Looking Back at our Adoption Journey

I want to confess that I avoid (at all costs) thinking about the ups and downs of our adoption journey. I just want to mediate on how much we love “E: and how none of us can imagine life without him (not even the dogs!).


But alas,  adoption is messy and there is no way getting around it. I don’t think I have read or heard about any adoption story that was simple and easy.

But maybe that is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe adoption is hard and messy and makes us want to run the other way because it shines a light on the Lord and his inability to stop running after us. 

Adoption is an earthly picture of  His relentless pursuit of us, his sacrifice for us and his plans for us including an eternal forever home.


We moms (adopted or not), we pursue our children with a fierce tenacity and we prepare a forever earthly home for our gifts from God.  We toil, we ache, we rejoice, we pray, we weep and we give thanks.  All the same things our God does for us.

As I reflect back on our adoption journey, I remember the disappointment of having our profile shown but not being chosen.  I remember the 5 months we spent investing in a birth mom  and the surreal moment of watching (with my own eyes) our her baby being born.  Because just to be clear... I didn't even want to catch a glimpse of my biological daughter being born let alone an almost stranger giving birth!

 And in the depths of my soul, I still remember sitting in hotel room, holding Maggie, and getting the phone call that said we had to give her back.

But then, when we least expected it, God turned the ruins of our journey into beauty.  He took the wretchedness of this broken world and turned it into something redeeming.  It's crazy how sometimes we have to wade through the waters of chaos to receive the blessing?

It’s not the road I expected yet it’s beautiful and redemptive and filled with grace and mercy.