God sometimes makes things abundantly clear because otherwise, you’d miss the call.  We were knee deep in marriage and health issues when God decided it was time to add to our family.  After our younger son was born, we were now a family of six.  I was okay with our family size at the time, mostly because I was so physically spent, I didn’t feel that adding to our bunch would be wise. Amidst all the chaos, in my heart, I didn’t feel done, but I was more than content with the blessings we had in our home. I was clearly conflicted.  It was during that time though, that God spoke to my husband.  The conversation was a simple one sided talk. 

“Adopt,” is what He said.

To be honest, I didn’t like what my husband was sharing with me.  Financially, there was no way we could afford an adoption.  My husband’s solution.  Put the house up for sale and downsize the house, upsize the family.  Over several months, I kept circling back to this notion of adoption.  We had always been open to the idea of adoption and the possibility of growing our family in that way.  But now?  I really didn’t feel that the timing was right.

God was patient with me.  We were still in counseling and figuring out our marriage.  We decided that the only way this would work would be if we put the house up for sale. We signed a contract and the sign went up in the yard.  We both thought that maybe we heard God wrong and that this wasn’t meant to be since we had not had one showing in six months. Looking back, it was during that time that our marriage was at it’s lowest, but also at the greatest place of rebuilding.  We were slowly coming out of the hurricane and building a stronger marriage.  God used that time to grow us.  He hit the pause button for awhile on the house selling process.

Six months almost to the day after we put it up for sale, we had one showing and it sold the next day. Our marriage was getting better everyday and I was starting to get answers in regards to my health. We had been passively looking at homes, but not seriously.  We closed on our home quickly and moved in with my parents while we looked for a home. Nothing was coming up that met our criteria. During those first six months of living with my parents,  I researched adoption and searched for homes simultaneously. 

One fall day, during a counseling session, we were sharing our discouragement with the house hunting process.  The adoption process could not begin until we had a home to do our home study.  Right there in his office, the three of us prayed for a home.  Thirty minutes later, I received a phone call. We had put in a bid on a house during the summer.  The owner did not like the offer and declined.  We left our information with the realtor and said if he changes his mind, to give us a call.  Well, he did, three months later. As we sat there at dinner, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  The owner wanted to consider our offer and wanted to close quickly.  Alleluia!  God clearly answered our prayer!  We had a home.

God was working on my heart.  While my husband was the one who had the calling from God about adoption, we didn’t have any clear direction as to how to proceed.  Many options were not viable for us and day after day, month after month, God kept presenting Haiti to me.  It was one of the countries we qualified for and I felt very strongly that our child was there.

He made it abundantly clear our child was in Haiti.  Haiti was just starting to change their adoption process and many agencies were not accepting applications from families that already had biological children in the home.  While we were discouraged, we knew that God was making a way. Private adoptions were still allowed at the time for pre identified children, but we did not have a pre identified child.

My prayer for about three months was, “Lord, we don’t know what else to do.  Our prayer is for you to make this child known to us.  Bring us to him/her or bring him/her to us. There is nothing left but to trust you and your timing and wait on this child.”

And then one day…He did.  When I saw his picture, I knew.  It was as if God screamed at me, “Here’s your son!” My stomach did a little flip as I stared at this precious, beautiful, little, smiley face. His face was familiar to me.  It was the faceless child I had dreamed about and suddenly, the face was revealed.

Here we were, two years later, and we were officially starting the adoption process.  During the wait to start He was equipping us to endure this difficult process.  While we weren’t nearly ready when He first spoke to my husband, it was that patient call and our obedience that led us to this point.