December 1st, we marked six years since we submitted our application to Lifeline Children’s Services to become part of their Ethiopia international adoption program. We had prayed, researched, prayed some more, and as a still newlywed couple, we embarked on a journey that we could have never imagined.
At the time, we were told that waiting for a child under the age of two in Ethiopia would be about 2-3 years. We’d only been married for one year at the time, so we were totally fine with that. One of the reasons that we’d applied to the Ethiopia program over other countries was because it only required adoptive parents to have been married for one year. Most of the other international programs were three years or more.
Anyway, back to the story…
We began our home study in January 2014, sent out dossier to Ethiopia on our second anniversary, September 22, 2014, and officially got on the waiting list as #30 on September 30, 2014. We were on that list for over a year, and then mid-November of 2015 (we were #12), we found out that the placing agency that we were waiting with was closing. Devastated as we were, we went in to that holiday season and new year hopeful for a new placing agency and a new list.
By January 4, 2016, we were on a new waiting list at #81. It was hard to swallow the fact that we were literally waiting for a referral call any day, and now we were higher on this new list than we’d ever even been before. We moved swiftly in the first few months, getting to #67 by July 5, 2016. However, once we got on the new list, God began pulling my heart in another direction — not a different direction, but an additional direction.
You all probably know how the story goes — we began a domestic adoption process alongside our Ethiopia process. We were chosen to parent a baby girl from Houston, TX on August 29, 2016 and Brighten Storie was born less than a month later on September 22nd. We were at her birth and she is the absolute best anniversary gift we’ve ever been given :)
Even though we had adopted Brighten, we were still fully committed to our Ethiopia adoption. We’d fallen in love with a country we’d never been to, and a people and a culture that we’d not yet immersed ourselves in. So, we continued moving on the waiting list until on April 21, 2017 we received a phone call from our case worker at Lifeline.
Our case worker told us that Ethiopia had temporarily suspended all international adoptions. They didn’t know how long the suspension would last, but they’d keep us updated. At the time we were #46 on the waiting list and we were actually waiting for a referral any day (many of the families ahead of us were on hold for various reasons).
From the beginning, we always said that we would continue pursuing this process until someone told us that we couldn’t anymore. And so, we were brokenhearted when we heard on June 6, 2017 that our placing agency could no longer work families who were waiting. They told us we couldn’t continue.
We took the next few months to pray and rest and gather our thoughts. During this time Ethiopia actually ended up closing international adoption altogether. Families who had been matched but not brought their children home had to fight to get into Ethiopia, go to court, and come home with their children. It was HARD for so many families who we’d come to know and care about.
In September of 2017, we ended up switching to Lifeline’s Haiti program. We were super excited to be able to have our hope restored for adopting internationally, and we were thrilled at the possibility of a sibling for Brighten from Haiti. We even extended our age range to four years old since the process for Haiti takes so many years. We aren’t sticklers for birth order, but we did, and do feel strongly that Brighten is our oldest child.
Anyway, we began our paperwork for Haiti soon after switching programs, albeit slowly because we had a 1-year-old. We actually were finishing up our home study and dossier papers when I found out I was pregnant with Grady! SURPRISE!
We decided to just press pause on everything while I grew a baby in my belly. Since we’d been living life with a child, we knew that adding any children to our home was A LOT, and we wanted to be sure we were prayerful about adding each child as God provided.
Grady Shores was born on December 21, 2018, after 44 hours of labor and a c-section. In January as I was recovering from surgery, we were learning life with two littles ages two and under, and we were settling in to our new normal. We finally began talking to Lifeline about our Haiti adoption process again. We actually learned that things had slowed way down and that the Haitian government really was not referring children under six years old, and hadn’t been, for a long time. They were asking families like ours who had been in process but hadn’t submitted our dossier yet to prayerfully consider another program.
When this began sounding a little too familiar, we did our due diligence and met with one of Lifeline’s case workers who went through each program that we qualified for with us. We spent several months praying, talking, and still balancing life with an infant and a toddler. We tried desperately to see where God was leading our family to adopt from next, but after many months and countless conversations, neither Jason nor I felt peace about moving forward with another program.
When we were updated by Lifeline about their Haiti program, we learned that no changes had really occurred and things were still at somewhat of a standstill. We knew we needed to give them a decision, but truthfully we knew that once we talked to them, we’d have to let go of SIX YEARS of waiting, hoping, praying, and longing for something that was clearly not going to happen. We looked around our home at our two sweet children — one formed within another woman, and one formed within my own body — and we could clearly see God’s goodness and providence. We knew that He had not lead us astray at any point along the way, and it was clearly time for us to let go and focus our sole attention on the beautiful miracles He’d given us.
So, where does that leave us now?
Well, for the first time in over half a decade, we are not currently in the process of adopting. We’re technically on an indefinite hold with Lifeline’s Haiti program. We have two years to come off of our hold status, so if things change, there’s always the chance we could jump back in. But for now, we’re living in the present and still remaining sensitive to God’s promptings for our family.
Truthfully, we feel like our family is complete — at least for now. Deep down, I long for Ethiopia to open back up. Even if it were years from now, we would certainly be interested in jumping back in and pursuing international adoption from Ethiopia at that time. We’d even pray through potentially adopting an “older” child, depending on Brighten and Grady’s ages at the time.
I’m so thankful for the last six years, for my incredible two children, and for the unfathomable work that God has been so gracious to do in my life through this process. We have are thankful for the completed process of adoption that allowed Brighten to join our family, and most of all, we are thankful for the completed work of Jesus on the cross that freely gives us adoption into the family of God.
Thank you all, from the absolute bottom of our hearts, for all of your prayers, kindness, and thoughts over these years. The community that has come around us has been unparalleled by anything else we’ve ever experienced, and we could not be more thankful.
We leave behind this process of international adoption with hearts full of gratitude, knowing that God has lead us to this place for a reason. He has not forsaken our family, the 153 million orphans in this world, and He is still doing a great thing in our world to bring justice and mercy to those who need families. I’m excited to see where He leads us as we lead our children to seek justice and pour out loving mercy in the world around us.
