I clung to the steering wheel as if it was a floatation device and I was drowning. It seemed fitting. I felt like I was drowning. There I sat in the parking lot of the grocery store. Mothers with babies on their hips casually walking past my parked car to go pick up milk and eggs. Women shooting off one last text before finishing their errands. And, I sat there, crying wondering if we had made a very big mistake.

A few days earlier, we had been sent her file. She was beautiful. After over two years of walking down the adoption process path, we thought this could be it. We thought that this was the moment we had been waiting for. We had sat down together before an alphabetical list of words months before that day. We looked at a handful of words we couldn’t pronounce and debated over which of those words were scary and which were not-so-scary for us. None of them were without implications; we knew that. But, it almost seemed like the scariest part wasn’t the words and their implications but the actual box checking.

Months later, we saw her. Our social worker had locked her file for us and sent it via email with an intentionally warm but short, neutral message every family gets to the effect of: Look her file over. Show your doctor. Let us know if you have questions. You have a limited time to respond. And so, it began. I did what I knew to do. We poured over her file, studied her pictures, charted her measurements, read about where she was living, consulted experts, and prayed. Is this girl with silky dark hair pulled back from her face and large dark eyes our daughter?

We said yes. The time was running out on our deadline, and there was no reason to say no. The labels attached to her were diagnoses we had checked “yes” to on that list. And, as we did all that we had planned to do when that referral came, there were no big surprises. We showed her picture to our children and told our families all about her.

But, something wasn’t quite right.

Can we get another update? Can they send us video? Can we ask her foster family a few questions? Let’s get one more doctor to weigh in.

I had never done this before. I blamed it on nerves. I blamed it on my own fear of the unknown. Surely this was the biggest leap of faith I’d ever taken. But, this wasn’t what I had imagined. I found myself looking at the pictures of a beautiful girl and looking for something hidden. I read her files over and over looking for red flags. The confirmation I had prayed for wasn’t coming; the only thing coming was increased anxiety and panic.

I wanted to say yes. I felt I had to say yes. Why wouldn’t we say yes? But, why did I find myself in the dark place of looking for a reason to say no?

I fell apart in the car that day, afraid that I wasn’t only wrong about this little girl on the other side of the world who simply needed a family but that I was wrong about much, much more. If I couldn’t say yes to her, if I couldn’t move forward in being her mother, maybe I was wrong about saying yes to adoption entirely, wrong about my own motherhood, wrong about my own heart, about everything. I could barely catch my breath. How did I get to this place?

He met me there. In the tears. In the chaos. In my conversations with my husband and with our social worker and with our children. He spoke to me and took my hand.

I was right where I was supposed to be, broken and poured out, wrestling to understand Him, His will, and my role in it. It was not my job to “save her,” so very much not my job. His plan for her did not ultimately depend on me. A checked box on a 2-dimensional list did not mean that we were required to move forward to make any multidimensional child our child. Those checked boxes simply helped prepare us as adoptive parents and helped our social worker in her difficult job. That’s all. People cannot be reduced to checkboxes. I could not fear any the opinions of others that may have come. No explanation was required. It’s okay to say no.

She had arrived into my inbox and my heart like a little butterfly, gently fluttering by and landing for a moment only to flutter again to another heart where she’d safely stay for good. While she was here, God taught me more about who He is and who I am than I could have imagined. I fell apart right into His arms where He let me know that she wasn’t mine. It was those same arms that took my hand and guided me to keep going and ultimately handed me the little one was very much my daughter only 6 months later. There was still anxiety, doubt, and fear at times. But, everything was different. Somehow in the midst of all of that, there was a peace and assurance, the confirmation that I needed that told me I couldn’t say no. My heart and spirit wouldn’t let me. I had to press on; she was our daughter.

There we were. A family of 5. Living the all American dream, I guess. But, there was something we just couldn’t let go of. God had brought us to the place that we were ready to adopt. And, I just couldn’t let that go.

But, Mark thought he could. It wasn’t adoption Mark had the issue with–it was 4 kids. He loved our 3, but he would have been fine to stop at 2. Four kids meant crossing over from the realm of normal to the realm of “are all those kids yours?” It meant more chaos, more noise, more money, more stress.

There was an adoption conference in our area when Drew was only a couple months old. Mark honored me, and we went to it. We sat in the back with our infant and listened from a distance. We took notes, went to breakout sessions, and then left a bit early, blaming our little guy.

A couple weeks later, we got a handwritten letter in the mail from Jason Weber who had been the speaker at the event. I laughed aloud when I read it.

Dear Mark & Kelly, 
Hello! We were glad you were able to come last Saturday to the If You Were Mine workshop!! I just had to write to let you know of the very unlikely events that transpired.
Before one of the afternoon sessions, we drew for the church orphan ministry starter pack and, Mark, we drew your name. Because you were unable to be there, we said we would recall your name at the beginning of the last session and if you were not there, we would draw another name. So, as we promised, at the beginning of the last session, we called your name once more and then drew (from a pretty large number of entries) once again. You’ll never guess who we drew this time! Yes, it was you, Kelly. When we announced your name, the audience was adamant that it was God’s will for you to have this kit. In fact, they voted unanimously to have it sent to you. 
So, we don’t know what God is up to but we are sending your kit and you should have it very soon. May you be greatly blessed!!
In Him, Jason Weber

I told Mark it was a sign. He still thought I was crazy. So, we had a lot of books about adoption now….and?…we also had a nursing baby…and a 2 year old and a 4 year old, a very challenging 4 year old.

I remembered the dream I had had years earlier–the dream about an Asian girl when I had wanted a Russian boy. Everything seemed to make sense.

I tried convincing him. I tried showing him websites related to adoption, pictures of children who moved my heart. I talked about it…a lot. And, then I remembered the lesson God taught me about 5 years earlier. So, I let it go.

Lord, change my heart or change his. Move in him to make him feel a desire to do this, or remove the desire from my heart to grow our family through adoption. 

I stopped initiating conversation about it, stopped emailing, stopped trying to make it work. If adoption came up in conversation somehow, I’d engage but not push. I just kept praying.

On Drew’s first birthday, March 29th, 2007, Mark walked in the back door into the kitchen where I was preparing dinner, and everything changed.

“We need to do it. If we don’t do it now, I think we’d be disobedient.”

“What? Do what?”

“I think we should adopt. And, I think we should start it now.”

Just like that, 2 1/2 years after I dreamed of her, we were adopting our daughter from China.

God grew my heart for adoption. But, years later, when my dream of having babies was threatened, my heart just wasn’t ready.

We joined the elite club of couples with a new part-time job of visiting a reproductive endocrinologist–which is just fancy words to class up that we were seeing a fertility specialist…a lot. And so began the hardest season of my life. I was teaching preschool and going to school for my Master’s degree–but babymaking became my job. Along with so many others, I somehow found myself spending my time in crowded waiting rooms full of women much like me who all felt very much alone as we flipped through magazines avoiding eye contact and waited for a nurse to call our first names only to protect our identity. With medications and modern technology and God’s sovereignty somehow over it all, we experienced the joy of becoming pregnant…twice…and experienced the grief of loss…twice. I was broken when we lost our first child. And, the hope that was restored when we conceived again made me fall even harder when we lost our second child.

Some moments even after years remain clear in your memory–so clear you can nearly tangibly feel them again. We had just lost our second baby. I was sitting with my husband as he so patiently tried to comfort me. And, it hit me. “I feel like I’ve been trying so hard to make my calling to be a mother that I’ve missed whatever it is God has called me to.” And, my eyes were opened. And, my heart was changed.

My purpose during that time was to become a mom—it drove me, was nearly all I thought about, broke my heart on a regular basis when I was still not a mom. But, at that moment, I had peace. I still wanted to be a mom, longed to be a mom…but I knew I wanted to do what God had called me to do first and foremost, day to day, right where I was, right where He had put me.

The month after that, while still taking medication but preparing for starting a new round of treatments the next month, we became pregnant with Evan, and the nearly impossible was miraculously made possible.

There we were, new parents, navigating our new roles together and what it meant to parent, and God smiled. We suddenly found ourselves with a 22 month old son and a newborn baby girl we named Ashlyn Kate. So there, science.

When Ashlyn was about 9 months old, Mark went solo to a wedding for a friend since leaving my little one for a long time just didn’t work. He came home late and laid beside me in bed telling me about the wedding—you know, answering all the questions a wife asks about dresses, the cake, the menu, and all the excitement. He mentioned that he sat at a table with a couple who had just adopted a little boy from Russia. As far as they knew, they wouldn’t have trouble conceiving. But, they wanted to adopt as well as have kids biologically. And, they decided to adopt first.

“I want to do that,” I announced. “Umm…what?” “I want to do that. Let’s adopt a little boy from Russia. Evan needs a brother. I’ve always had a heart for adoption. Come on, let’s do it.” I think I may have heard some chuckles and a few “you’re crazy”s before we fell asleep.

That night, I had a dream that I was right where I was in bed and a little girl approached the bedside and called me mommy. She was Asian. And, her name was Lydia. I didn’t speak her name; but, I somehow knew what it was. The next morning was just a normal morning, waking early to babies who needed to eat, and I said to Mark, “I had such a funny dream. I dreamt we had an Asian daughter named Lydia. But, I want a boy from Russia.”

I started researching and gathering info—for our Russian son, of course. I was into it. Mark still thought I was crazy. Maybe I was a little.

A few months later, Mark got a surprise call at work from me…in shock. We were pregnant. And, I was dumbfounded. And, I let go of the dream of adopting. Not long later, we lost our third baby. And, soon after that, now intentionally trying to have another, we lost our fourth baby. When we got pregnant again, after blood counts and ultrasounds every other day, we heard the news we had heard four times before; we were losing this baby too. We both cried. We went out to lunch together and talked through the pain and started the process to accept the loss of yet another child.

Why were we doing this? 

We’ve talked about adoption. Mark was open to adoption. Let’s stop trying to do this thing again and move forward with adopting. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. There was hope in our loss. And, we were ready to go to Russia for our boy. We came home with red eyes but lighter hearts.

Then, the doctor called us. More tests came back that weren’t so clear. Come back in a few days for a recheck. 7 months later, Drew was born.