A Timeline

I keep trying to write a blog to explain how we came to the decision to adopt, and it keeps ending up being too long, and probably too detailed. The answer in simplest form is: God.

God used several friends, our niece Gwen, and some strange and difficult situations to get the ball rolling for us, and to lead us to the baby we’ll bring home in February. To save some space and time, I’ve tried to whittle down the last year or so into a timeline to give you a basic idea of the process. There are some other details and “God moments” in there that I will try to fill in in subsequent posts, but here is the basic story:

Summer 2007: After two years of trying to conceive, I was ready to start looking into adoption, but Mark wasn’t there yet. We decide to pursue some fertility treatments.
Fall/Early winter 2007: HSP, Clomid, three rounds of IUI.
January 2008: Last IUI. We decide to take February off from even thinking about what to do next.
February: My friend Annie calls, tells us about a pregnant friend of a friend looking for a family to pursue a private adoption. Mark’s still not completely sure about adoption in general, but it feels right to look into this situation.
Late February: We contact the potential birthfamily and wait to set up a meeting. Meanwhile, we hear about Spirit of Faith Adoptions (SOFA) from another friend, and call to ask if they can help with private adoptions
March: We visit Mark’s sister and her family in China. Mark has a great time with our adopted niece Gwen, and his heart changes—he’s ready to go for it.
Early April: We come home and find out the situation with Annie’s friend has fallen through. After grieving this loss, we contact SOFA, this time to say we’re interested in pursuing an adoption through them.
Late April: Stacy (our adoption worker) calls and tells us about a boy due in July whose birthmother wants to place him with a family outside the Toledo area. Although it’s not a sure thing because we haven’t even started our home study and the birthmother doesn’t know about us yet, it seems hopeful.
Early May: We start trying to quickly get our home study going, and attend the SOFA orientation in Toledo.
May and June 2008: We work hard on completing our home study so we will be ready for the baby in July
Late June: We get word that the baby boy due in July has been matched with another family. This is very difficult news, but we know that God is good.
Mid July: We finish our home study and turn in the first draft of our photo profile.
Late July: We get a call saying a baby boy has been born and the adoptive family has backed out—do we mind if they show our profile to the birthmother. We piece together the details and realize it’s the same baby we had been hoping for earlier.About five days later we get a call saying the birthmother saw our profile, but picked a family who lived out of state and had kids already.
August 2008: We finish the final draft of our photo profile, and begin the period of having nothing to do but wait.

Like I said, there will be some details I’ll fill in later, but for those of you who haven’t been aware of all these events, this will give you an idea of how those other details will fit in to the bigger picture. Also, if there’s anything you would like to know more about, please leave a comment and ask questions (I think I’ve fixed the settings so anyone can comment now). We were pretty ignorant at the beginning of this whole process about what goes into an adoption, and friends and family have asked a lot of questions as we’ve gone through this.

Looking back we can see clearly that God has brought us to this point. Originally, I had planned to say that all those strange and difficult situations were orchestrated by God to bring us to this point, but I’m not sure I can say that exactly. This whole process is fraught with questions about God’s sovereignty (I plan to write another post dedicated to some of those questions), but whether or not He actually orchestrated the situations that led us to this particular child, I have little doubt that He has chosen us to be this little boy’s parents. Because of the way things work with this type of adoption, nothing will be 100% until after the baby’s born and the papers are signed. But we trust that the phone calls, conversations, disappointments and decisions (made by us and others) that have taken place in the last year are being used by God to create our family. This is His plan, and we’re just stumbling along as we try to follow Him.