For many couples, the choice to adopt comes from various circumstances in life, normally from not being able to become pregnant. For us, adoption was always a part of our idea of a family even when we first married. If God blessed us with children by allowing pregnancy, that was fine too. Nevertheless, we knew from the very beginning that God had called us to adopt. Really, our only questions were…when do we start the process and which babies will God allow us to have?
Three years into our marriage God moved us to South Carolina from New Orleans. Neither of us wanted to move, but we knew it was the right decision. Two weeks after we moved out of New Orleans, Katrina hit the Gulf coast. Both of us were grateful that God spared us the devastation, but we also felt that God had other reasons for us to move. After living in South Carolina for a year, we were presented with the opportunity to take a little boy into our home because his birth mom faced some legal trouble. We completed all of our paper work for adoption (home study, back ground checks, etc.) and we did so in the record time of about 2 weeks. We also met an adoption lawyer who we found out later is the best adoption lawyer in the state. After an agonizing month of watching this little boy remain in foster care and the court system drag on and on we realized that this adoption was not going to happen. Eventually his mother was able to keep him, for which we were glad. Nevertheless, our hearts were broken, and we put adoption on hold for a little while.
A few weeks later God prompted us to contact the adoption attorney we met in our previous adoption attempt to ask about their adoption process. The message we received back was the beginning of our faith journey. The social workers working with this adoption group said that if we had our paper work ready (which we did from our previous attempt) we could be immediately put on a waiting list. The type of list was our choice. If we waited for a Caucasian baby it could be 10 months to a year. If we wanted to put on the list for a black baby or mixed raced baby, they could have one in our home tomorrow. We asked why there was such a difference in the wait time. The answer we were given broke our hearts. They said that most white couples only want white babies and very few black couples are adopting. We immediately knew what God was telling us to do. We knew that God wanted us to adopt that babies that others did not want. We were to adopt a mixed raced or black child.
Two weeks after we turned in our paperwork, the lawyer’s office called to tell us that a birth mom had chosen us to be the adoptive parents for her baby. We were given the privilege of meeting her a few days later and we fell in love with her. She was a second generation Puerto Rican from New York City. We did not know very much about the birth father other than he was black. A week after the initial meeting with the birth mother, our first daughter, Karis Esperanza, was born. We were thrilled with her and immediately knew that God had done a mighty work in timing for Karis to be in our family. This adoption process, from the time we turned in our paper work to the time she was in our home, was a little over a month. If we had not had our paperwork completed from our failed adoption attempt, Karis would not be in our home today.
Fourteen months after Karis was born, we felt God leading us to begin the adoption process a second time. We used the same adoption agency, but the only hitch was that we had moved back to New Orleans and were no longer living in the same state as our lawyer in South Carolina. It took us about a month to complete the paperwork needed. We turned in all the paperwork at the end of November. We prepared ourselves for the fact that every adoption is different and the likelihood of an adoption happening as quickly and smoothly as our last was very slim. We knew we wanted another mixed or black baby and we did not care whether the baby was a boy or girl. We thought there would be very little walking by faith with this adoption but God had other plans.
On New Year’s Eve our lawyer called us to tell us that a baby girl had been born and that the birth mom had chosen us to be her parents. They wanted to talk to us about this baby before we made plans to come get her. They told us that the baby had been born a “crack baby” and that the birth mom drank alcohol through the first part of her pregnancy and smoked through the entire pregnancy. She had failed her first APGAR test but had passed the second. She had a normal birth weight, but they could not be sure of the long-term affects of the drug and alcohol use.
We had completely different reactions to the news. Ashley was ready to jump in the care and go get the baby from the hospital. Because of her training in developmental psychology, she knew the possible ramifications of the drug and alcohol abuse, but she knew deep down that this baby was theirs no matter what. Page was a little more reluctant at first, but after spending some time in prayer God reminded him of the type of children God had told us to adopt. We were to adopt the ones that no one else wanted. Within a day, they both knew that this baby girl was supposed to be in their home. Sixteen months to the day after Karis was born, Alethia Joy was born and added to our family. To this day she has shown no ramifications of the drug or alcohol abuse.
God has taught us so much through the adoption of these two precious girls. God has given us insights and an overwhelming love for another culture outside of our own. He has opened up numerous opportunities for us to share about how God wants to adopt each of us into His family. But probably the greatest blessing He has given us through our adoptions is the understanding that He desires for His church here on earth to look like the kingdom of Heaven...a multicultural and multiethnic church. He desires for every nation, tribe, and tongue to worship Him together as one, each and every time we come together on the Sabbath. We are so excited that God has given our family the opportunity to have a little bit of Heaven here on earth as we choose to honor and glorify Him in a multi-racial home each and every day.
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