Our Adoption Journey: One Step Closer
Editor’s Note: This guest blog post was submitted by adoptive mother, Beth Hardy, who shares some of their adoption story. With her gracious permission, we have the privilege to feature this honest and encouraging piece with you.
Our adoption journey started as many others do. A year of trying to get pregnant, a visit to the fertility specialist, multiple procedures, a miscarriage, the decision to stop trying, taking some time for ourselves. Then, the inevitable happened…we still desperately wanted to become parents. So, we began another chapter in our lives, this time determined that God had big plans in store for us.
We started 2016 with the belief and drive that we would become parents. In February, the day after our Facebook page went live, we were already matched with an expectant mother (M). She was two weeks overdue and could have the baby any day. We were left scrambling to complete our Home Study and preparing ourselves to become parents to a sweet baby girl. John and I could not believe our luck! God was finally smiling down on us after all of the heartache we had been through.
We got the phone call two weeks later. M was 5 centimeters dilated, so we rushed home from work to pack and drove 5 hours to meet our little bundle of joy. She was perfect, she was an angel, she was as good as ours…and then she wasn’t.
We spent a little less than a day in the hospital caring for our precious baby. We named her, changed her diapers, fed her, comforted her when they took her blood, and loved on her. But, she was not meant to be ours. The birth mother changed her mind. The happiest day of our lives turned into a horrible nightmare.
We always knew this was a possibility. The most challenging part of adoption is giving up complete control and putting your faith in God that everything will turn out the way it is meant to be. That little girl would not become our daughter, even though we both wanted her to be. So, we were faced with a decision to make…let the sadness engulf us or move forward with the idea that God put us in M’s life for a reason.
At first, the decision was not an easy one. We allowed ourselves to be truly sad, angry, and upset. But, as the days went on, we realized that God had bigger plans for us than we first thought. While we were not meant to be parents to this baby girl, we were put into her life for a reason. God knew that M needed a little nudge to step up to the plate of motherhood and we were there to push her. While this was not the outcome we saw in our future, it was the outcome that God had planned all along.
As the weeks have gone by, life is slowly returning to normal. I will not lie to you and say that we are completely healed from this experience, but it gets a little bit easier every day. Finding the silver lining has been difficult, but it is important to be able to move forward. I know that God has good things in store for us and I cling to that belief. I wake up every day and tell myself that we are one step closer to meeting our baby. No matter what happens along the way, we are always one step closer.
*Post contributed by adoptive mother, Beth Hardy.
