Adoption is a miracle, it is our miracle!

Tim & I have known each other a lifetime. We have been married twenty eight years. His grandparents lived down the street from my parents before we were ever born. As children we sometimes played together; I can even remember thinking how cute he was on one of those visits when I was eleven or twelve. A few years later at the age of eighteen, after a long three month courtship, I was engaged to the boy next door, sort of. We were married one year and one week after our official first date. We knew we were kindred spirits and felt as though we were meant to be together our whole lives.


We both loved children and decided a family with six children sounded perfect. The plan was to have our first two children one right after another; we just knew they would be the best of friends. Three months after we were married, our journey to build our family began. It was not as simple as we thought.

Things were different 28 years ago, and infertility was just on the cusp of what it is today. Fortunately for us we lived near Los Angeles, California where the leading infertility specialist in the country lived and worked. Unfortunately, it was very expensive and not covered by insurance at all. After a few years of daily injections, ultrasounds and many other things, we had no baby, and not even a close encounter with one. My heart was breaking and so was Tim’s. We both loved children so much and felt as though our arms would never hold a child.

The good thing about going to the top infertility doctor in the country was that he was the top INFERTILITY doctor in the country. I mean my goodness other doctors called HIM for advice! The bad thing was, in subsequent years as we moved further from LA, and we’d visit other doctors, their first response was, “You went to Dr. so and so, he is the leading physician in this field, if he couldn’t help you conceive, more than likely I won’t either, but I’ll give it a shot.” Needless to say our arms stayed empty for several years.

After a couple of years of trying for our own baby, we decided to file our adoption papers and continue to try as we waited. At the adoption orientation meeting we were told it would be five or six years before our names would come up to really start the whole process. We waited, and hoped with each passing month that a miracle would happen.

Many things in our lives changed over those years of waiting. We were blessed to have nieces and nephews who filled our home and hearts with much love and satisfaction but the yearning for our own family never stopped. We tried fooling ourselves a couple of times saying, “It’s not that bad not having children, we love each other, our lives are good, maybe this is what’s meant to be”.

Then it happened, after seven years of waiting our name came up. We completed a mountain of paperwork, went to several classes, became licensed foster parents, and started waiting again. During this second period of waiting we joined the LDS church and our lives seemed glorious, everything seemed to be falling in place. At the one year visit with our adoption worker we proudly asked her to please change our religious status from Catholic to LDS, she advised us not to do that but we graciously declined. Call it naïve, but we had no idea being “Mormon” was a bad thing, as a matter of fact we were telling everyone that would listen about our conversion.

The waiting continued. At a meeting with our Bishop he told us about LDS Family Services, and after being sealed in the temple we could start their adoption process. We decided we had waited so long on the other list that we were just too close; we wanted to stay with our original agency. Two years passed from the time we began our home study and still no signs of a baby. During this time we did however, have an opportunity for a private adoption, through a friend, which failed after having a little one in our home for ten glorious months. Would the heartbreak ever end? Could we do this again? Needless to say, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and we learn so much from the trials we endure.

With the help of some investigative work by our friends, we came to the conclusion that our name was never going to come up on our agency’s list due to circumstances that would not change; our religion. We finally listened to our bishop and put our papers in with LDS Family Services. It was a completely different experience. We felt the spirit from the moment we walked in the door. We felt the love of those who worked there and we felt like finally someone cared enough to see that the two people in front of them were more than a number, we were future parents! After eleven years of waiting, within eight months our son was placed in our arms – this time for good. At that time, we were the swiftest placement in the history of the agency. We were grateful to our Heavenly Father for His compassion and mercy on us.

Life hasn’t been the same for us since. We now have three beautiful children. Every one of them have been passed from the loving hands of our Heavenly Father, to their birthparents and then to us. Each one comes with their own, very personal, set of miracles. We have seen the Lord’s hand in every one of our adoptions. We know without a doubt that every one of our children was meant to be part of our eternal family.

The real beauty in adoption doesn’t lie with the adoptive parents at all. The real beauty lies in the hands of those whose sacrifice everything they love for something bigger than themselves. We know the sacrifice it takes for a mother and father to place that special someone in someone else’s arms and trust that the Lord will watch over them and protect them. They above many know the true meaning of the Atonement; they experience pain for someone else’s joy and for the greater good of the child. They are given a very small taste of what Heavenly Father must have felt when his son atoned for the sins of each of us.

We are eternally grateful to our children’s birth parents. We know it is only through their sacrifice that we are able to experience such happiness. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our children were meant to be in our home. We could take up pages with the stories of the miracles that happened to us along the way, but the greater story here is the story of two people who give it all, for two people they don’t even know and a baby they love beyond measure. We thank Heavenly Father everyday for the blessing of our children. I can honestly say that I am grateful that things didn’t come easy for us. I don’t believe we would have appreciated being parents near as much as we do now.

Adoption is a miracle, it is our miracle.