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God is Gracious

Jayden was perfect—as close to perfect as one can be without truly holding the unattainable gift of perfection. If I could have dreamed up a child on my own accord, I never would have come close to anyone as wonderful as our boy. His whole being manifested joy. As a baby, Jayden left the hospital on a great schedule, and that continued at home! He ate well, slept well, and giggled constantly. Everything suddenly became more fun with him: evening walks around the neighborhood, holidays, parties, trips. Everything!

In the spring of 2018, when Jayden was about a year and a half, we decided we wanted to grow our family once again. If God saw fit to bless us with another child, we wanted them to be close in age so they could grow up having a built-in best friend. We looked into both foster care and adoption attorneys and God made it clear, through a series of events, that working with an adoption attorney was the direction He was leading us at that specific time. In January of 2018, we contacted the same adoption attorney who had finalized Jayden’s adoption back in 2017. Working with her for a second time somehow brought added comfort. Much like with Jayden’s adoption, we hit the ground running. Except this time, we were seasoned veterans. Familiarity hovered over the routine, the paperwork, and the appointments. We completed our paperwork just as quickly as the first time around—if not more quickly.

Our church was having its annual kid’s camp—our version of vacation bible school—and I wore the “lead crafter” hat. At the time, my husband and I had been members of our church for roughly five years. Shortly after we became members, we began helping with the youth group. And shortly after posting a picture to Facebook of the latest craft I had created, I found out that our Pastor was serious when he talked about members of the body using their gifts. He saw my Facebook post and called to ask if I would lead crafts for camp.

One of the elders at our church owns several acres of land where he and his wife built Peaceful Way. This was a place where people could gather for events, outreach ministries, or just to enjoy the quiet outdoors with family and friends. All the kids looked forward to summer camp here year after year. Cows, horses, even lemurs were known to graze the fields. A beautiful backyard swimming pool welcomed a myriad of children from multiple age groups, and children’s songs and laughter spread throughout the grounds.

I’m a very detail oriented person, so being on time equates to being late in my book. I pulled up to Peaceful Way early enough that I had to enter the security gate code before the gate would open and allow my entrance. As I punched the numbers into the pinpad, my phone rang. Back in May, we were officially considered “active” for our adoption and any potential expectant mother could view our profile. Fast forward two months, to July 11th, and our adoption attorney was calling me after hours on a Wednesday evening. My fingers trembled as I pressed answer and cleared my throat.

Am I the only one who clears her throat prior to answering phone calls? I don’t do it when someone comes up to me in passing, so why do I have the incessant need to clear my throat only upon answering important phone calls? And why was she calling me after hours? Couldn’t whatever she needed wait until morning when she was in her office? Unless it couldn’t. Unless maybe, just maybe this was the phone call? Surely it couldn’t be.

When we heard the news about Jayden after only 15 days of being active, our agency was very quick to tell us and remind us on multiple occasions, “This never happens. This seriously never happens.”

There’s no way it could be possible that another adoption would come after only a few short weeks of waiting.

Let me remind you, this was the back and forth conversation I had with myself all before answering my phone. What a chatterbox my ever-running brain could be.

“Hey, Emily,” I answered, confused but excited.

Here’s my best recollection of the next few moments:

“Leeann, sorry to bother you right around dinner time. But I wanted to present a situation to you.”

“Sure! I’m actually not with Zach right now. Do you want me to add him to the call?”

“Yeah, that would be great,” she answered.

Frantically I began trying to dial him in and merge calls. I was a teenager through the evolution of cell phones. This should be a very simple task. Instead, I felt weighed down by a true heaviness of complexity. 50,000 minutes later I finally merged all three of us on a single call.

“Hey Emily. I’m on the line now,” Zach chimed in.

“Hey there, Zach. I was just telling Leeann I had a situation I wanted to run by y’all. I just got off the phone with an expectant mother and she has chosen you both.”

“Oh my word! Wow!” was somehow the only intelligent thing I could muster up.

“I’m still working on getting more information for you. She has a due date of August 1st, and just completed an ultrasound and everything seemed to look good from what I understand. Other than that, I don’t have any prenatal information for you right now. She is no longer in a relationship with her boyfriend, but he does know about the adoption and he actually chose y’alls profile separately from her. Kind of a funny story, I’ll tell ya about it later.”

“Ok, wow. That’s awesome.” Again, lacking in any attempt at more mature adjectives to contribute to this conversation.

“I’ll let y’all talk it over and if you could get back to me I will let her know your answer and we will move forward however you decide”.

“Ok, that sounds great. Thank you so much. You definitely made our night. We’ll get back to you very soon.”

Triple checking to make sure Zach and I were the only ones left on the line, we had a moment of celebration. What in the world? How on earth? We knew we had lots to talk about, but we exchanged ecstatic I love yous and knew we’d talk when I got home.

Though I say we had lots to talk about, I think both of our minds were already made up almost instantaneously after we hung up with our adoption attorney. I got home from camp and we both were ready to move forward with this potential placement. The next few days escaped in a blur, but one thing seemed certain. Jayden was about to be a big brother. His one year old voice couldn’t quite articulate “brother” yet, but he sure did try and “bubby” is what came out and, in my completely unbiased opinion, that’s one hundred times cuter than “brother” anyway.

Sporadically throughout the day, Jayden and I would pray for “bubby.” Driving to the grocery store or sitting on the living room couch, Jayden prayed: “Be with bubby. Amen.” If only technology was advanced enough to insert a video into a paperback book. If I could, I would. The prayers were precious. And how much more precious would this new little bundle of joy be?

Four days later brought us to Sunday morning. Being parents to only one child meant we could lazily drag our feet on Sunday mornings and still be on time for church. Zach unplugged his phone and realized he had a missed text from the middle of the night. I checked my phone and I too had an email from the same time. Both were from our attorney. We called her back immediately, and much to our surprise, found out our expectant mother went into early labor in the middle of the night, and was due to deliver within the next few hours. We both frantically started running around the house putting together a diaper bag of items for bubby and restocking Jayden’s diaper bag. We called one of our friends from church and explained the situation. No sooner did I try to ask for a huge favor than they immediately took the words out of my mouth. “Just drop Jayden off at church this morning on your way to the hospital. We’ll bring him back to our place for lunch after the service. Take your time at the hospital. We have a pack n’ play so Jayden can spend the night with us too. We’d love to have him. We’re so excited and will be praying for y’all.” What an amazing church body we have. People truly acted as the hands and feet of Jesus in our time of need. We took them up on their generous offer and rushed like mad people around our home.

Today is the day!

Zach and I constantly bumped into each other scurrying around the house to accomplish our to do list of tasks before walking out the door. The car ride to the hospital seemed to take forever. We cried, laughed, prayed, and nervously played through every scenario in our minds. Zach dropped me off at the hospital and then drove to drop Jayden off at church with our friends. I walked in, hesitant on how to feel in the moment. I truly had no idea what to expect from the situation. Was this a joyful moment? Yes! Was this a moment of deep confusion? Yes!

Is it ok to be excited? Is it ok to be happy when down the hall a woman’s heart is breaking?

Our attorney instructed us beforehand to go to the nurses’ station to let them know we had arrived and to explain our situation. So you better believe the nurses’ station was my first stop. I was greeted by the sweetest nurse who already knew my name and stood ready to meet me. “Yes, she told us about you....