The Truth about Adoption - part 2

This is part 2 of Christy's personal journey of faith through adoption. God's love is so clear and profound in the picture of adoption. He is a loving, perfect Father and has not brought us on as servants - but as His own children. Adoption is such a clear picture of His provision and His perfect love for all of us!

Transcript

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Hey guys, I'm so glad to have you with me today. This is part two about the truth about adoption, and I am been so excited to share the rest of this story with you because it's just such an incredible story from beginning to end, really. And there's no way I could put into this all the details that were happening in real time. It was just everywhere I turned, God's hand was moving. And one of the things I failed to mention, I'll talk about this in another episode as well. So I'll just give a brief intro to it here. But during this process, the Lord had made it very clear in my heart that this was our daughter. And I know I I mentioned that when I was on my face, I just knew this was my daughter, I just knew it. But even though her birth mom had signed the paperwork at that point, it continued to be a high-risk adoption because she was not terminating her rights. And you know, there's a process where adoption agencies can go in and terminate the rights of the birth parent, but I didn't want that. I just love our birth mom so much, and I wanted for her to be able to make that decision and not have it taken from her, but to be a decision that she could make. And that was risky, and in fact, risky in that you know it delays the process a bit. And I know that that Kim got a little frustrated with me because I was doing things so differently. She was like, we can just go in and we can have her come over and we can terminate her rights. And I said, I don't want to do that, Kim. I want to give her an opportunity. And our birth mom was not corresponding much at that point, and so it's really difficult to get a hold of her, it was very difficult to get this, and so um I just was very firm in that I wanted her to be able to make that choice. I'll tell that story another time when I talk just about prayer and things like that. But this was part of that that was such a beautiful working of the Lord, and we were praying, she did not terminate the rites until April. And remember, Mia was born in December, and so we went that many months without certainty that this adoption would go through, but I had certainty beyond anything I could explain, and again, it was the grace of the Lord. I know in my own normal operations, I would not, I would have vacillated between believing and not believing the Lord. I would have um not been certain, but I was so certain I made people around me uncomfortable because until it was done, nobody else, you know, I don't want to say nobody else, but people wouldn't say, Yes, I agree with you that this she's your daughter, she's gonna be yours. And even had people say to me, you know, I can't, I can't pray in agreement with you that she's your daughter. And I said, Well, that's okay, you just pray with whatever faith you have that the Lord's will be done in this, but I'm telling you, I don't know that the adoption will be finalized when she's 10 weeks, 10 months, or 10 years old. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that's my daughter, and I just knew it. And we just kept going forward, and then her birth mom did terminate her rights, and the adoption was finalized in June, just like every other adoption in the world, um, that can be finalized in six months. At six months, we were able to finalize the adoption, and her birth mom had named her destiny, that was her first name, and to honor her birth mom, and because I just thought it was such a beautiful name, it was such a beautiful indication of what the Lord had done, I knew we were naming her Mia, and which, of course, that in Spanish it means mine, she is mine, and so we named her Mia Destiny, and I just the Lord over and over just reminded me what a great destiny He has for her, and it's just such a beautiful picture of who the Lord is, and so that was just something that was very encouraging. So, my sweet baby Mia Destiny, I get her home. We we left off last week where we were able to take her home from the hospital because as many obstacles as they tried to throw, the Lord had already worked it out that we had met the criteria, and so we were able to take her home that evening, and then we just celebrated together. That Christmas was just unbelievable. The richness of the Lord in all of those things, it was just beautiful. And another part of this story that was just incredible is at the time my daughter Madeline was eight years old, and she had prayed with me a lot, and she really, really, really wanted a baby sister, and so the fact that she was a girl just it sent her to the moon and back. She was so excited over that. But she would she would pray with me and she would pray on her own for our baby and for our birth mom. And she brought me a little note, you know, it was one of those little stenopads that's only about this big, you know, it's just so small, one of those tiny little notebooks, pocket notebook, that's what it is. One of those tiny little pocket notebooks, and she had torn a page out of it and she had written a prayer for our birth mom. And it said, Dear God, please be with our birth mom, whether she's in Bryan or whether she's in Texas, and basically just keep her safe and keep the baby safe. Well, guys, as I looked back at that little note she wrote, she wrote that note on December the 4th, which is the day Mia was born. And not only had she prayed for that, we lived in College Station, we didn't live in Brian. And so for this eight-year-old to have said, whether she's in Brian or whether she's in Texas, like you can understand Brian is in Texas, but she was in her eight-year-old mind saying this, but she was born in Brian, and so it was just every little you know, people would call it coincidence that had taken place. It was just so much who couldn't have faith that there is a God in all of this. It was just the most beautiful time, and you know, I've said it several times that this has been the most transformative thing for me in my relationship with God was to understand adoption and what he means by that. I knew how much I loved her, and I had biological children as well, so I knew how much I loved my biological children, and there was no difference, and that was something that was so it was just huge, it was revolutionary to me because, as I said in the last episode, you know, when I was growing up, people would make jokes if you were different than your family or something else, they'd say, Well, you're adopted, and those kinds of things, and so you know, we're almost taught to feel adoption is less, but the Lord was revealing to my heart so clearly that adoption is no less, there is no less love in adoption than there is in having biological children, and as a matter of fact, there is a fierceness and a protectiveness in me for parts of my daughter's life that aren't that way with my biological children because they didn't have the struggles, you know. They all the sounds and the smells and the everything that were was a part of the womb they were conceived in was a part of the life they grew up in. For my Mia, it was different. The womb and the sights and the sounds and the smells that she had there were there was none of that in her current life situation, and so already things have been taken from her that we can't regain. There was already loss there for her that my biological children did not experience, and so there was a fierceness and a protectiveness over her for certain things that I didn't have to have for my biological children, and so the love was no less, he just showed me I am his daughter because he showed me she is your daughter, and I knew she was my daughter, and it I it's very difficult to explain because I know in biology she grew in another womb, but to me, in that womb as she was being formed, the Lord knew that she would be placed in our family, and so it's just this beautiful mystery how it all comes together, but he showed me over and over again with the way that she loved me and the way that I knew I loved her, his love for me. That adoption looks like that equalness, that equality, that co-air, that when he sees Jesus, he doesn't love him just a little bit more than he loves me. It is the same love that he loves Jesus with that he loves me. And I just hadn't ever had that revelation because all of those scriptures about being adopted into the family now carried this new weight and emotion and experience that spoke something to the depths of my heart that I had never understood, and it was really beautiful, it was just really beautiful, and so for the rest of the story, we get Mia home, and of course, having adopted her, we get access to all of her medical paperwork, and so I when one day was just praying, still praying for our birth mother, still writing her letters, staying in contact with her because I love her, I love her, and just because she was not ready in the beginning to have a relationship with us, but I can't explain to you the love that I have for her and the gratitude I have for the sacrifice that she made to place Mia in our arms willingly. And so I had been praying, I had written her letters, but I hadn't been able to connect with her one-on-one, and so I'm reading everything I can about her experience. I'm just praying and I'm grieving because I'm thinking, you know, did she get an epidural? I've had to be induced every time I went into labor and I had an epidural because the pain was just so strong and so fast and too much, and so I had an epidural with every baby, and I thought, did she even get an epidural? So as I'm searching back through the admission records and all of that, the Lord showed me something that was absolutely astounding. And I had gotten an opportunity to meet with our birth mom, and I knew that she was gonna be, there was a high likelihood she was going to be with her mom September the first. So we had Mia uh in December, and September the first, I knew it was her mom's birthday and that she would probably be there, and I knew her where her mom lived. And so I had driven over and taken Mia so that her mom, Mia's biological grandmother, could see her and hold her, but also hoped to catch our birth mom there. And I did, and at first she kind of went away, but then she did come back, and I just said, Look, we don't have to stay long, but I wanted you to have the opportunity to hold her if you wanted to hold her, and you know, ask me any questions if you have questions, and I gave her some new pictures and things like that, and I got to talk with her, and she was very candid with me. She told me that while she was pregnant, everyone in her family, with the exception of one sister, had told her, You need to abort the baby, you need to have an abortion, you need to have an abortion. And so those prayers that I prayed instantly came back. The knowing that I had woken up in the middle of the night, probably over those very times those discussions were having, were taking place, and to see the hand of the Lord over that. As she keeps talking, she's telling me that she was in a relationship that was very abusive, and he used to punch her in the stomach. And again, when I woke up in the middle of the night praying that she wouldn't be being abused or hurt in any way, I'm telling you the clarity with which I prayed only points to the fact that there is a Holy Spirit and there is a God that knows all, sees all, and loves all. And so He invited me in to protecting her before I ever even knew she existed. While she was still in the womb, before we ever knew about our birth mom, we were able to pray with clarity over things that were touching her life. It was unbelievable to me. But at that point, after that conversation with her, I understood that she did not have a vehicle, she did not have a cell phone, and she lived in a place where very few people had vehicles and cell phones. And so the night that she went into labor, she actually shared with me the night she went into labor, she had to walk up and down her street knocking on doors to see if anyone that had a vehicle would be willing to drive her to the hospital. And there was a gentleman that said he would drive her, and then her and her mom got in the vehicle and they were headed there, and her mom said, Hey, let's stop off for a burger. I'm hungry. And she said, No, I've got to get to the hospital. I'm fixing to have this baby, and so they actually were admitted into the hospital at midnight, and um, it was let's see, yeah, it was 12 35 a.m. And 1247 she had Mia. And so as I looked at those timestamps, I was like, that's 12 minutes. That's certainly not time enough to get an epidural, that's 12 minutes, and it's occurring to me as I'm looking at these timestamps, she didn't have a car, she didn't have a phone, she couldn't have even called 911 to come get her. If this man had not driven her to the hospital when he did, if they had stopped off to get a hamburger, my daughter would not be alive right now because she was born not breathing, and she needed oxygen for five minutes, and with all of that information, it flooded me the understanding that God had so protected her life, not just from the drugs and alcohol in the womb, but also again on her birthday, when she, if she would have been born in that truck, I asked her birth mom, I said, Would you have known what to do, or what would you have done if she was born? And she said, I would not have known what to do, she wouldn't have made it. And so again, I was astonished at the hand of God over my daughter's life, over all of it, over every single detail. I just wanted to share this part of the story with you because it's miraculous, because it just shows God's hand over all of it, his sovereignty. And I want you to know maybe you are a woman that has placed a child in an adoptive situation. I want to tell you thank you. Thank you for the gift that you have given that adoptive family. It is an unbelievable gift to be able to raise a child that did not grow in your womb. It is an unbelievable gift. And there may be some of you that are struggling with infertility, and you have tried and tried to conceive, and it just hasn't worked. And adoption may be scary for you, and there are so many parts of it. You need a good tribe, you need a good adoption agency to walk you through different parts of the process because children who have been in foster situations or adoptive situations are coming out of trauma, and there will be ways that that trauma presents later on, and so you need people to surround you that are aware of what that looks like, what that feels like, and so that you can have a community of support. But I am telling you, there is nothing more beautiful than adoption and the process of being able to love one that did not grow in your womb. It is not less, and it will change your life, it will absolutely change your life. And then I know there've got to be some adoptive families that maybe didn't have the support they need, especially even foster families that maybe didn't have the support they need, the tribe around them, and things have been really hard or difficult, or maybe just didn't even go all the way through or work out. And to you, I say, I am so sorry. I am so sorry for the pain that you've been through, and it doesn't have to be that way. God can step in and redeem even these parts of your story, of those children's story. Nothing is out of his reach, and there is no one that he doesn't love and treasure. And so I just really want to encourage you, surround yourself by people who will speak truthful things to you in whatever season you find yourself in. And maybe there's an adoptive family out there right now that's waiting, they've submitted their paperwork and they're just waiting, and you're in that time where you feel like, is this ever gonna happen? And I want to tell you, just hold on, just hold on to the truths of who God is and the things that He is doing because the story He is writing is much bigger, much better than any story you could ever fathom. And so, no matter what your experience has been to this point, I want to encourage you, continue to pray. Take your hurt, take your pain, take your fear and your doubt, and sit before the Lord and ask him what he wants you to know. Don't sit and ask, why, why this, why that? Ask him, God, what do you want to invite me into? What do you want to show me about this? Because he has healing and he has beauty in your story. Beauty. And there are plenty of you out there that I know have maybe never given birth to children, but you have adopted many children, even if it hasn't been legally, because you have invited women to come in to your space, and you have mothered them, you have spiritually mothered other women. And I just want to say thank you to you. It is so vital that as women we mentor, we love, and we adopt other women who need that mama figure in their life. And so if that's you today and your heart has been torn open because you have not birthed any children, but you have mothered spiritually children, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for everything that you've done. Thank you for pouring into lives and loving the way that God loves us. And I just want to say you're seen, and we just thank you. So thank you for joining me for this second half of the story. And there's again so many details that I have left out and so many beautiful parts of it. But I just hope that you've been encouraged and I hope your walk in faith has grown stronger from listening to these stories. Thank you for spending your time with me. I'll see you next week.