Our Adoption Story

Many people have asked us to tell them how our adoption came to be. Here is our story. In the spring of 2005, Kevin and I moved to Knoxville for Kevin's new job. In January of 2006, Kevin began to listen to a financial guy on the radio named Dave Ramsey (I promise, this is really important to our story). We signed up for a class and began it the next month. We also decided at that time that we were ready to start our own family. We spent the first two years working our way out of debt, learning how to live without credit cards, and saving money to buy a home of our own. Also during those two years, we realized that we were at a crossroad. Our only options for having our own child was either adoption or a type of IVF with only a 33% chance of success. Both options would cost us the same amount, and needless to say they were not cheap :) We prayed about this decision and decided that God was leading us towards adoption. We spent many hours in informational meetings with different agencies trying to decide how we should proceed. Should we try for a "guaranteed" international adoption or hope to be picked by a birth mother for a domestic adoption? We decided to adopt domestically (within the United States) and chose Bethany Christian Services as our agency. We began the paperwork in January of 2008, and took a brief break along the way to buy our home in April. Now, when I say paperwork, I don't mean a quick application. Kevin and I had to each complete paperwork which consisted of approximately 40 essay questions, as well as three interviews with our social worker. We also had to answer many questions regarding our financial status, our backgrounds, and our beliefs. We also had to have a home study to make sure our home was appropriate for a child :) We finally finished our paperwork in November of 2008 and turned in our parent profile books (scrapbooks that birthmothers can look at to learn about adopting families). I was completely shocked when, on January 13th, our social worker called to say there was a birthmother interested in us. We met with our social worker, Mark, the next day to learn about her. We loved everything that we heard, and were very excited to have the chance to meet with her that Friday, the 16th. She stated that she was interested in us because we had no debt and didn't use credit cards!! We left that meeting feeling great about the situation. We knew that she was choosing between us and another family, and on Monday the 19th we received a call from Mark that she had chosen us!! We were ecstatic :) We spent many hours buying last minute essentials. Thursday morning (the 22nd) I received a call at work that the birthmother was in labor (six days early!). I drove to tell Kevin and received another call an hour later that baby Andrew had been delivered. We were able to meet him at 3:00 that afternoon. It is so fun to see God's fingerprints all over our situation. If Kevin's company in Indianapolis had not been bought out, we would never have moved to Knoxville. If we had not moved to Knoxville, we would not have taken the Dave Ramsey class. If we had not taken the Dave Ramsey class, we would not financially be able to adopt a child without a loan. If we had not been debt free, we would not have been chosen to be Andrew's parents. If we were not Andrew's parents, we would be missing out on the love of our lives :)