When Things Don’t Work Out

When things don’t work out as we plan, it can get discouraging. I knew that when I got married I wanted at least two kids. When we started having infertility issues I began to think we would never have children. 

All that changed when I started a new job and we moved. We were able to save up for adoption. After we adopted our son, my desire to have more children became stronger. I was ready to start the process again. As many of you know, adoption can be expensive.  Our savings were depleted. It was going to take a while to save up again.

When my son was about one-and-a-half we received a call from the adoption agency. They had been in contact with our son’s birth mom. She was pregnant again and wanted to place her baby for adoption. I was beyond ecstatic!

Our social worker continued to tell us that the birth mom wanted us to adopt the baby. Words can not express how happy I was.  I was so excited we would have a chance to adopt again. We would be giving my son a sibling he was actually related to! We wouldn’t have to go through the whole waiting game again; the baby was due in a couple of months.

When my husband got home I could not wait to tell him. My excitement was hard to hide! As I began to tell him the news I noticed his reaction was not the same as mine. He reacted with a heart of reality and I reacted with a heart of emotion. How were we going to afford another adoption? With the baby being born in a couple of months, the chances of us coming up with another $20,000 was slim. It would have to take a miracle.

I was ready to sell my house, my car, and move in with my parents. My thought process was desperate. When you try to have children for so long, and then an opportunity presents itself, you jump on it. At least I did.

For several days my husband and I tried to come up with ideas on how to raise the money. Every solution for us was drastic. To be able to produce that amount of money in such a short time, we were going to have to make a huge sacrifice. Eventually, I began to realize that it was not going to work out. I was heartbroken. It felt like I lost a child. It felt like I was letting my son down for not being able to adopt one of his siblings.

About six months later, I emailed the agency to see how the birth mom was doing and if they found another family for the baby. To my surprise, they told me that the birth mom decided to parent the child. It’s funny how things work out–or in our case, don’t work out. If we had decided to go through with the adoption, we would have been even more heartbroken. I think it is amazing how God protects our hearts when we don’t see the big picture. If something doesn’t work out the way you want, it can be devastating. Just remember it will hurt for a little while, but somehow it all works out.