An Adoption Story
More Than Enough
by Christy Harker
LifeLines, Spring 2003
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
That Scripture always sounded so simple to me— my desire was to have a baby and I reminded God of this often. Now I realize how selfishly I looked at this verse. I held onto the part that was easy and satisfied my longings, and I ignored the rest. After many months, thousands of dollars, painful medical procedures, and two miscarriages, God began to get my attention . . . and I began to pay attention to the entire verse.
When I got married, I knew that having children would be difficult because I had endometriosis, but I was also certain that God knew about my desire to have children. When I didn’t get pregnant, my husband and I thought that God was going to grant us a child through in vitro fertilization, but still, there was no baby.
My marriage was beginning to strain under the pressure I was putting on us to conceive. “Why isn’t God answering my cries?” I would ask.
I’ll never forget the rainy Sunday morning in my car, as I cried out to Him. I was going to church alone because my husband was scheduled to work. The car was unusually quiet as I called out to God, but before I could finish my speech, God asked me a question that would forever change my life—one that opened my eyes to the entire psalm that meant so much to me.
“Do you love Me enough?”
“Well, don’t be silly, God, of course I love You enough.”
“Do you love Me enough to be happy and joyful if My plan for your life does not include having a child?”
I don’t remember the rest of the drive to church, but I do remember thinking long and hard before I answered what I knew could be the hardest question of my life.
God was asking me to truly “delight myself in Him” and let Him fill that God-sized hole in my heart that I thought was child-sized.
I had to decide if I really believed all the things I said about God–He knows what’s best; He wants to bless me; His timing is perfect; He loves me more than I could imagine, and so much more. I was broken at the very moment I answered, “Yes.”
“Yes, God, I choose to trust You with my life, even if Your plans are different from mine. Yes, God, I choose to be joyful in all circumstances, even if I am never a mom. Yes, God, I love You enough!”
For the first time, I felt what it was like to have total peace, contentment, and joy. For the first time, God, and God alone, was enough.
A few months later, God led my husband and me to begin the adoption process through Bethany Christian Services. Only four short weeks after we completed all of our paperwork, we got the call. We had been chosen to be the parents of twins who could be born any day. We couldn’t believe it. But God was not finished teaching me yet—a few days before Christmas, we received a second call to let us know that the birthparents had packed up and left the country.
When my husband and I began considering adoption, he expressed
two specific fears. One was regarding the relationship we might have with the birthparents, and the other—the greater fear—was the possibility that the birthparents would change their minds.
So, here we were living out my husband’s biggest fear. We questioned whether or not God was really going to use adoption to give us a child. My husband and I clung to each other, to our families, to our church, and to God. Again, I had to decide if I loved God enough.
To protect us from further hurt, our social workers decided that when we were chosen as adoptive parents again, we would not be informed until the parents had relinquished the baby. We got through Christmas and decided we needed to take some time to heal and pray to make sure this was truly what God wanted. We decided to make our profile unavailable to birthparents for a while.
During this time, God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:11 became so special to me. It says, “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” I clung to this promise, and although I was disappointed and heartbroken, I knew God had something better in store for us.
There was a young couple who was expecting a baby in February. They had chosen adoptive parents, but the mother wasn’t at peace with their decision and felt that God was prompting her to look through the adoptive parent profiles again. When the couple originally made their choice of parents, our profile was not in the stack they saw because we had been chosen already for the twins. When that adoption fell through, our profile went back in the stack of available adoptive parents. It was there for two weeks before we decided to pull it out. In those two weeks, that young couple came back into the office and chose us to be the parents of their child.
When we called the offices of Bethany Christian Services to pull our profile, that young couple had already chosen us. The Bethany employee tried to talk us out of it because she knew the circumstances, but couldn’t tell us we had been chosen as parents. God was at work in the details.
Meanwhile, after the adoption of the twins fell through, a woman we knew offered to be a surrogate mother. We didn’t know what God wanted us to do. We just wanted what He wanted, so we decided to take the next month to pray.
By the end of that month, we had chosen to work out the details with the surrogate mother. First, we needed to call Bethany and let them know that we were going to try another option. That call was on my “to do” list for February 13, along with calling the infertility doctor to set up an appointment. I know that God kept me from making that call because He planned on answering our prayers that day. It was all His timing!
I had been reading The Prayer of Jabez that month and praying the prayer every day. On the morning of February 13, I was home from work with pneumonia. I prayed the prayer during my quiet time and, as I got to the part that said, “bless me indeed,” I stopped and asked God, “How can you do this today? I am sick and trapped in my house. I just don’t see how it’s possible.” I had forgotten about Mark 10:27 which says, “All things are possible with God.”
That afternoon, I received a call from Bethany telling me that we had been chosen to be parents and we could come pick up our beautiful baby girl if we still wanted to adopt. I can’t even begin to tell you all of the feelings I was experiencing. What I can tell you is that the voice I heard on the phone was God’s voice telling me that now was the time He had chosen to “give me the desire of my heart.” He blessed me indeed!
February 14, 2001–Valentine’s Day– my husband and I got in the car and drove the longest two+ hours of our lives to pick up our three-day-old daughter, Morgan. From the moment we saw her, we could see God’s divine appointment. We spent that morning getting to know her and her birthparents. God had answered our prayer with a child, but He also answered it with her birthparents. Not only did God take away the fear of what that relationship might become, He also gave us a love for this couple and a desire to know them.
We bonded with Morgan immediately. Even the things that are expected with adoption, like the child not having the inherited physical traits of the parents, were part of God’s plan with Morgan. On our way home, as I was gazing at this perfect little gift from God, He showed me again how the details were in His hands. I had a baby picture of myself that looked just like our precious baby girl. God is incredible! That photo is placed in Morgan’s memory book next to the pictures we took of her that day.
When we brought our daughter home, she instantly fit into our family. Our parents—her grandparents—fell in love with her as readily as we did. Our church family embraced Morgan with enthusiasm.
Morgan is growing so quickly. She not only walks, she runs! Her vocabulary has grown from “mama” and “dada” to a new word every couple of days. She loves music. As long as there is a beat going on—music or not—she is dancing. She is quite the daddy’s girl.
Sometimes my husband and I sit back in awe as we watch God’s miracle unfold in our daughter. Morgan is a light, a joy, and a reminder of how much God truly loves us. He knows the perfect timing for the things we ask for and for the things that we don’t even think about. He planned for us to be Morgan’s parents, and He took care of all the details.
Every time I see Morgan interact with my husband, I fall in love all over again, with both of them.
by Christy Harker
LifeLines, Spring 2003
“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 (NIV)
That Scripture always sounded so simple to me— my desire was to have a baby and I reminded God of this often. Now I realize how selfishly I looked at this verse. I held onto the part that was easy and satisfied my longings, and I ignored the rest. After many months, thousands of dollars, painful medical procedures, and two miscarriages, God began to get my attention . . . and I began to pay attention to the entire verse.
When I got married, I knew that having children would be difficult because I had endometriosis, but I was also certain that God knew about my desire to have children. When I didn’t get pregnant, my husband and I thought that God was going to grant us a child through in vitro fertilization, but still, there was no baby.
My marriage was beginning to strain under the pressure I was putting on us to conceive. “Why isn’t God answering my cries?” I would ask.
I’ll never forget the rainy Sunday morning in my car, as I cried out to Him. I was going to church alone because my husband was scheduled to work. The car was unusually quiet as I called out to God, but before I could finish my speech, God asked me a question that would forever change my life—one that opened my eyes to the entire psalm that meant so much to me.
“Do you love Me enough?”
“Well, don’t be silly, God, of course I love You enough.”
“Do you love Me enough to be happy and joyful if My plan for your life does not include having a child?”
I don’t remember the rest of the drive to church, but I do remember thinking long and hard before I answered what I knew could be the hardest question of my life.
God was asking me to truly “delight myself in Him” and let Him fill that God-sized hole in my heart that I thought was child-sized.
I had to decide if I really believed all the things I said about God–He knows what’s best; He wants to bless me; His timing is perfect; He loves me more than I could imagine, and so much more. I was broken at the very moment I answered, “Yes.”
“Yes, God, I choose to trust You with my life, even if Your plans are different from mine. Yes, God, I choose to be joyful in all circumstances, even if I am never a mom. Yes, God, I love You enough!”
For the first time, I felt what it was like to have total peace, contentment, and joy. For the first time, God, and God alone, was enough.
A few months later, God led my husband and me to begin the adoption process through Bethany Christian Services. Only four short weeks after we completed all of our paperwork, we got the call. We had been chosen to be the parents of twins who could be born any day. We couldn’t believe it. But God was not finished teaching me yet—a few days before Christmas, we received a second call to let us know that the birthparents had packed up and left the country.
When my husband and I began considering adoption, he expressed
two specific fears. One was regarding the relationship we might have with the birthparents, and the other—the greater fear—was the possibility that the birthparents would change their minds.
So, here we were living out my husband’s biggest fear. We questioned whether or not God was really going to use adoption to give us a child. My husband and I clung to each other, to our families, to our church, and to God. Again, I had to decide if I loved God enough.
To protect us from further hurt, our social workers decided that when we were chosen as adoptive parents again, we would not be informed until the parents had relinquished the baby. We got through Christmas and decided we needed to take some time to heal and pray to make sure this was truly what God wanted. We decided to make our profile unavailable to birthparents for a while.
During this time, God’s promise in Jeremiah 29:11 became so special to me. It says, “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” I clung to this promise, and although I was disappointed and heartbroken, I knew God had something better in store for us.
There was a young couple who was expecting a baby in February. They had chosen adoptive parents, but the mother wasn’t at peace with their decision and felt that God was prompting her to look through the adoptive parent profiles again. When the couple originally made their choice of parents, our profile was not in the stack they saw because we had been chosen already for the twins. When that adoption fell through, our profile went back in the stack of available adoptive parents. It was there for two weeks before we decided to pull it out. In those two weeks, that young couple came back into the office and chose us to be the parents of their child.
When we called the offices of Bethany Christian Services to pull our profile, that young couple had already chosen us. The Bethany employee tried to talk us out of it because she knew the circumstances, but couldn’t tell us we had been chosen as parents. God was at work in the details.
Meanwhile, after the adoption of the twins fell through, a woman we knew offered to be a surrogate mother. We didn’t know what God wanted us to do. We just wanted what He wanted, so we decided to take the next month to pray.
By the end of that month, we had chosen to work out the details with the surrogate mother. First, we needed to call Bethany and let them know that we were going to try another option. That call was on my “to do” list for February 13, along with calling the infertility doctor to set up an appointment. I know that God kept me from making that call because He planned on answering our prayers that day. It was all His timing!
I had been reading The Prayer of Jabez that month and praying the prayer every day. On the morning of February 13, I was home from work with pneumonia. I prayed the prayer during my quiet time and, as I got to the part that said, “bless me indeed,” I stopped and asked God, “How can you do this today? I am sick and trapped in my house. I just don’t see how it’s possible.” I had forgotten about Mark 10:27 which says, “All things are possible with God.”
That afternoon, I received a call from Bethany telling me that we had been chosen to be parents and we could come pick up our beautiful baby girl if we still wanted to adopt. I can’t even begin to tell you all of the feelings I was experiencing. What I can tell you is that the voice I heard on the phone was God’s voice telling me that now was the time He had chosen to “give me the desire of my heart.” He blessed me indeed!
February 14, 2001–Valentine’s Day– my husband and I got in the car and drove the longest two+ hours of our lives to pick up our three-day-old daughter, Morgan. From the moment we saw her, we could see God’s divine appointment. We spent that morning getting to know her and her birthparents. God had answered our prayer with a child, but He also answered it with her birthparents. Not only did God take away the fear of what that relationship might become, He also gave us a love for this couple and a desire to know them.
We bonded with Morgan immediately. Even the things that are expected with adoption, like the child not having the inherited physical traits of the parents, were part of God’s plan with Morgan. On our way home, as I was gazing at this perfect little gift from God, He showed me again how the details were in His hands. I had a baby picture of myself that looked just like our precious baby girl. God is incredible! That photo is placed in Morgan’s memory book next to the pictures we took of her that day.
When we brought our daughter home, she instantly fit into our family. Our parents—her grandparents—fell in love with her as readily as we did. Our church family embraced Morgan with enthusiasm.
Morgan is growing so quickly. She not only walks, she runs! Her vocabulary has grown from “mama” and “dada” to a new word every couple of days. She loves music. As long as there is a beat going on—music or not—she is dancing. She is quite the daddy’s girl.
Sometimes my husband and I sit back in awe as we watch God’s miracle unfold in our daughter. Morgan is a light, a joy, and a reminder of how much God truly loves us. He knows the perfect timing for the things we ask for and for the things that we don’t even think about. He planned for us to be Morgan’s parents, and He took care of all the details.
Every time I see Morgan interact with my husband, I fall in love all over again, with both of them.
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