The last two months have been a whirlwind for us. I've been processing and thinking about what to write several times a week, but of course, little man's care is time consuming, to say the least. We are loving having a baby again, and the lack of sleep hasn't been bad at all. There's just been grace for it. There's no other way to put it. He's an easy baby, we're more relaxed parents, and having very helpful teenagers around has been very helpful. However, the purpose of this post is to share our guy's story, or as much of it as we know. Some of the story is not for public knowledge, because it's his story. But what I want to share with you shows just how kind, loving, sovereign and amazing our heavenly Father is towards all of His children.
There are several people who are involved in this story, so I'm saying first names only for their privacy. And I won't be telling my readers the name of my son because if you don't know it, then we're not really very close friends. And I want to protect him. So we'll call him Fred.
Fred's birth mom was not aware that she was pregnant. She went to the doctor and they ran a precautionary pregnancy test and discovered that she was, indeed, pregnant. Fred's birth grandmother was very upset about this news. She told one of her coworkers, William, that her daughter was pregnant and that she had made an appointment for her in Houston to get an abortion. William tried talking to her about other options, like adoption, and explaining to her that this baby has a beating heart, fingers, toes, etc, and was an actual human being. He even told her about an adoption agency in town that would walk her through the process. However, Grandmother was convinced that abortion was the best and took her daughter for the appointment anyway. In the meantime, William asked members of his church to pray for this family and pray that the Lord would spare this baby's life.
Backing up several years. Kevin and I started the adoption process several years ago, and somewhere along the way, I had created an email group of about 20 friends who were interested in hearing about our adoption journey and wanted to be praying for us. Three families in that email group attend William's church.
In the state of Texas, abortion clinics are required to perform an ultrasound before consenting to abortion services. Also in the state of Texas, it is illegal for a clinic to perform an abortion after 20 weeks. When Fred's birth mom went to her appointment, they discovered that she was 24 weeks pregnant! That is stunning considering about a week before, she didn't even know she was pregnant. The clinic workers advised birth grandmother as to where she could go to have it done legally, but she remembered her conversation with William and decided that "she could not do that to this baby", in her words. So, she decided to visit the adoption agency that we had signed up with to be adoptive parents.
Our adoption agency requires that each adoptive family create a "Life Book". They use the books to help a potential birth mom "get acquainted" with the adoptive families and to narrow down their selection choices before meeting with the families. Our adoption agency showed the birth mom/grandmother our Life Book, and grandmother's best friend was looking through the book with her. In our book was a photo of a young woman who Kevin and I "adopted" spiritually about 10 years ago. That's a whole other story, but it's important because I put this photo in our Life Book to show potential birth families our heart to take in kids who need families. The photo in our Life Book was one with me, Shawna (our adopted spiritual daughter) and our friend Laurie. We've been friends with Laurie for at least 15 years, and her husband Eric was an usher in our wedding. They are our people. We love them very dearly. So, as our birth family and grandmother's best friend were looking at our Life Book, the best friend saw the picture of Laurie and said, "I know her! We taught together for about 8 years!" So, best friend contacted Laurie and asked her about us. Laurie said a lot of sweet things about us and our boys, and best friend said, "Anyone who Laurie thinks that highly of are great people." Fred's birth grandmother said from then on that she didn't want to see any other books and that we were the family that she wanted to raise Fred.
Laurie is one of the people who was on my adoption prayer email list AND she also attends William's church. Remember William?
Our adoption agency practices "Open Adoption" which means that we will have a relationship with our birth family, or at least try to have one. It's healthier for the birthmom, the baby and the adoptive family. So, we met them about 6 weeks before Fred was born, had a little contact before the birth, and were at the hospital when he was born. Our local hospital gives adoptive families their own room for free, so I was actually able to have Fred in my room with me at night, and some during the day. There were several aspects of that weekend that were stressful, and I won't get into that on here. But on Monday morning, when my emotions were fried and I just couldn't wait to get home and hold and keep my baby, I received an amazing email from my friend Karen, who is on my adoption email list.
Karen's email basically said this;
She told me about her friend, William, who had asked the church to pray for the life of a baby who's birth mom/grandmother, were heading down to Houston to abort the baby. Birth grandmother had sent William a picture of Fred when he was born, and William sent the photo to his church family and said, "This is the baby we prayed for a couple of months ago! He was born and is being adopted by a family" In the meantime, I had sent a couple of photos to my adoption prayer group, and Karen just put two and two together that THIS WAS THE SAME BABY!!! We know several people at this church, but some of them are dear, close friends. It is amazing to us that the Lord had them pray for OUR baby a couple of months ago for protection from abortion AND praying for him again as we were walking through the adoption process.
WHAT AN AMAZING GOD WE SERVE!!
