would be meeting with a new expectant mom the next day. She would be due in 6 or 7 weeks and wants to “match” ASAP. After reading this, Casey and I knew that they would not have shared this with us if we were not a possible match. Since going “live” in August of 2018, our profile book had only been shown once. We had been given an opportunity to say “yes” to our book being shown in January of 2019. The expectant mom had a unique situation and did not have a “match” with the agency based on what was on file. The agency reached out to everyone on the list and shared the situation and asked to let them know if we would like our book to be shown. Casey and I said yes, but she chose another family. Our profile was on hold for two months with the agency (during the time we pursued the opportunity with K and T), and for the nine months before that, our book was shown only the one time because we did not match profiles with any of the expectant mom’s that had been to the agency.
After reading their email together, Casey and I talked through everything. We first tried to make our decision without involving this expectant mom because we didn’t know if we would be chosen. But after talking for a little bit, we knew we could not make this decision without involving her. We had been given this information for a reason, but also knew there was the possibility of not being chosen, just like before. We prayed together and separately for about 45 minutes..worship music playing in the house, inviting the Holy Spirit, asking for God to give us our peace, His peace, as to the decision we were supposed to make. I cried. A whole lot. Buckets of tears. I was grieving everything we had been through since February. For five months we had been in a sea of emotions without absolute clarity. I felt that if our peace was to go back to our agency, then the past several months would feel wasted.
When we were done praying I asked Casey if he had his peace. He said he did and I knew I had mine too. Casey shared first and said he felt we needed to go back to the agency…I felt the same. 100%, no doubt, our peace, God’s peace, was to go back to our agency.
I cannot share enough with you about how amazed I am with God’s sovereignty. I cannot tell you enough how strong the feeling was to make a decision about updating our Home Study that Tuesday night before we went to bed. The urging of the Holy Spirit was almost palpable. He placed it on my heart to start the conversation with my husband that we had ignored the past few days.
We emailed the agency around 10:30pm and told them we would like to move forward with them and we would end the “match” with K and T if our book did get shown. The next morning I was up early with excitement, wondering if all that we had experienced the night before was for that day. Wondering if our book would in fact get shown and the expectant mom would choose us. I had an email from the agency that morning. It said from what they were told on the phone by her, it sounds like a “match” we would be open to and if they did show profiles today, ours would be included. They didn’t tell us what time they were meeting with her, so you can imagine that all day we waited in anticipation.
Around 5pm, Casey got home from work and around the same time I received a text message from our agency asking us if we would be open to a certain aspect about this expectant mom’s situation. We said, “yes”. They responded saying, “okay, we had your book out just in case, so we will include it.” My mind was racing with excitement. Casey and I planned on going for a run in the neighborhood when he got home, and I knew it would be a good distraction as we waited. Usually I don’t bring my phone, but that day I did just in case we received a call from them.
After running for about 15 or 20 minutes my phone rings. It’s the agency. Casey is just up ahead of me, I yell to him, telling him they’re calling. He turns and runs back to me as I answer the phone. The first words were, “she picked you!”. I put the phone on speaker and said something like, “oh my gosh!” Casey and I looked at each other, beaming. Tears filling my eyes. I will never forget how excited we were as we walked around our neighborhood listening to them tell us about this expectant mom. She did not know the gender, but her due date was September 19th. We were dumbfounded. This was within one week of when K was due. We had been planning for a September baby since April…would we have a September baby after all?
Could it be that God had us pursue K and T not because we would adopt their baby, but because our profile would need to be put on hold so that we would be matched with the right expectant mom, our child’s birth mom? We think so. There is no doubt in our mind that everything we went through this year was a part of God’s plan. We may not always understand His providence but we know there is nothing we can do to mess up His plan.
So, the rest of the story? I’ll be writing that soon in Part 2. Stay tuned.
For now, I am headed to bed, remembering this night one year ago, when God spoke our daughter’s name to me, before she was even created. “Aliyah”.
