adoption story - makyna and matthew

I had the joy of serving Makyna and her husband Matthew last year, for just a few short months before their precious son, Worthy, was born in January.  They came to me as already homestudy ready, immediately started presenting to cases they received, and were matched a month after going active with us.  Their little guy was born about two months after that.  (I'm always amazed at how each adoption has its own timetable!)

Their little guy r

ecently turned "one," and Makyna was gracious enough to share the lovely as well as the "messy" side of adoption, that she shared with friends and family when he was still a newborn.

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Before Worthy, as a hopeful adoptive parent, I saw many feel-good stories of adoption. Beautiful, precious, heartwarming stories. I knew I wasn’t seeing the full picture - for there to be a need for an adoption, there must be a heartbreaking loss - but I also didn’t fully know what the full picture would look like for us.

Our story is FULL of God moments and it is beautiful to us because it’s the story that carried our boy to us.. but it was also extremely painful and gut-wrenching and messy. More so than I ever could’ve imagined.

So I feel like I need to bring some balance to the last few days of adorable baby pictures and share some of the hard parts because 1) I never want to fool someone into believing that adoption is easy, or gushy, or could ever be summed up by a few cute pictures and 2) I believe that there are people reading this right now that are willing and ready to “get messy” in love (especially with all that’s going on in our world right now and the desperate need for foster/adoptive parents) and you might just need a push to know that God’s ability really will come alive inside of you to help you do all the things you could never do in your own strength. 

Spoiler alert: It really will.

There’s a lot of Worthy’s story that we will never share outside of our family because it’s his story to tell and it’s up to us to be able to hold onto it with integrity until we’re able to give it to him.

With that said, here are a few things I can share (from my perspective, because that’s all I have right now):

Nothing NOTHING prepared me for how deeply I would grieve the loss of his mom.. for him mostly, but also for myself. I wanted him AND her. And without going into details, right now that isn’t a possibility for us. It was unexpected and it hit HARD. 

We were so fortunate to be able to spend some time with her at the hospital before this and I was able to hold her in my arms and look into the eyes (that look just like his eyes) of the brave and selfless woman who had just labored all through the night to bring our boy into the world.

To hold a broken hearted mother in the same arms that just held our dream-come-true baby boy, and feel the full spectrum of emotions all at once was the most overwhelming thing I’ve ever experienced. As educated as I tried to be going into our adoption, that’s something you just can’t be prepared for. 

I soon found out that there was A LOT I wasn’t “prepared” for.

No one can prepare you for the side of adoption that leaves you weeping on the hospital floor after leaving the room where your baby’s mother lays recovering alone.

No one tells you that your newborn will stay wide-eyed for hours, looking all around the room, and restless because he wants the one that’s familiar to him. The voice he’s known and heard for 9 months.

No one can prepare you for the moment you honor his mom’s last request and give him “one more kiss for her” and nearly drown him in tears while trying to kiss him.

But most of all, no one can prepare you for the moment you’re handed a child that shares absolutely none of your DNA, and that’s not even technically yours yet, and you fall so deeply, instantaneously, and wildly in love with them that your knees go physically weak and nearly buckle underneath you.

THAT is the moment that makes all other moments WORTH IT. But you can’t have one without the other. The trauma of loss has to come for the dream of adoption to come true. I will never forget or bury this loss. It’s something we will walk through as a family, answering every hard question, and honoring his story and his first mother everyday for the rest of our lives.

One thing I know for sure and have seen more clearly than ever before is that God is faithful and so GOOD. But “good” does not mean easy or comfortable or “safe”. Easy, comfortable, and safe doesn’t require any trust, or any faith, or any miracles. So where’s the fun in that?

Thankfully, you don’t need all the answers to start. Even up until the end of our journey, we couldn’t see the how, we just knew the “why” and kept pressing on and trusting God. We did a lot of things wrong, and we were unsure of many things and decisions. But you just keep moving, and each day trusting God with the little things - and now we’re here looking back at what looks like a tornado path of miracles cutting through every obstacle that seemed so big at the time. 

God, we’re so in awe of your power and what you’re doing in our life and in Worthy’s life.  Happy One Week, our Worthy boy! We adore you, son.