Today is the day! It’s time! I’ve packed my bags and I’m heading to the airport to await our newest child. Who knows when baby will come? I’m so excited to meet him/her! I’ve been eagerly awaiting this trip for two months, when we first found out about baby. Honestly, I’ve been waiting for this moment since 2019 when we were approved to adopt. If I’m super honest, I’ve been waiting my whole life… it’s a dream come true. It’s finally happening! I’m going to be holding my newborn, soon-to-be-adopted baby. My heart is so full. It feels like it might explode, but thankfully, it won’t. There is just so much joy!
The Reality…
I wish all that was true. Part of it’s true. Today IS a significant day in this journey and we have known about him/her for two months. We did say, YES, to adopting this little one. But, I’m not on my way out to meet him/her. Things have gone a different way…So much hope and anticipation followed that YES… and a huge flurry of activity – gathering official documents, filling out forms, getting fingerprints and doctor’s visits, writing a biography, meeting our new social worker, and so much more. When I say flurry, I mean it! We had two months to start and finish our home study! The front end stuff was on track to be done in 2-3 weeks if we really dropped everything and focused on this. Sure enough, we did that! We had to get this first step done fast because once our adoption agency approved our home study, we had to send it to the state. That’s the part that we had little control over the timing. State approval can take anywhere from 4-6 weeks… or longer! We really wanted to have an approved home study by the time baby arrived. … And we had almost met that goal… just a few more boxes to check and we’d be there. We could do it! I couldn’t believe how much progress we were making.
Two and a Half Weeks Earlier…
A week before we said YES to this little one joining our family, we were not making any moves towards starting up the adoption process in our new state. We were biding our time until we felt like our life was settled enough… settled enough from the move two years earlier… settled enough from the new church plant that we and our team started two years prior… settled enough with our kids finishing up their 2nd year back in school (as opposed to homeschool). We were finally getting settled and I could feel my thoughts shift towards adoption. I had internal space to catch up on my many adoption blog podcasts. I was leading the baby/toddler ministry at our church and realized that I still remembered a lot from my young parenting days. I could offer words of encouragement and advice to the moms of young kids. I even found that I enjoyed sharing about my experiences and bringing up those past memories. And then there were the conversations. People started asking me more frequently how things were going on the adoption front. I had to really give some thought to how it was actually going. Was it moving forward, backward, stagnant? Was it something we still wanted to do? Would it look the same? How about foster care, should we consider that option instead of private adoption? I found myself thinking about adoption more than I had in the past two to four years. I asked myself, “Is the Lord turning my thoughts towards all this adoption stuff again because it’s getting close to the time to do something about it? Or am I just thinking about it and there doesn’t need to be any action yet?”
You can imagine how I answered that question when we received a call that a birth mother remembered us from way back in 2020 (Read more at this post) and was wondering if we’d be interested in adopting her baby! I was blown away when I heard that! What was God up to??? There were so many swirling thoughts in my mind. How did she remember us after all this time? How was it that she kept the text number of our previous adoption social worker? I mean… that agency had closed. There wouldn’t have been a way for her to find us or the social worker otherwise. Whoa! …And since the agency had closed, that could mean this adoption would be able to go through as an agency-assisted adoption which would likely reduce our costs since there would be no large placement fee. Also, I always felt like we would adopt from the state we previously lived in. I was sad when that didn’t happen and certainly confused and disappointed. But now, we might even be able to finalize the adoption IN THAT STATE! What?!?!? It really seemed like things were lining up to be accomplished in a way that was what I had hoped and dreamed and planned for… albeit a bit veering from my original plan since I had moved away and it was 5+ years after our initial home study approval. But who cares about all that when it’s finally about to happen? I certainly didn’t. All I knew was that hope was rising in me once again.
With such a big, life-changing decision to make, we immediately started to seek input. We talked with people who had adopted, we talked with mentors, counselors, family, friends, you name it! We sought out prophetic words from the Lord, we prayed for the Lord to speak directly to us, we used human wisdom in our discernment. We reassessed whether or not we still wanted to make adoption a part of our life story at 40+ years of age. Did we still want a newborn after all this time? How would this affect our kids? How would it affect our church? How would it affect our work? There was just so much to consider. Thankfully, we had a week before we needed to give our decision, but that still felt so quick. Our lives were quickly heading in a 180 degree direction. But was it a complete turn around? I mean, we had been considering this in our PAST. Were we really so far along on our present trajectory that adoption would turn us right back around?
We came to the conclusion that, no, it wouldn’t be out of the question for us to adopt. So, with anticipation and some trepidation of the unknowns, we made the call to the adoption social worker. We said, YES! She didn’t hide her enthusiasm. She really wanted us to say yes. She told us that she was hoping we’d agree to adopt because we were who the birth mother really wanted and it’d fulfill our dreams as well. We talked about the next steps, the aspects we’d need to figure out with the lawyer and the agencies in both states. We called and texted the people who had prayed with us over this decision and shared the news. There was SO MUCH rejoicing going on. We were all ecstatic with JOY! Just about every part of this felt like the LORD! Praise Jesus! We were finally going to adopt a baby. It was really going to happen. We really were going to change our lives for so much good, and we could foresee so many interesting positive outcomes by taking this step. We said YES with our whole hearts and we jumped in! That’s when the flurry of activity happened that I mentioned earlier.
What Came Next…
Along with that flurry of activity came an unexpected swirl of chaos. It completely took us off guard. We noticed an instant anxiety rise up in our kids. Their emotions were all over the place. Along with this, the main stone fell out of my wedding ring. This was a first for me. I had no idea when it happened and after searching through so many places, I never found it. Then, we discovered that the required pool fence was going to be more extensive than we originally thought and that we’d have to find some way to make our 15 foot oleander hedge inaccessible to a child – either that or take them out completely. The final blow was when my doctor refused to fill out my adoption form without an appointment, even though I had just seen her the previous month. Luckily, our adoption agency recommended that we go to a certain clinic. So, I did that. When the nurse asked me why I was there, I said, “I’m hear to have an appointment so I can get this adoption form filled out.” She flat out said, “We can’t do that.” [blank stare] After some discussion with her about how our agency literally told us to go to this clinic and her trying every which way to find a way to allow them to fill out the form, I walked away empty-handed. I was so disheartened. This was the final item that I needed to do on my individual list and then just a handful on our joint list left to do. We were so close to getting our home study sent off to our agency for approval. Why was this so hard? What was happening? Even our adoption agent was confused at the lack of help we were receiving from these medical providers. What was going on?
That night, I got a text from our out-of-state social worker asking if we could have a phone call. We made the space in our schedule and got on the phone with her. She proceeded to share about the recent midwife visit our birth mother had and gave us stats from that appointment. Then she shared more information about what she’d learned about the birth parents and their health histories. I was thankful to receive more information. I had been waiting for two and a half weeks to hear more about how things were going and I was eager for a glimpse into how the pregnancy was progressing and to learn any additional information that we could about our baby. But there was more. My husband sensed it from the beginning of the call. Sure enough, there was something there that was cause for concern – at least on our end. Ultimately, we learned that the birth mother was starting to question her decision. She was going to take the weekend to think about things and had a counseling appointment scheduled for her at the top of the week to help her with this process and the decisions she needed to make. It was Thursday.
The next morning, my husband and I finally got to work on our non-adoption related things. It seemed like it was the first time in a long time that we had been caught up enough to devote some time to our usual work. Just before lunch I received a call from our out-of-state adoption social worker. I took that call and my heart dropped. “I hate to have to be the one to make this call, but the birth mother decided to parent,” she said. Shock. Tears. Disbelief. Confusion. What?!? She didn’t need the weekend or the counseling appointment to process her thoughts. She made the decision overnight, thanked us for ‘stepping up’ and went on her way. Devastated, that’s how I felt. I felt devastated. I finished the call and then sobbed. Sobbed for the lost baby, the dream put on hold again. Sobbed for all the stress and time, energy, and money we had put into the past weeks. Sobbed for the future decision about whether or not we’d continue with the adoption home study process. Sobbed that we’d have to break the news to our kids. Sobbed at the prospect of telling all those who rejoiced with us that now it was over. I was heartbroken. I shared the news with my husband at lunchtime and he too had obvious emotion over this. His was a bit more towards the angry side of things. This was really hard news to stomach. Oh man, it was hard.
Just as quickly as it started, it ended. Just like that, it was over. No more racing, no more rushing, no more taking the next step. And no more dreaming, no more excitement, no more anticipation. It was just a bunch of ‘no more’. It was empty. I was empty. Every place that I had filled with adoption, suddenly had holes poked into it and everything leaked out. What a pain I carried. What deep pain that I hadn’t experienced in this way before. It was sharp and dull at the same time. It was deep and shallow. Pain that was acute and yet, chronic too. My heart and soul weeped. I wept. … I wept.
…….
‘Jesus wept.’ It’s the shortest verse in the Bible. That’s why we know it. ‘Jesus wept.’*** I wasn’t the first one to come to this place. Jesus had been here too. He wept over a loss also. He wept over a person too. Jesus wept over people who were like family, although not legally so. Jesus wept. I am not alone in weeping. I am not the first to weep. Yes, I’ve already said that only a few sentences back. But, I must remind myself. I must remind us. We must remind ourselves. We are not alone in our sorrow. We are not the first ones to experience deep loss. The King of Kings has WEPT! His life wasn’t without pain. Although he was perfect, he still experienced the sadness that life brings with it. Because of this, I can trust Him again. I gain my strength from Him! If He can rise up from this, I can too. If He can find strength to pray again, I can too. Dare I say, if He can seek for a resurrection, I can too. I can seek for a resurrection of this dream. I may not seek it immediately, though. Sometimes it takes time to heal from the battering that comes with loss. But, someday, when my heart is healed, I will hope again. I’ll feel that gentle nudge, “Brittany, will you follow me into the world of Foster/Adoption? Will you let your heart hope and dream again? Will you trust me as I lead you through this narrow way?” I’ll tell you, HE is the only one I will trust with this. He is the only one who can make a way when there seems to be no way. He is the only one who can turn ashes into beauty; sorrow into rejoicing. So, I choose HIM. I choose Jesus. I will follow Him. I will say YES to Jesus once again.
Update…
After some time had passed, We made a decision to continue with finishing out our home study. We don’t know what will come of it, but we feel it’s good and right for us to continue forward on this path. So, we’re starting our adoption journey afresh here in our new state. Our lives are so different now, but that doesn’t bother God. We’ll trust him to keep leading us and we’ll keep our hearts tender towards HIS dreams for our family.
Adoption Triad…
I would be remiss if I didn’t say that although this blog post is about my own personal journey through adoption as a Prospective Adoptive Parent, there are two others in this adoption triad – the Birth Mother, and the Adoptee. It is found to best for children to be raised by their birth parent(s), in their family of origin, if at all possible. This birth mother has chosen to parent and if I take a step back from being a PAP, I can see many positives and benefits for them both. Congratulations to this birth mother. I wish you the best as you continue on as mother and child.
*** You can read the story of Jesus weeping in John 11:1-44 in your Bible or at the link.
Brittany M Putman 