Unpredictable is kind of a scary word and a perfect word to describe adoption.  If something is unpredictable it means one is unable to determine an outcome, it is unreliable and unstable.  Many parts of adoption feel this way.  It is hard to tell if a situation is going to end in heartache or merriment.

Yesterday, I wrote about the heartache of a failed adoption and an unexpected phone call of a new adoption opportunity.  That is both ends of the adoption spectrum and both were not predicted by us.  We hoped, we prayed, we set our course, but the journey took us to places we had not prepared to go.

After our first son was born we began the process of figuring out how to be parents.  Even that journey was unpredictable.  It doesn’t matter how hard people try to prepare you for the parenthood experience, it’s harder than they are telling you.  Sleepless nights, mounds of dirty diapers, being late for everything, the unconsolable crying, the throw up, the piles of laundry, the hopeless feeling that you are never going to figure this out, the constant worry that something is wrong, the tremendous amount of gear you leave the house with to be prepared for any situation . . . it is all exhausting.  Then one day without warning they are sleeping through the night (you have no idea which of the 45 methods you tried actually worked) and eating solid food.  You just get there.  The phases go so quickly, but they can also feel like an eternity.  Then that sweet child smiles at you and all of that melts away.  You can forget about all of the hardness until the next stage feels like it is going to crush you.  It is an endless risk reward cycle.

Figuring all of this out left no brain space to think about another adoption.  We were still on the waiting list with Jamaica.  In Feb. 2015 they sent us a letter making sure we wanted to be left on the list.  We told them we did knowing it would be years before we would be matched with a child.

In March, I got an email from our adoption agency asking if I would be willing to talk with a family about our adoption experience.  The social worker thought their situation sounded a lot like our first adoption experience in Jamaica.  I sent the wife an email and we talked over the phone.  I was happy to share my experience.  She was leaving the next day to move to Jamaica to be there when the baby was born.  She was going to live there until they could bring him home.  I admired her bravery and hoped that it worked out for them.

At the end of June 2015 something very unexpected happened.  We were in Chicago at the hospital.  My youngest nephew had just been born and we were waiting to see him.  When it was our turn I sat down in the guest chair and got to hold that newly born little nugget.  He was so sweet, tiny and so still compared to our child who, at that very moment, was crawling all over the waiting room with his older cousins.  Kevin took his turn holding him and I whispered, “We should do this again, soon.”  He looked at me like I was crazy, but did not outright object.  It was in that moment with my nephew that my heart was open to adoption again.  I didn’t feel the need to take action, but it was open.

At the end of August 2015 I was working at our church with middle school students.  It was Sunday and I had gone upstairs to set up for the morning.  Kevin was usually with me, but today he was on the worship team downstairs.  I opened up my computer and saw an email from a friend at our old church.  She had been trying get in touch with me for awhile.  She was wondering if we were still trying to adopt from Jamaica.  She had a friend who was trying to help a young mom get her unborn baby adopted.

My face must have had quite a look on it because my co-worker walked in and asked me what was wrong.  I showed her the email.  She was dumbfounded just like me.  I made my way through the morning, picked up our baby boy from the nursery and got into my in-laws’ car to head to a family lunch.  Kevin was meeting us there.  I didn’t want to tell anyone because I didn’t know anything.  I just wanted to talk to Kevin.

He arrived the restaurant and I started texting him from my phone.  His face probably had the same look I did when I read the email.  We got in the car after lunch and I dumped out everything I knew, which again, was hardly anything.  We decided to call our long lost friend and get more information.  She explained the situation, we explained our experience and she told us we would have to call her friend for more information.

We called her friend.  She had more information, but she told us we really needed to call her sister who lived in Jamaica and knew the birth mom.  So once again, we heard what was said, but explained that we had been down this road before and the Jamaican government did not let it happen.  Then something really expected happened.  Remember the woman I had talked to in March about adopting from Jamaica?  The one who moved there to be with the baby?  She was a friend of these sisters!  What?!?  It was crazy.  The story had come full circle.  I had no idea that a conversation in March would lead to new friends in August, who also happened to be friends with my friend from my old church!

Kevin and I were in shock.  We had no idea that this is where our day was headed when we woke up that morning.  Our heads were telling us, “NO!  Don’t do this!  You’ve done this before!”  Our hearts were broken for this young woman and her situation.  They were broken for this unborn baby.  We were financially in a different place.  I was now working part-time and staying home with our baby.  We did not have the resources to hire someone to care for this baby.  We knew from our last experience that we would need someone in country to fight with us to make this happen.  We felt that was the missing component for our first adoption.  We didn’t have anyone who could influence the situation in our corner.

The thing our previous adoption experience had given us was knowledge.  We began making a list of everything that would have to fall in place in order for this to work.  The list wasn’t long, but it was felt overwhelming.  It felt too hard.  We also felt like we needed to move quickly.  The baby was coming in a little over a month and this mom needed an answer.

We began to pray and I started reaching out to my friends in Jamaica to see what the adoption climate was like.  It appeared that things had become even more difficult than the last time we tried.  We were ready to say, “No.”  We had given ourselves a deadline.  We would research and pray until that day and then we would give the mom our answer.  We woke up that morning and still believed that “no” was our answer.  I picked up my phone and there was an email from my friend, Katie.  She was the director at the children’s home, the one from way back in 2006.  She apologized it had taken so long to get back me and gave me the name of a lawyer in Kingston who had helped another family with their adoption.  Katie later told me that the baby could stay at the children’s home as a private placement.

I called Kevin.  He said, “It doesn’t sound like we are saying, ‘No,’ this morning does it?”  I agreed and called the lawyer.  She is an amazing woman and agreed to help us for free and her associate would give us a discounted rate.  She walked me through the process and we made arrangements for me to meet with her before the baby was born.

God just kept opening the door wider and inviting us to walk through.  We were so nervous and yet so excited.  We could not have predicted this scenario.  We were not looking for this to happen.  We fully believed we had a Jamaican child in our future, but we were not making plans.  As I look back at 2015, and the years before, I see where God was preparing us even when we weren’t paying attention.