Early on in our adoption process I encouraged Kate to start a blog so she could share her thoughts and feelings about this monumental step in our life. With pregnancy, random strangers will ask about how you are doing, whether it's a boy or a girl and what names you have picked out. But, with adoption, there are no physical signs that you are about to be parents and I wanted Kate to be able to share what was going on in our hearts, even though there wasn't a physical change in her appearance.
Several months later, we are hours away from sending off all of our paperwork, our adoption books for the birth moms and all of the other loose odds and ends and I have yet to write a post. I have never blogged before but, seeing as the preparation is coming to an end, I thought it would be appropriate for me to write about how this process has been for me, where we are at and where we see the Lord leading us. I've never been one to stay within the page limits on papers so I apologize if this post is a little lengthy.
Over two years ago, Kate and I got married and we immediately started trying to have kids. I'm not sure if I was ready for the weight that raising a child brings but I knew I wanted to be a father. I always have. I love kids. In a lot of ways, I feel I relate to them more than adults. I love to eat, sleep and poop and I usually cry when I don't get my way so the thought of having another like mind in the house just seemed right. What I wasn't ready for was infertility.
Month after month, getting false test after false test, praying that the Lord would hear our prayers, we often felt abandoned. We knew that we were called to be parents and with each month that passed, I had a deeper and deeper desire to have a baby but it just wasn't happening. We did all the tests and everything came back normal (actually, my test came back RECORD BREAKING, but that's another story for another day). It seemed almost daily, friends would be praying for us and asking us how we were doing and the truth was, the Lord was good and was sustaining us but the hurt remained. We became a statistic of unexplained infertility; the 14% of the population who have all the ingredients but an empty cake pan.
There's no sugarcoating it. It was hard. It still is. You see so many morons breeding like rabbits and a couple who earnestly wants to love and care for a child can't have one. I remember having a conversation with our children's minister at church. Kate had just found out we weren't pregnant again and stayed home from church. Telling Charity this, she looked me with her eyes glistening and said, "But God is good. He is loving and He gives good gifts to his children." It's funny how all the theology in the world can't comfort you at times but hearing the simple words, God is good, He is loving, He gives good gifts to his children, can uplift your spirit.
From our first date, Kate and I had both expressed a desire for adoption. It was never going to be an if but a when. Unfortunately, for a while, I was so focused on what we didn't have that I forgot to listen to the Lord's gentle whispers that He had called us to adoption as well. I was so wrapped up in fitting it into our plan (have three or four kids of our own then we'll move on to adoption) that I never thought about starting our family with adoption. But what a great wife Kate is.
Kate would continually bring up adoption. And I've always had a heart for adoption but I always saw it in the future. She would mention it in love here and there and, after praying about it together, last summer we decided to pursue adoption.
This was not a replacement or a cure for our infertility. That's not the picture of adoption we see in the Word. Our Father lovingly called us to Himself, not because of what we have done or because we deserved it rather because of Christ. God the Son came down and humbled himself as a man, lived the life we were supposed to, died the death we all deserve, defeated death by raising again three days later and is now sitting at the right hand of the Father. Through this along are we able to be adopted as sons and daughters to our Heavenly Father. There is nothing we can do to lose our position as a son or daughter because it was purchased by Christ. In the same light, adoption is a reflection of this reality.
Again, we are not trying to forget our infertility by adopting a child. We are overwhelmed with joy that Christ would purchase our redemption with his blood so that we could be adopted as sons and daughters to God and we cannot wait to share that love with our adopted child.
I cannot express how excited we are. To know that we are less than 24 hours away from submitting what has been four months of hard work and will soon be waiting to receive that phone call saying we have been selected to be parents makes me tear up. Kate swears she won't cry when she finds out. I know I won't be able to keep it together.
We want to thank everyone who has been so supportive through this entire process. So many of you have been lifting us up in prayer, generously donating and have loved us so well through our adoption. We cannot wait to bring home a little baby Houghton to show everyone. Thank you.
-Jeremy
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