Our story...

Welcome! This is our first ever attempt at blogging, and we are excited about using this as a way to keep everyone updated on our newly formed family of three! Although it was probably a surprise, most of you are now aware that we adopted a baby boy, Elijah, just over 2 weeks ago! We've had several people ask to hear our "story" and how this all came about so quickly. Well, here it is! (WARNING! This story is prone to cause the following symptoms: tears, laughter, goose bumps, jaw drop, and an awe inspiring sense of God’s divine intervention!)

Early last fall, we began talking about the idea of adoption. We did some reading, research, and even talked with several friends who had adopted to get their insight and advice. We learned a ton and had many questions (and fears!) addressed, and rather quickly that thought of adoption was becoming more of a decision. We began praying about it, too, asking for wisdom and guidance as we looked to begin our family. We decided to make our decision official over the Holidays by informing our families and close friends of our intent to adopt.

Our goal was to begin the adoption process with the turn of the New Year. So, we filled out the initial paperwork and turned in an application with the agency of our choice. On January 15th we anxiously walked the application into the post office and had it mailed to the adoption agency. After all, this was a HUGE decision! But, there was no cause for immediate celebration because we “knew” there could be quite a bit of waiting time involved before our profile was even available to potential birth parents.

Less than one week later, Thursday the 21st, we received an interesting call from “L” (our neighbor, friend, Bible study partner, and now “Fairy godmother”!). “L”, fully aware of our intent to adopt, just happened to mention us and our situation to a co-worker, “S”, the day before. (Side note: “S” wasn’t even supposed to be at work that day!) That woman was actively involved with a birthmother who was in desperate need to find an adoptive family for her baby (The relationship between "S" and this birth mother is another story entirely!). There had been another family lined up for this child, but just the week earlier they backed out of their contract because they found out they were pregnant. So, now with the due date rapidly approaching (Sunday, Jan 24th), they had just about given up until “L” happened to be at the right place at the right time and mention us to “S”! Amazing, right?!

“L” called us that afternoon to give us a quick explanation of all that had unraveled from this seemingly innocent conversation at work! We congregated at “L’s” house that evening to discuss the situation in more detail as well as to talk with a couple of other key characters in this already unbelievable story! We were given the name of an attorney who was already familiar with the situation, and we were told to call him in the morning. With so much going on, I called off work on Friday (But, I was honest and told them I wasn’t sick and promised that everything was okay!). We called the attorney and set up an appointment that day! After meeting with him we were given the green light, and from that point things began happening very quickly.

We were told that the birthmother was due on Sunday, but that she would be induced the following Thursday (28th) if nothing happened before then. Talk about massive overhaul! You should see what we had done in less than a week’s time! Again, the word “baby” wasn’t even on our radar because we just “knew” that it would take a minimum of 4-5 months to complete the paperwork with the agency! We had absolutely nothing prepared to bring an infant into our home, but our family and friends immediately responded to our plea for help! Our computer room quickly became a nursery with the help of friends who cleaned, washed, and freely loaned clothes and other baby “stuff”. We had family fly in as early as Saturday evening to share in the excitement and to help prepare for the arrival of little Elijah.

Thankful for the extra time to prepare (a whopping week!), the birthmother was induced as planned and our little Elijah was born Thursday, Jan 28th at 10:04pm! Eli came home with us from the hospital on the 30th and has now been home with us for just over two weeks. We feel overwhelmingly blessed and shocked all at the same time! There is certainly no denying that God’s hands were directly involved in bringing us together! We could go on and on with the details, which prove even more the divine intervention that made this happen, but we’ll spare you for now. We are just excited to share this news with everyone, and you can guess at the surprise when we called the agency to cancel our application! We are abundantly blessed!

Another interesting side note, and perhaps one of our favorite parts to this story, is how we chose Elijah's name (Elijah Nathanael). The birth mother had a confidant, "K", who was very involved in this entire process. So much so, that "K" was given the responsibility of choosing the adoptive parents as well as naming her baby boy. "K" decided on Nathan John as his name. Upon further inspection, we found that the name Nathan means "to be given". Really? Could there be a more perfect name for the situation at hand? So, wanting to preserve the significance of that name and it's part of the story, we decided to keep Nathanael (means "gift from God", also very appropriate!) as a middle name.

So, there’s our story of how Eli came into our lives. We look forward to sharing our journey with you through many updates and lots of pictures!! Thank you for your encouragement, support and continued prayers as the legal work will take several months to finalize. Until next time…