Being Led to Our Decision

Danny and I started having serious conversations about children a couple months after we got married. We both agreed that we wanted to be young parents to at least 4 children so starting sooner would be to our advantage. We decided to start trying for a family in May of 2003 after only being married for 9 months. Much to our surprise, we found out we were pregnant on June 3. There were no words to express the excitement that we felt. We told everyone immediately and even started shopping for baby stuff.

On August 6, 2003, we quickly learned that something wasn’t right. Danny took me to the emergency room because we knew that bleeding wasn’t normal during pregnancy. I will never forget that night. They ran tests, an ultrasound and a physical exam. After 3 hours of waiting, the doctor walked in and asked me "when was the last time you ate." I told him that we were in the middle of eating dinner when we left to come to the hospital. He said that he was admitting me because he wanted to get me into surgery tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Being very confused, I asked what kind of surgery I needed. He looked at me like I was stupid and said “the baby is dead and we need to get it out.” I remember the feeling of complete shock. I became hysterical, saying over and over again “this can’t be, I am 3 months pregnant.” The doctor walked next to me, put his hand on mine and said “this happens to 8 out of 10 women on their first pregnancy so this is normal” and he walked out of the room. I have no idea how long I sat there. I eventually got dressed, feeling completely empty. As I walked out of the room, the nurse stopped me. She asked where I was going. I told her I just wanted to go home and she said “you can’t.” She walked me back into the room and said, “if you try and pass this baby, you could bleed out at home. You have to stay here. Your surgery is scheduled for 6 a.m. and your room is being prepared as we speak.”

I remember calling my parents that night. I woke them out of a deep sleep and told them what had happened. Danny climbed into bed with me and we cried ourselves to sleep. The next morning, they performed the DNC. We agreed to allow the doctors to run tests on the fetal tissue to see if they could determine what went wrong. We left 4 hours later and I spent the rest of the day with my head in Danny’s lap or cuddled up to his chest as we cycled through watching movies, crying and sleeping.

I cried for weeks. I was 24 and had never met anyone that had experienced a miscarriage. I felt so alone. Danny and I started falling apart. We didn’t know how to talk to each other about how we were feeling (anger, disappointment, frustration, isolation, sadness, etc.) We ended up falling apart instead of walking together.

It took almost 2 years of counseling before we were able to rebuild what we lost during the 2 ½ years following that miscarriage. I know now that God was at work in us. We met a counselor that helped us address our own insecurities, feeling, habits, defense mechanisms and coping strategies. She was tough and to the point. I believe to this day, she was the only reason we were able to recover from the damage we caused to our marriage.

She was also the first person to challenge me on the thought that "this life was not about me." She would challenge me on my beliefs or lack thereof. She gave me an address of a church that was down the road from where I lived and told me to check it out if I felt up to it. I remember the first time I told Danny I wanted to go and the fear that my atheist husband would make funny of me, insult me, or talk me out of it. He surprised me that day. He wanted to come with. We walked into this massive church and were instantly intimidated. I remember shaking a couple people’s hands as we walked in, we quickly grabbed the two chairs in the last row closest to the door, so we could escape if it got freaky in there. I remember looking around and thinking to myself that we didn’t belong there. Everyone there looked so…peaceful. I wanted to look like them. I wanted to be them.

The worship team took the stage which was followed by a sermon given by Pastor Jeff. We were completely at ease as we watched him this goofy guy teach about God's word while wearing a cape. I don’t remember exactly he said but I knew walking out of there that I needed to come back again. The drive home was quiet. That night we just watched T.V. At some point, I got to courage to look and Danny and tell him that I wanted to go back again. He agreed and we started attending Faith Church every so often. We didn’t get it but we couldn’t stop trying to understand.

One day we had a huge blowout…it was our rock bottom. We needed to decide if we were going to continue working hard on our marriage or walk away. At the end of our fight, we were both sitting on the kitchen floor, completely exhausted. I looked at him and grabbed the keys. He asked me where I was going and I said “to church…you comin?” We drove in silence, walked in and listened to every word that was said.

Pastor Bob talked about “jumping in.” He challenged the attendees to look at where they were, “are you watching from the edge of the pool or have you jumped in?” At the end of the sermon, Pastor Bob asked the attendees to stand up if they were ready “to jump in and submerge into their walk with God.” Neither one of us moved. I wanted to but was too worried of what Danny thought. We walked out to the car and drove off to get dinner. As we were driving down Route 30, I told Danny that I should have stood up and that I wanted to change because the way I was living my life was no longer working. He also expressed that he should have stood up as well. At that moment, I pulled a U-turn and we went back to Faith Church.

The worship team stood talking at the front while Pastor Bob was talking to a distressed woman. The team introduced themselves to us and we talked about their style of worship when Pastor Bob walked over. We introduced ourselves and told him “we should have stood up.” He invited us into his office where he asked us about our relationship with Christ. We both admitted that we didn’t have a relationship. He asked us if we wanted one and we told him that we didn’t understand. He asked us if we believed in God and we couldn’t answer with certainty. He said that as long as we believed, with even as much faith as small as a mustard seed, that God exists, that we could be saved. That night, we invited Jesus into our hearts.

We took our leap of faith that night and have never been the same. The relationship we have now, it 1000 times stronger than what we started with. The man I am married to is more caring, attractive, supportive, understanding, and loving than that guy I fell in love with 11 years ago. The relationship that I thought was good had been transformed into a relationship that I never thought was possible. I know now that God was preparing us.

Our relationship has experienced a lot over the past 6 years. It has overcome the loss of four additional pregnancies, surgeries, specialists, testing procedures, 2 ½ years of unemployment and severe financial distress. More importantly, our relationship has witnessed many miracles as well. It has allowed us to see the birth of our son, become financially independent, discover our spiritual gift of helping others gain an understanding of their finances, find a church family that is loving and supportive, meet incredible people that we can walk through life with, and gain the courage to start the adoption process.

The family we thought we were going to have has changed just like our relationship. What could have been good is turning out to be a family that is going to be incredible. We have the privilege of allowing God to build our family to be more beautiful than we could have ever imagined.

We have turned in our application for the domestic program that is run by Sunny Ridge Family Center. We are currently enrolled in a Transracial class to help us understand the tools that are needed to possibly support a child of color in today’s society. I don’t know what our child will look like, whether they will be a boy or a girl, but I will know that the child we receive will be loved and accepted by us.

The Start of Our Journey

One question that I have been asked several times over these past couple months is “where did you start?”  I can relate to that question because it is such a big deal.  I started the same way my students do when they want to know something; I jumped on the internet.  I typed in “adoption process” and became really overwhelmed with the number of resources that were out there.  I started clicking on different links and reading as much as I could.  I quickly learned about the types of adoption, some of the costs involved, and the steps that are involved in the adoption process.

All of this research stimulated good conversation between Danny and me about our future child.  How old would they be (baby, toddler, child, teen, etc.)?  Where would they come from (Illinois, United States, or another country)?  What race would this child be (Caucasian, African-American, Asian, Hispanic, etc.)?  Right from the start, we agreed that we did not want a child older than our son (who was going to turn 4 the end of August).  We talked about finding a child between the ages of 6 months – 2 ½ years old join our family because it seemed like all the other families were only interested in babies and we wanted someone that would be closer to our son’s age. 

After I spent several weeks jumping around on the internet to learn what I could, I found out that one of the agencies had an “informational meeting” coming up in two weeks.  I contacted friends of ours that had mentioned adopting in the future to see if they would attend this meeting with us.  Two weeks later, we were driving with our friends to the meeting together.  As we sat in that two-hour meeting, I tried to absorb as much as I could.  I was very overwhelmed learning about the requirements for each type of adoption, information about the China special needs program and the domestic program, the number of children that had been placed over the years, as well as the cost and time that were involved with each.  The whole time I sat in that meeting, I kept waiting for them to talk about the children that were from the United States in the age group we were interested in learning more about.  They never talked about those kids.  So at the end of the meeting, I approached the woman from the domestic program and asked her how many toddlers they had placed.  She said “one” but that was a special situation. By the end of that discussion, I felt that our thought about having an “older” child join our family was not a reasonable expectation. I was defeated, lost, and heart-broken.  What was I supposed to do now?

On the drive home, Danny and I decided to attend additional meetings to learn about other agencies and find out what they had to offer.  A month later, we were sitting in our second agency meeting.  Much of the information we heard was similar to the other agency we had visited but we were there to learn as much as we could.  We were very impressed with the guest speaker who adopted children through the China special needs program.  She was so confident when she spoke about her experience; how her and her husband “knew” they were supposed to adopt from China, their adoptions for each of their three children, and at peace with the road they were traveling.  I wanted her peace.  I wanted her confidence.  Inside, I felt neither.

We had a chance to talk after the guest speaker and both my husband and I agreed we wanted to adopt internationally but didn’t feel that that time was now.  We listened to the women talk about the different programs they had to offer but still did not hear about the children we were looking for.  We stayed after class to talk to the director and found out that our desire to adopt a child that was a couple months to a couple years old was not going to be fulfilled through that agency either.  I asked her for help.  She gave me contact information to other agencies she thought would help us find a child in that age group.  I was very grateful because I finally felt that I had been heard and had the next step was being laid out for me.

I called that contact and four others to find out that the only way to get a child to get a child in the United States is through the foster care system.  Who better to talk to than DCFS itself, right?  I am still waiting for a call back to any of the voicemails I left back in end of June.  So after telling my friend Pam, who works at an adoption agency, about my frustration of trying to find out if foster system was going to be a good fit for our family, including our future child, she referred me to her co-worker Amy.  Amy was a blessing.  Amy talked to me for almost an hour about the foster care system, international adoption as well as the domestic program.  I was so grateful that someone would just talk to me and help me understand what I wanted I so desperately wanted to comprehend.  At the end of our conversation, Amy told me that I could call her if she could help.

Danny and I had several conversations about what our family could look like…we both still saw a toddler but we started to talk about whether that toddler could be a different race than us.

I attended a third agency meeting at the end of July to learn about the different countries they worked with, restrictions that those countries had as well as the requirements for each.  At the end of that meeting, I was very overwhelmed.  I knew nothing about any of those countries.  How do you decide where to adopt from?      

I went home to talk to Danny about all of the new information and we spent several weeks talking about our options.  By the last week in July, my head was spinning.  We had been actively researching adoption options and were no closer to understanding what we were going to do and they next school year was right around the corner.  At the end of one of our conversations, I asked Danny if he would go with me to talk to Amy so we could figure out what we were going to do.  We made our appointment and got to sit down with her on August 2, 2011.  After 1 ½ hours, we walked out of that meeting with clear heads.  We had come to a mutual decision J