Hi,
You don’t know who I am (and I don’t even know your name...sorry!), but my sister-in-law, Lindsay, was talking to my wife, Sally, today and mentioned that it would be nice if we could share our experience regarding adoption with you. I know that I don’t know much about you at all, really anything except that you’re expecting and maybe unsure of what to do. That last part is obviously an assumption. Having said that, take the following at face value please. I share it only because it means a lot to me, and hopefully in some small way it will be helpful or encouraging to you.
Let me first say, I’m a pretty normal guy with a very happy little family. I met Sally during undergrad at BYU out in Provo, Utah. We just finished med school about a year ago, and now I’m an anesthesiology resident. We wanted kids as soon as we got married, and they didn’t come for 4 years. Three years into that ordeal, we were frustrated and tired of waiting, and one night Sally said to me over dinner that she thought we should adopt a child. Wow, that blew me away. We’d kind of talked about it previously, but honestly, I still had the perception that adoption was for older couples who had tried to have kids for years and years without success. We weren’t even technically infertile. The doctors we went to said there was nothing obviously wrong with either of us, and infertility just happens without an obvious cause sometimes.
Now comes the part that is most meaningful to me. I don’t know if your religious, church going, a simple believer in God, or none of the above. Just to get it out on the table, I am. I can’t explain my experiences with adopting my son and daughter without bringing that aspect in. I believe we are all children of our Heavenly Father. He sends us here to earth as a test and to learn and grow. His intention is for us to return to Him as families when this life is over, and the final goal is that we will all be tied together and to Him as His eternal family forever. I also believe that Heavenly Father actively participates in our lives and helps us to choose paths that will lead to our ultimate happiness and success in life as well as make it back to him after this life. So, with that background of my faith out on the table, I’ll proceed.
After Sally brought up adoption to me over dinner, I told her I needed some time to think and pray about it. I actually started to fast from food and water in order to show Heavenly Father that I really needed His help in making this decision. I’ve fasted and prayed many times in my life, but this time was different. That night I went to the computer to read some things about adoption, and before starting, I knelt down and simply asked Heavenly Father if adoption was right for us. Immediately, I was overwhelmed with a feeling that not only was it right for us, but it was something we should pursue immediately. The feeling was one of the strongest, most direct, and fastest answers to prayer I’ve ever had. We started our side of the process and within a year M., our son Caleb’s birth mom, contacted us through LDS Family Services. Caleb was born a few months later.
The days after his birth were the hardest for M., I think. We didn’t realize how much so until after she placed him with us and signed the paperwork. I admire her determination and courage and her willingness to struggle through doubt and outright opposition to Caleb’s adoption into our family by some of her own family members (thankfully she has a sister who was very supportive). I look at my son now in awe every day knowing that Heavenly Father truly guided this whole experience. There was no mistake about Caleb coming into our family.
10 months after Caleb was born, I was in my first year of residency (it was actually 1 year ago now), and I began having the recurrent thought that it was time for us to start the paperwork for adoption again. Wow, that was a surprise. This wasn’t the same overwhelming feeling I had with Caleb’s adoption. It was just persistent. Over and over again, I thought that it was time for us to start our paperwork. Over time it turned into a feeling of the need to hurry up and get everything in order. I also began feeling that we were going to have a daughter join our family. I told myself and everyone that it obviously didn’t matter to us if we had a boy or girl, but something in my mind (I attribute it to the Spirit of God working on me) just said over and over that we had a daughter coming, and we’d better get ready soon.
Sally agreed, and we started the process again. There were road blocks and difficulties with our schedules, etc., but we pushed hard to get everything taken care of. It still took 6 months to finish our home study and all the paperwork, and then the funniest thing happened. All those feelings of urgency went away, and we were left with completed adoption paperwork wondering what was going to happen next. Were we going to now wait for years before our second child was placed in our home? Were all of those feelings just me be an over excited and over ambitious father? Some doubt crept into both our minds at that point as well. We honestly stopped feeling anything. We wondered if we had taken too long and missed our chance. We wondered a lot of things. This was April of this year. The start of May brought a dramatic change to our lives. We got a letter from Y.’s mother saying that she and Y. wanted to place her grandaughter in our family. Y. was to deliver her baby girl in June. And so it happened, and now we have little Ella Elise in our little family.
The craziest part (really the most amazing and in my mind the most divinely directed part) of our experience with Ella had to do with timing. Only in retrospect could I observe that very soon after Ella was conceived and just as Y. was starting her own struggle with what she was to do for her baby, I began having those first thoughts that it was time to prepare for our next child to join our family through adoption. And soon after that the impression that we would be having a daughter. I guess it feels so amazing to me because I felt it all and experienced it all and then saw it all happen so fast. To me, it was a personal miracle performed by Heavenly Father for my family. I know that Heavenly Father intended to have little Ella be my daughter. I can’t explain it better than that. I just know it.
So, Y. and M.’s stories are unique. They are significant to us, and we know that we really don’t know the whole stories behind the sacrifice and struggle each of these wonderful women went through in order to bless their children. Our children’s birth mothers are our angels. We think about them and talk about them often with Caleb and Ella. We keep up blogs, email, and send pictures and videos of the kids. Sally texts with M. every now and then. Y. has not felt she could maintain very close contact with us however, but our lives are still connected. We love these two women with all our hearts, and I believe that Heavenly Father will bless their lives for the selfless sacrifice they performed for their children and us.
With all that, you can tell I’m obviously an advocate for adoption. I’m not trying to convince you to place your child with an adoptive family, though. That is a unique, and I suppose, an intensely personal decision for you alone to make. People will give you opinions on the matter and quote statistics or anecdotal experiences, but in the end, you will be the one making the decision. Only you will know what is best for your child. I just hope you realize from this letter that adoption is a blessing in everyone’s life who is involved. It can also be painful and heartbreaking in many ways. I didn’t experience all of that. M. and Y. are the ones who ad the greatest struggle in my mind. However, I feel deeply that they did the right thing. I know that Heavenly Father sent Caleb and Ella to our family. They came in a way that was different from how I ever expected to have children, but they came in the way that He intended for them to come. There were no mistakes about any of this. Heavenly Father sent Caleb and Ella to Sally and me, and in some unspeakable and beautiful way, He connected our lives with theirs. He also connected our lives to M. and Y. forever. How much actual interaction we’ll have in the future will be mostly up to them, but the connection and love we have for them will endure throughout our lives. Caleb and Ella will grow up knowing what a beautiful gift their birth mom’s gave to them in bringing them into the world and placing them in our little family.
Again, I know we don’t know you, but we love you. Know that you are in our thoughts and prayers.
Sincerely,
Joe (and Sally, Caleb, and Ella)
