We loved everything about our daughter’s independent, private adoption process. We built a relationship with her birth mom in a way we wouldn’t have been able to with an agency in the middle.

On Cate’s second birthday, we started taking steps toward our dream of a second adoption and met with our social worker. And, yes, we dreamed of another independent adoption process. But we assumed we’d have to proceed with the “normal” agency adoption route. (Yes, I realize there’s actually no normal in the adoption world.)

My husband, Greg, and I both knew we had been blessed by our first adoption process and considered it a little greedy to hope it would happen again like that.

So we chose an agency in Fort Worth, Texas, and made plans to attend an orientation there a couple months later because we already had an extended family vacation planned to the Lone Star State. I filled out grant applications, gathered documents for our home study, and made an appointment to meet with our local attorney to update him on our desire to adopt again. That last matter was important because I’d already put his name on countless forms.

More evidence of life not being what I expected, our attorney called a couple days after we met with him to tell us he found us a birth mom. Well, actually, the birth mom found him and he thought of us.

I couldn’t even orchestrate this miraculous timing if I tried. And Lord knows I tried.

A local, pregnant, unmarried 25-year-old who worked full time and was going back to school wanted a family to adopt her baby boy who was due at the beginning of December.

Yes! Really? Maybe. Wait …

We were supposed to leave on Saturday for Texas, where our itinerary included meeting with an adoption agency that seemed like a perfect fit for us. Yet the Monday before we were to leave I talked to a woman who was pregnant with a boy who needed a family.

We sat on a couch in her living room the night before we left for Texas and discussed how adoption could work. The baby she was carrying was due about the same time her son turned 1. She believed adoption was the best plan – both for the son she was raising and the one growing inside her.

We left her house believing she was committed to her decision, but we hadn’t talked with the birth father yet and had one hesitation: We live in a typical small town, where people know each other’s business.

We love our adoption stories – and we love telling our adoption stories. But some details of adoption don’t need to be tossed around small-town gossip circles – or even among my husband’s large extended family that has lived here for generations. The birth mom was on the same page, uninterested in small-town drama.

We met with the agency anyway, but the more we talked about it the more clear our decision seemed to be. Conversations and prayers led to peace, erasing our hesitation. When we returned from Texas, we proceeded with this second independent, private adoption we weren’t expecting but were thrilled to embrace.

We meet the birth mom at her next appointment and saw our son via ultrasound. He was 25 weeks in his birth mother’s womb and weighed 1 pound 7 ounces – so much like his big sister’s storyline.

Only God fulfills dreams like that. {<===Click to Tweet}

The second independent adoption process we had dreamed of unfolded in ways better than we imagined.

Adoption had blessed our family once and God was doing it again, in some of the same ways and in plenty of different ways. In the end, God’s faithfulness remained and he continued to hear the desires of our hearts.

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That second adoption process led us to our son, Ben. I tell this story and others from my journey to motherhood in my new ebook “Peace in the Process: How God Built My Faith & My Family,” which is available on Amazon. Adoption is an everyday conversation at our house, but this month is National Adoption Awareness Month, so I’m hoping the topic finds its way into other homes and hearts.

 

Shared by: Kristin Hill Taylor