We left Utah on August 12th and arrived in Georgia on August 18th. Before, during, and since then, the Lord has been reconfirming to us that this has all been orchestrated by Him. I could probably share a different story every other day, but I have refrained because my head is still just reeling from the past two and a half months of our lives. However, this one is so fresh and I want to share what the Lord did to reassure us this weekend.
I attended a women's conference at a church about 45 minutes from where we are staying. I went with a group of women from our new home church. When I was registered to attend several weeks ago, I didn't know that the guest speaker was Karyn Johnson from the House of Ruth (adoption) ministry in Downey, California. Memories flooded back from the hardest year of our lives when I heard that name. You see, in 2006, after two years of trying to have a baby, we suffered two miscarriages within six months of each other, the last being in October. Two months later, just days before Christmas, we received a phone call that connected us with Karyn. She had a very special situation with a birth mother who specifically needed an adoptive family in Utah. Without going into all the details, we were one of two couples being considered. We were excited over the thought that maybe this would be the way God would answer our prayers to have children! We decided that if we were chosen, we would name the baby boy Malachi. You can imagine the depth of despair we faced when we found out that we were not chosen.
We were broken and we were hurting. I just didn't understand why a loving God would allow such heartbreak into our lives over and over again. I was so desperate for a child of my own that I didn't stop to look at all of the loving relationships I had all around me. I went into a depression that I didn't want to admit that I had. I shut down and pushed people away. I was truly a person that was the unloveliest of the unlovely.
Over the course of the next several months, we went through a barrage of testing to see what could be wrong with us. Although we did receive some answers from the medical field, we never received peace. In August of 2007, we were done with this fight. We were physically, mentally, and spiritually broken. We made the decision to stop forcing the situation and to just trust God's plan for our lives. Over the course of the next year, the Lord truly released me from the unhealthy obsession I had with having a baby. I didn't give up hope, but I finally smashed that idol and had truly found peace. A year after we had let go of what we thought was our control, in August of 2008, we discovered that I was pregnant with our miracle baby, Judah. She was born in April of 2009.
Over the years, I have still had questions in my mind as to why we had to go through the things we did, but they say that hindsight is 20/20, right? I received a glimpse of that answer yesterday, in regards to the baby we wanted to adopt all those years ago.
I was invited into a room with the pastor's wives where we ate lunch. I sat directly across from Karyn and was having an internal debate on whether or not I should even mention to her that our paths had crossed back in 2006. I got up the nerve and nonchalantly reminded her of our brief time of phone communication back then. She sat back in her chair with a look of confusion on her face. I started to turn red because I felt horrible that I had put her on the spot. I could see the wheels turning in her head as she kept looking at my name tag and then looking at my face. Certainly, she didn't remember me and was wracking her brain trying to place me. Without looking away from me, she yanked on her friend's arm who had come with her to the conference from California. She said, "Connie, do you remember the couple from Utah that was being considered to adopt Bonisha's baby?" Connie looked at her and said, "Well yes! Of course I do!" Karyn pointed across the table at me and said, "This is the woman, Mandy." Connie sat down in her chair and told me that she is Bonisha's mother. We all just stared at each other in amazement!
Connie filled me in on the events that had taken place, and then told me that before Bonisha had handed her newborn baby over to the adoptive parents, she had named him Malachi. When I told them that Malachi was the name we had chosen for him as well, we all got goose bumps. Oh, just wait! It gets better!!! I told them that God had granted the desire of our hearts and gave us two children, the first being named Judah, which means "praise." Before I could even tell them our son's name, their jaws dropped to the table. The adoptive parents changed Malachi's name. Can you guess? They named him Judah. I even got to see a picture of him!
We never expected that this story would have ever come full circle, but our loving Shepherd poured out his love on us once again to reconfirm to us that He guided us here. That meeting wouldn't have taken place if the Lord hadn't brought us here when He did. I just know that He was looking in on our time together yesterday with a loving smile on His face, saying, "You see, my child? I DO have plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future."
We are truly, truly, truly blessed. And I know that we are right where we are supposed to be.
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