Featured Adoption Story

At 12 years old I read a story in Reader's Digest that descrbed a child who had literally been abandoned and neglected.  It broke my heart!  How can a parent(s) do such a thing? It was incomprehesible to my young mind.  I had never heard of such abuse and I can remember feeling compassion like I've never known before.  No child should ever have to experience abuse of any kind.  That day I knew that I would one day adopt a child so that he/she could experience what love and true security is.

In 1985 I married my husband.  Adopting the child I had dreamt of for years was getting close.  To my disappointment my husband did not have the same desire.  I never thought about that happening.  So, for years I would pray to God for his heart to change.  

When we married we had a blended family.  Each of us already had a child.  Within one year we became pregnant and gave birth to our first child together.  It's a boy.  By the summer of 1993 we became pregnant again, only this time it resulted in a miscarriage.  We were devastated as one could imagine.  But, as God would have it, we were preganant yet again within months.  In late 1994 child our son, child number four, was born.  Life was good, life was busy, and our hearts were full. 

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, it happened!  My husband began talking about adoption.  I was overjoyed.  After eight years of praying to God, he answered my prayers.  My husband was ready and we didn't waste any time.  We started with what we thought was the best route of us and this was to go through children's services and adopt a child out of foster care.   We contacted Health and Welfare to learn about the process.  As their starting point we had to take ten classes.  We attended the first few but with the holidays approaching and it being my husband's busiest season of the year for work we put classes on hold until.  Before we could restart them I became preganant again so the adoption pause continued.  We were overjoyed once again about growing our family.

My sister-in-law reached out to us right after we learned we were pregnant.  She was letting us know she too was pregannt.  Unfortunately she was in a season of crisis alread in her life so this pregnancy was not at all in good timing.  We offered to support her through it in whatever way we could.  Because of her circumstances we were going to try encouraging her to place the baby for adoption. We reached out to an adoption attorney and personal friend of ours.  He gave us five profiles of couples who want to adopt.  Before having the chance to propose the thought of adoption she went into labor.  She called me to ask if I could be there with her.  I naturally said yes. Within hours of arriving I was blessed to witness the birth of our neice.  She's beautiful and perfect.  I even got to help name her.  That was exciting to me.  Lingering in the back of my mind was how to bring up adoption.  After much prayer we felt the time was right and my husband and I had a loving talk with her.  She agreed to look at the profiles and was at least open to the possibility.  We left the profiles with her went home.  The following day, she told us that she had reviewed the profiles but decided she wanted to take her beautiful baby girl home so we helped her do just that. 

I arrived to my planned conference and got checked in.  As I was geting settled into the room I began feeling very sick.  My roommate called my husband to let him know I was headed to the urgent care to get checked out.  Once he arrived we were given the devasting news that I had suffered another miscarriage.  How could this happen again?  The pain was indescribable.  What now, Lord?  We made our way home.  I went into the bedroom to lay down and rest.  Looking at the baby crib we had put up in our room brought overwhelming saddness.  I couldn't bring myself to ask my husband take down the crib.  Doing so would bring finality that this baby was gone and I was not ready for that.  Heavy denial in the days following the news.  The grief was so deep.  The mourning continued for months until we got a random call asking if we would care for sister-in-law's three children ages 13, 11, and 2 1/2 months.  By this point we only had two of our sons living at home which gave us the space to welcome our neices into our home.  And that crib?  It was left up in our room for such a time as this.  We had just the right place for the baby to rest.   

We had been caring for our neices for about eighteen months when my sister-in-law succumbed to the realization that a raising her baby in her current situation was not in anyone's best interest.  She approached us asking if we would adopt the baby.  Would we adopt?  Are you sure?  We were in disbelief.  This was God's plan all along.  We gave her a resounding, YES!  By age 2 1/2 we had our baby girl.  Her brothers and the rest of our family welcomed her with so much love.   She has been the one of the biggest blessings to our family. 

Today, baby Shelby is 23 years old and my Rooted in Faith business partner.  It is our hope that as we share our story it will inspire others to adopt, give hope to those who are in the process, and remind everyone that God's plans are way better than anything we could ever dream of. 

Brigitte