Adoption story - Lorrin + Rebekah

I absolutely loved working with Lorrin and Rebekah on their journey to parenthood!  They are local to me, so we had a great time meeting at a local Starbucks, at the very onset of their adoption journey. I always love being able to meet a family in person, as it really makes their journey even that more personal to me

Rebekah shares some of their adoption journey below, including a wonderful surprise they recently revealed!

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Rebekah's view.....

You’d think we would learn, after all you see the signs everywhere...

“Man makes plans and God laughs,"

and

"A man plans his steps but God directs his path”.

What you don’t know is what a great planner I am! Every detail is thought through and a perfect timeline is set up. Its beautiful! Why would I want to deviate from such a perfect plan?

My plan was: we would get married and enjoy newlywed bliss for about a year, we would get pregnant the moment we wanted to, and build our happy little family. Down the road we would adopt, maybe infant, maybe international, maybe foster to adopt (that plan was still under development). We would live happily ever after in our comfortable bubble. We had no idea that only a couple months after our perfect wedding that bubble would start to pop and God would shift our plans so far outside of our comfort zone neither of us could have prepared for the journey.

After the “pop" of learning that we would not conceive on our own, there was a long period of grieving and bargaining. Maybe we needed a different doctor, maybe they missed something, surely this isn’t the answer, we were so sure of what the future held.

It didn’t take too long to decide to pursue adoption but it still took some time to actually do it. We had to dig back deep inside and remember certain truths, like God makes babies and God makes families. PERIOD. Doctors help, adoption agencies help, but God makes them 100% of the time and what He makes is always good.

 We started making tiny steps. We started with a home study. It was a tiny group just starting out and boy did it take forever! But that was part of the plan. We needed forever to get excited and then find some more grief to push through, then get excited again. We knew that there was a lot about the process that we didn’t know and we started looking into consultants.

We found Christian Adoption Consultants and set up a meeting with Gretchen one Saturday. I loved everything that she said and she really sounded like she knew what she was talking about...so we did nothing! I knew right off that if we said yes to her this ball would start rolling FAST and in my heart I wasn’t ready yet. That grieving cycle can be strong and we needed some more time.

When the forever  long home study finally arrived (seriously forever, about 7 months total) we were coming out of the fog and ready to make a tiny step towards our family. One call to Gretchen was all it took and away we went. The next thing we knew we were planning profile books, looking into grants and fundraising opportunities and trying to picture the family that God had been planning since the beginning.

Within a day or 2 of our profile “going live” with CAC we were receiving situations and praying about which ones to present to. We just knew our dreams of growing our family was right around the corner.

  About 6 weeks after going live (around August 2016) we made a decision to handle some medical stuff before having a baby. Sort of a “now or never” lets make sure we are as healthy as we can be before having a baby situation. It was hard to make that call to push pause. We had been getting situations left and right, we wanted to present to these birth moms and hear the wonderful words “she picked you!”. But God was still right there with His reminder that GOD makes babies, God makes families.

If you are going through this process I can’t stress this enough. You won’t get the “wrong” baby. It's not possible. God has decided who your child is. You may present to the most perfect situation and not get picked, because it wasn’t your baby. You may hear no a thousand times, because it wasn’t your baby. You may not be 100% sure that you should present to that situation but if you are at least sort of sure, go for it! You will only end up with your baby.

When we paused in August, our baby had not yet been conceived. We were not ready for her and she was not ready for us.

In January of 2017 we were ready to go again. We were healthy and as prepared as we could be to become Mommy and Daddy. We presented to a situation, a perfect situation, and heard….No.

The "No," came with a "but" this time. The lawyer liked our book and was working with another birth mom whom she had a relationship with. She knew what she was looking for and wanted to know if we would be interested in being 1 of the 2 books she would look at. I remember sitting in my living room that afternoon with Lorrin looking at the situation and the pictures. We were both unusually quiet about this one and we finally both came to the same conclusion. We didn’t want to say yes because we just knew that if we did we would be chosen and that was terrifying (and exciting). We prayed and went for it. After all we had been through we were learning to get out of God's way and let Him work. We called Gretchen back and told her to let the lawyer present our profile.

Less than 24 hours later my phone rang with a Florida area code...She picked us! If you’ve ever met me or if you have read this far, clearly I am not often without words but in that moment I was speechless. I was honored, I was terrified, I was excited beyond belief. More emotions than I knew existed washed over me.

Surprising Lorrin that night was one of the best moments of my life!

In our relatively unique situation we had many months to prepare (most matches are much shorter). We were able to visit with our birth mother a few times prior to the birth. We were also surrounded by the most loving community of friends and family who helped to bring our daughter home. We were able to be in the delivery room when Lydia was born and discover even more emotions that I can’t describe. We were a family! It wasn’t instant, it wasn’t perfect, it was effort that only succeeded because of love. Love for our birth mother, love for our daughter and more love from God than we could ask or imagine.

We now have a happy healthy 5 month old darling girl who is the center of our world. She is going to have to get used to sharing the spotlight though because in about 5 more months she’s going to be a big sister! We were very honored just before Christmas to be asked by her birth mother to adopt again. Lydia will have a biological sister this summer whom we will welcome into our home with open arms.

A year ago we didn’t know if or when we would ever have a baby, and now a year later we will have two!

God makes babies; God makes families. We just have to be ready to say yes when He calls.