We aren’t at all where we thought we would be at this point in our adoption adventure. Yet, somehow we know we are in the middle of God’s will for our family. He has led us to explore nearly every path of adoption.

We want to share with you, our Village, so that you understand our heart posture moving forward and can fully support us in what God has called us into. We also want to connect anyone we can to the different paths of adoption. God has not led us astray and we know that every pursuit along the way has given us experience that can help others on their adoption journey.

*To hear an audio recording of the following post, click here.

*To watch a video where I candidly tell our story of our journey to fostering, click here.

We believe passionately that every believer has a part to play to create a culture of adoption and caring for vulnerable families. We hope you will find connection points to our story even if God has not called you to foster or adopt yourself. If you feel called to explore the world of foster care or adoption, I hope you will jump in with us. As scary as it may be, I’m confident that we will all look back and say that this leap of faith was the best thing we ever did.

I’ll warn you that this post is long but I’m going to ask you to give your attention to something I believe is near to the heart of God. This may be our story but it isn’t about us.

INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION

Growing up, I paid close attention to the families in our church who adopted internationally. One of these families was my Aunt and Uncle who I lived with in China for a time in high school. The desire to adopt had already been implanted in my heart when my step dad adopted me at the age 5. Some of my earliest memories are of me playing “adoption” with my baby dolls. Because of my love for other cultures and the example set by my community, I always imagined myself adopting internationally.

When I met Michael, he had just been in Haiti where God impressed the desire to adopt on his heart. This shared dream was something that brought us together early on in our relationship. Fast forward, we get married and move to Southern California so he can attend dental school. Knowing it wasn’t the right time to start a family we continued to nurture our dream of traveling the world and adopting babies from various countries.

Michael graduated from dental school and we moved to Oregon where he began private practice. Shortly after our newly established stability we got pregnant with our son Finn. I started the paperwork for international adoption just a couple months after his birth. I understood that the process can take from 2-10 years and I didn’t want Finn to be an only child for that long.

Then came the surprise of our life. When Finn was only five months old, I found out I was pregnant with our daughter Lucy. We put a pause on the adoption process and focused on getting through a very hard pregnancy that involved bed rest and constant contractions.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

After Lucy was born, God gave me a burden for human trafficking. Most of my life I had looked away from the realities of the horror of trafficking and its prevalence in our own neighborhoods. I had no idea how harmful this denial was. I prayed a scary prayer and asked God to break my heart for what breaks his. He did, and he gave me courage to face the vulnerable child crisis head on. This is a prayer I encourage you to pray but it comes with a warning. When God gives us his heart for something we are never the same. We can never look away from the issues that break his heart again. I discovered that 300,000 U.S. children are at risk of commercial sexual exploitation every year and the U.S. is the leading consumer of child sex trafficking worldwide. Sex trafficking exists in every state, every city, and every county of America. This is infuriating and heart shattering.

Discovering these statistics left me feeling helpless. What could I possibly do to make a difference in the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world that generates over 150 billion a year in revenue globally? God’s answer to me was unexpected: “Foster Care.”

FOSTER CARE

A quick google search revealed the correlation between trafficking and foster care. Children in foster care are much more vulnerable to child trafficking. 60% of child sex trafficking victims have been in the child welfare system.

If 1 family in 1⁄3 of churches in the U.S. adopted, there would be no children waiting to be adopted in the foster care system (currently there are over 122,000 foster care children waiting to be adopted and 380,000 U.S. churches). I dare you to read that again.

In response to human trafficking, foster care is both restorative and preventative. It’s restorative for children in the welfare system who have already been abused sexually, physically and/or through neglect. Foster homes provide a place of refuge for these children.

Foster Care is also preventative for the children who are adopted out of the system. More than 23,000 children age out of the foster system every year with no family, no home and no support system. The majority of these young adults end up homeless, in jail, or forced prostitution. These kids are extremely vulnerable to becoming victims of human trafficking. Adopting children out of foster care can literally save their lives.

When I discovered this, I began to pray over waiting children whose profiles are listed on American Kids Belong and Northwest Adoption Exchange. Michael and I considered doing a foster to adopt program but felt it was wise to not disrupt the natural birth order of our family. We know people who have successfully adopted out of birth order, but we didn’t feel that was how God was leading us, at least at that time.

In order for a child to become adoptable the State has to give the family of origin every possible opportunity to receive the support they need to get their children back. If a child is adoptable it means they have gone through a lengthy process that tragically ended with their parent’s rights being revoked. It also means there are no relatives willing to step up and provide kinship care. Because this process takes time, and because families are more inclined to adopt younger, most of the waiting children in the foster system are over five.

The goal of foster care is always reunification. At the time, Michael wasn’t ready to consider switching our focus to foster care because it does not involve the initial goal of adoption. I did not fault him for this. Despite my enthusiasm, I did not try to persuade him because I understood that a motivation to appease a spouse is not a substantial enough reason to sustain someone through the ups and downs of a foster care or adoption journey. I continued to pray over waiting children and asked God to prepare us to foster in his timing if it was his will for us. I concluded that I wouldn’t bring the topic up again until our kids were around high school age and we could take in older kids. In the meantime, Michael and I still desired to pursue traditional adoption.

REVISITING INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION

After I learned more about human trafficking, I saw the tie to the global orphan crisis, which changed my views on international adoption. In short, the more I learn about the real causes of the orphan crisis, the more adopting ethically becomes my priority. Because I did not feel I could insure an ethical adoption with international agencies, and because it’s in the best interest of a child to stay in their country of origin if at all possible, I decided I would rather donate money to support adoptive and foster homes in their own country than adopt internationally. I am certainly not suggesting that adopting internationally is all bad; it’s a topic far too complex to even summarize here. The Archibald Project is a great resources to further your understanding on the global orphan crisis, what causes it, and how to respond. Shortly after our decision, Covid brought international adoption to a screeching halt which was further confirmation to us that this path was not the one we were meant to walk down, at least not now.

This left two paths open to us: domestic infant adoption and embryo adoption.

EMBRYO ADOPTION

We instantly got excited about adopting an infant. I binge-watched domestic infant adoption stories on YouTube and became very familiar with the process of open adoption. Then God asked us to prayerfully consider embryo adoption. I was closed off to it at first. Embryo adoption was introduced to me when I met an incredible woman who has 8 children: 5 adopted and 2 through embryo adoption. The last one she birthed at 54 years old, post menopause. Isn’t God amazing? They named their last baby Pearl. This child they chose as a frozen embryo is a pearl of great price in the eyes of God. Their story inspired me greatly, but in my mind it felt more important to adopt children that have already been born than one of the 600,000 embryos frozen in the U.S.

Then one day on a trip to Arizona to visit Michael’s parents, God changed my heart. I was walking through a jewelry store when I heard God say, “Each embryo is more precious to me than the most priceless gemstones.” In that moment I repented for assigning value based on my own understanding. I opened my heart to the possibility of embryo adoption. Every embryo has its own unique destiny code woven inside it at conception by our Creator. Receiving a burden for the unborn and valuing life at every stage was an important part of our journey. We were, and still are, willing to walk down this path if Jesus leads us there. One thing I know, God is after fully surrendered hearts. Once we surrendered to another potential change in our adoption plans, God spoke to us both that it was time to begin the domestic infant adoption process.

DOMESTIC INFANT ADOPTION

We decided to sign up with Christian Adoption Consultants because of their high ethical standards. It mattered greatly to us that the agencies we work with have best practice when it comes to caring for expectant mothers. We wanted to ensure there was zero coerican and full support for mothers if they chose to parent. We also wanted to work with agencies that provide free counseling to birth mothers for life. CAC was a great resource for us for these reasons. We also liked their multi-agency approach which usually means shorter wait times. The average wait time when working with CAC is a year, whereas the traditional route can easily take three years or more.

We filled out the mountain of paperwork that comes with completing a home study and signing up with seven adoption agencies. We created our profile book that tells the story of our family to expectant mothers. These mothers are making the most selfless and loving decision to place their child for adoption. Contrary to stereotypes, most birth moms care greatly about the family they select to parent their child. Each one has different preferences when it comes to choosing a family. We took great care to portray our family and life as authentically as possible in our profile book.

Once we were active with our agencies we began to receive profiles of expectant mothers in our inbox. These emails give some information about expectant mothers and their reason for creating an adoption plan. We chose to present to almost every mother whose preferences we matched. Occasionally we would go longer stretches of time without receiving profiles, but on average we presented to one mom every two weeks, giving her time to make her choice before we presented to another situation.

We quickly discovered that there are more hopeful adoptive families waiting for a match than ever before. Although we recognized that this would likely mean longer wait times for us, we were overjoyed that God had moved on the heart of so many to adopt. Especially considering the timing of the overturning of Roe vs Wade. God has prepared more than enough families to be ready to adopt when there is an increase of babies born as a result of stricter abortion laws. The Church is the solution. Christians are more than twice as likely to adopt than anyone else. From our personal experience, we can testify that the majority of families eager to spend $40,000-$80,000 in adoption costs are Christians. It did strike me that there seems to be a greater need for foster families than for families waiting to adopt infants. Still, we knew this was the path God had set before us.

I will always remember the first mom we presented to. The advice we had received from our consultant and other families who have been through the process was to guard our hearts. I understand the advice because most hopeful adoptive families end up presenting hundreds of times before they are chosen, but God asked me to do the opposite. He told me to get attached. He asked me to apply my faith to every situation and believe that the mom we were presenting to and the baby she was carrying were the ones meant to be a part of our family. Each time we presented, I was tempted to pray disconnected prayers, “Lord bless her, provide for her, give her wisdom” because it was scary to let my heart get attached again and again. But I knew God had asked me to stand in the gap in intercession and he gave me the courage to ask and receive his heart for each one. This prayer assignment broke me every time in the best way. I have never felt the pleasure of God in any ministry more than this. God’s love for these women and the families they are connected to is so great it’s incomprehensible.

It’s easy to care about helpless babies. It’s harder to care about parents battling drug addiction, domestic abuse, and criminal activity. But God loves each of his children desperately no matter what they have done. God gave both Michael and I a heart transplant because we yielded ourselves to the surgery of the Spirit. Each time I asked God to show me his heart for these vulnerable families he removed a stoney part of my heart and replaced it with a piece of his heart. His heart is so tender I can’t even write about it without weeping. This alone was worth every heartache.

One of the ways God performed surgery on our hearts was by moving Michael out of private dental practice into prison dentistry. This career change came with a move away from all of our friends and family to the desert where we knew no one. Most people that work in the prison system treat the prisoners on a scale from bad to horrible depending on the prisoner’s record. God changed Michael’s heart to the point that he does not even consider their records. He knows every one is a worthy son that Jesus died to redeem. There is no scale of sin in God’s eyes, we are all in need of a Savior. Michael treats the inmates with love and respect that isn’t based on merit, only God’s grace.

In July we went through more heart surgery. I attended the Her Voice National Conference and experienced an outpouring of the Spirit of adoption to an extent I hadn’t encountered before corporately (Romans 8:15). One of the passions of my life is to see the Spirit of adoption lead us into our true identity, inheritance and intimacy with Jesus until we look just like him. I could hardly stand in the tent as I felt in my spirit this very thing beginning to take place.

After testimonies were shared from foster and adoptive mothers, women flooded the altar to show their commitment to participate in an adoption movement and create a culture of adoption. My prayer the entire conference was that each husband connected to the women in the room would receive the same impartation, including my own.

The day after the conference we sat in church together as one of my heros, Nicole Fitzpatrick, shared about her ministry, The Village Global, that rescues and rehabilitates trafficked victims in Mexico. Nicole and her husband are the adoptive mom and dad to two homes full of village children who have been victims of sex trafficking and horrific abuse. Michael was outwardly emotional during the service as Nicole shared some stories of the children they have rescued, some as young as infants. Afterwards Michael shared with me that during the service God asked him to be open to foster care. God never fails to transform the desires of our hearts to align with his will when we surrender to him.

It was exciting to see another powerful transformation in my husband. I thought God was highlighting to us the path he would have us travel on after we finished our journey with domestic infant adoption. I was conflicted because I believed that my lifelong dream to adopt and the goal of reunification in foster care would conflict. I felt that after we adopted a child first then we would fully be able to support the mission of foster care.

In October we moved back to the Portland area to be near family. We went through the process to update our home study with our new address and continued to present to expectant moms. After we settled, we began taking steps towards getting our foster license. We decided we didn’t want to wait any longer to help care for vulnerable children. We planned on providing short term foster care until we had an adoption match. I knew the path of domestic adoption and foster care don’t easily intersect, but I trusted that if God was leading us to do both at the same time that it would work supernaturally.

Then came the prompting to step away from the domestic infant adoption journey completely. God spoke to Michael about this first and it was very challenging for me to consider. What he said in that moment softened my heart: “God has changed my goal of adoption from a means to grow our family, to adopting children into God’s family.” The transformation in my husband was undeniably God. He went from being adamant that we would never foster to leading the way into this new territory.

We had just received an ideal situation of an expectant mother that we would be thrilled to match with. I heard God say this was the last one. While we waited to hear back about this mom’s decision, I asked God to give me the grace to lay my dream of adopting down. I was pulling up to my sister’s house when I received the email that we had gotten too many times before, “Your family was not selected to present.”

This particular email always stung more than the ones that came after an expectant mother had viewed our profile book and personal letter and chose another family. The attorneys that made the decisions on behalf of this expectant mom never took the time to get to know us. In fact, not one of the seven agencies we worked with ever reached out to us on the phone or with personal emails. Everything was copy and paste template communication to keep things as streamlined as possible. The exception of this was our consultant at CAC who was a lifeline.

I told myself the agency’s impersonal approach was because they were investing all their efforts into caring for the expectant moms. I hope this is the case, but it doesn’t seem like it has to be one or the other. The fact is, most agencies are not run any differently than a business. This experience has put a passion in me to see adoption reform. I am praying for a new system that can ethically and honorable facilitate the largest adoption movement in history that I know in my spirit is coming.

The impersonal nature of the email worsened the sting of grief. I sent my kids in the house with my sister and went back to my car. I knew I had a choice. I could feel bad for myself and question why God would have us go through all this heartache only to walk away without a baby. Or, I could choose to trust him when it doesn’t make sense and offer him worship that cost me something. I am grateful for the grace to choose the latter. I spent some time in worship and laid my heart before the Lord. In my pain the Holy Spirit was only kind.

One of the things God has taught me through this adoption journey is how to grieve. When I am sad, I don’t usually want to be around people. With each “no” we received on this journey, the Lord has taught me how to grieve in community and not isolate in my pain. I am thankful that the day I received this final email was a day that I was already planning on spending with my sister and mom, the two women who have been like doulas for me on this journey. We cried together and spoke in reverence of the worthiness of God. He is near to the brokenhearted.

That night I wrestled with God on the way to my women’s group. Most of the gals in the group are newer friends that I wasn’t sure I could trust with the tender places of my heart that I felt I was wearing on my sleeve. I knew I couldn’t stuff my emotions, but I also wasn’t sure that it was safe to express them to this new community. God has asked me to be very raw and vulnerable about our journey which has led to many misunderstanding me. The fear of being misunderstood is something I have to confront regularly.

As Christians we are so quick to try to take other’s pain away or give them a band-aid rather than hold space for it. We mean well, but sometimes declaring Romans 8:28,“All things work together for good!” can leave people feeling condemned or misunderstood rather than comforted. Believing in the purpose of a painful experience protects us from discouragement, but it does not take the pain away. I could explain to you in detail how God has used every step of this journey to build my character and teach me valuable things, but the end of this journey still felt like a death.

Despite my fear of being misunderstood, I went to bible study that night. God told me that he wanted me to share not for me, but for the women there. He said that this sacrifice was a sweet smelling aroma to him and sharing it would release the sweet fragrance of his presence. Before we started the bible study, our leader said that she felt I needed to share something with the group. The honor and support I received was deeply healing.

I felt like it was a funeral where these women warriors were standing at attention, not saying a word, just honoring what was being laid down. Grieving God’s way is always worth it. The very next day I woke up and I felt resurrected. I wasn’t sad and I wasn’t second guessing our decision to walk away. I felt steady and excited for the new path God was leading us down. It felt like the dawn of a new day and my strength had been revived for this new adventure.

We are in the final phase of getting our foster license and hope to be ready to welcome a child into our home as early as March. We will be available to foster children age three and under. God has shown us that we can hold the goal of reunification and the desire to one day adopt together. These desires do not have to conflict.

I have a friend who wisely pointed out that when I say I want to adopt I’m not saying that I want an expectant mom to get hooked on drugs, get pregnant as a teen, not have financial provision, be in an abusive relationship, or be homeless so that she has to create an adoption plan. We would never wish that on anyone. I was simply saying that I want to be a part of God’s plan of redemption. The same is true with foster care. Saying we hope to one day adopt through foster care does not mean that we are rooting for the parents of the children in our care to fail at their efforts for rehabilitation. We are simply saying that we are open to providing a long term solution for any children in our care who might tragically suffer the termination of their parent’s rights.

Because of the heart transplant we have undergone, we are fully excited to support vulnerable families to successfully reunify if at all possible. We believe that even if we never adopt a child through foster care we will be participating in the ministry of adoption, not just of children, but also whole families.

Are we ready to experience the heartache of fostering? No. But neither are the children who enter the system without a choice. So we will do it with open hearts.

Are we going to be able to handle the broken system? No. But the children whose lives are being controlled by this broken system certainly can’t handle it either. So we will do it trusting God to weave redemption into broken places.

Are we going to get too attached to every child who comes into our home? Yes. But isn’t that the whole point? These children need someone who will get attached and show them love without reservation whether they stay for three days or three years. So we will do it, embracing inevitable heartbreak.

Are we afraid? Yes, a little. But the children who get plucked out of their home and taken away from everything they know to go live with total strangers are terrified. So we will do it scared.

Thank you for supporting us as we choose to embrace a broken system for all the children who aren’t given a choice. Thank you for trusting with us in our God who specializes in transforming brokenness to wholeness, ashes to beauty, and graves to gardens. And thank you for praying for us that we would be strengthened, surrendered and saturated in the presence of God as we open our hearts and homes to foster children.