Adoption: Trusting God's family plans

My Husband And I had always imagined we'd have a child. But we never thought it would be such a challenge.

During the first few years of marriage, we were optimistic that I would become pregnant. But I didn't.

I started bargaining with God. Every time I prayed to God, I began, "If we could just have one child, I would never ask for anything again!" And so it continued.

The same response would always come: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10 ). At times this comforted me, but I also spent many nights wondering what I'd done to be so deprived.

Friends and relatives were having babies, and every time they would call to make their announcement I would hang up the phone in tears, absorbed in self-pity. I felt God had abandoned me.

I realized that I needed to open my thought to what God wanted instead of being so absorbed in I wanted. That was tough at first. I knew what I wanted and hoped that God wanted the same.

A phrase from Science and Health came to me. It refers to dissolving "the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love ..." (p. 242 ). Adamant means inflexible, unyielding, immovable. I had to let go of my will and my planning, and focus more on God's plan.

I also thought about this: "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds" (Science and Health, p. 1 ). I needed to trust more and know that God did indeed know my desire and would fulfill it in the right way and at the right time.

We started thinking about adoption. I began calling adoption agencies, but to my dismay, they all said the same thing—it could take five to ten years to get a child.

Then my husband saw an ad for an adoption agency that was having a free informational meeting on adopting babies from Romania. The thing that caught our eyes "No waiting lists!" We went to that meeting, and we had such a good feeling about it that we knew this was what we wanted to do.

But after we prayed some more, it didn't seem right to proceed just yet. One day, I reached out to God in desperation for an answer. I basically said, "God, I want to go forward with this, but I'm afraid I'll be disappointed that I'll never know what our children would have looked like."

All of a sudden, God's answer came. It was loud, clear, and spoke to me in a very motherly voice. The voice said, "Oh, ... but you will."

Tears welled up in my eyes, and I felt enveloped in love. I didn't take it as God telling me I would become pregnant, but that I would know what our child would look like because no matter how the child would come to us, he or she would be from God.

Now I was ready to go forward.

The next hurdle was to come up with the money for an international adoption. We applied to several banks but all of them turned us down for the amount we needed. Now I was really confused. Here I thought we were pursuing God's plan, but we still couldn't go forward. What did I need to know now?

My husband and I talked about the fact that he was finishing graduate school. It was a demanding schedule, but he would be done in a year. We decided that maybe now was not the right time.

A year went by. Our trust in God's plan was stronger than ever. As my husband's final semester came near, we decided to start adopting a baby from Romania. We contacted the agency and were quickly accepted. We completed the home study, a requirement for adoption, and received the first video of our son.

The day my husband received his master's degress was the day our son was born! The feeling of being loved by God couldn't have been more evident at that moment. We were grateful that so far we'd been able to come up with the money needed to keep the adoption moving along. Then when we went back to one of the same banks that had turned us down the year before, they approved the amount we needed.

As things progressed, we were told that we would have our son home just in time for Christmas. We were thrilled. My family planned on coming that week to welcome our son home and to help with things around the house. But then we got another phone call saying that the embassy in Romania was closing for several weeks, and that we wouldn't be able to bring our son home until the middle of January.

I prayed about this, and it seemed right for this to happen sooner. The thought came to contact a state senator with whom the adoption agency had worked on a regular basis. At the same time I also made a conscious decision not to be willful.

The senator's office was happy to lend a hand. The governor's office also got involved, and both offices got in touch with the United States embassy in Romania. With this help, and a lot of prayer, we secured an appointment at the embassy in Romania a few days before Christmas.

Before our trip, we felt many uncertainties about being new parents. A friend who was praying with me about this trip said I should not see myself as a foreigner in another land—I was among my brothers and sisters, among God's children. Along these same lines, our son was not going from one (foster) family to another (our) family. His family was already established as being in and of God.

Those were comforting thoughts. Also, I prayed that we wouldn't be fearful about his adjustment to his new life. Life in God is "the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (see Heb. 13:8).

When my husband and I arrived in Romania, we were taken to the attorney's office. There they handed us our son. It was nothing like we'd imagined—we were both exhausted, not having slept in about 30 hours. Our son Sam was the most precious thing we had ever seen, however, and we were glad to meet the foster mother who had taken care of him for eight months. She spoke some English, and I was grateful that I was able to thank her personally and give her a big hug. It was a very emotional moment.

When we got back to the hotel, we had to become instant parents of an eight-and-a-half-month-old baby. We both turned wholeheartedly to God to give us direction. We were so thankful that there were two other couples from the US staying at the same hotel, adopting children from the same agency. They helped us with Sam, showed us where to exchange our money, and gave good moral support.

What became the biggest problem was that our son cried so much that we didn't get any sleep.

I called the same friend in the US who had been praying with us right along. We were concerned that Sam's crying would disturb others on the 12-hour plane trip back to the US.

The practitioner and I talked about a hymn by Mrs. Eddy called "Mother's Evening Prayer" and the line in it, "Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 207 ). God was keeping our son on "upward wing tonight."

I felt great peace and comfort from our discussion of God's power to keep Sam feeling comforted and safe. And what was so awe-inspiring was that he went to sleep immediately after this conversation. We gave him his bottle at the airport, and pretty soon after that he went back to sleep. For the remainder of our trip, he was quiet and happy, and slept on and off. It was amazing.

When we landed, we were happy to be back home, and better yet, to be bringing Sam with us. He settled in right away. There wasn't really any adjustment period, something we'd been told to expect. And we were home just in time for the holidays.