Our Adoption Story: How Faith Brought Our Daughter Home

March 31st is a day that changed our lives forever. This is our adoption story of faith and family.

It is the day I received an unexpected phone call from my doctor asking, “Are you and Josh still interested in adoption? If so, you may want to sit down for this.”

I had no idea that phone call would lead to one of the greatest gifts of my entire life. And today, as I sit here watching our daughter Selah Mae at 17 years old, healthy and strong and full of faith and talent and all the beautiful complexity of a young woman coming into her own, I am undone with gratitude all over again.

Let me take you back to the beginning.

Ever since Josh and I met, we knew that when we were ready to have children, adoption would be part of our story. About three months before that March phone call, we felt God nudging us to begin the process. We knew it would be a long journey. So we started walking through the steps.

We got physicals. We were referred to a local doctor many of my friends loved. During that appointment I shared what we were doing and why. He was warm and supportive and wished us well.

Then, interestingly, about a week later Josh and I felt a quiet reluctance and decided to put the process on hold for a while. We stepped back. But God, as He so often does, had something entirely different in mind.

The Phone Call That Changed Everything

Back to March 31st.

My doctor called to tell me about a young woman who was looking for a family to adopt her baby. She was due any day.

He had met her nine months earlier when she came to his office planning to have an abortion. He counseled her gently and lovingly. She left upset and never came back. Then, to his complete surprise, she walked back through his door nine months pregnant, right around the same time I had been there for my physical, and asked for his help placing her baby with a family.

He and his wife had been praying for a month about who the Lord wanted to raise this child. And for reasons I still do not fully understand, Josh and I were the ones placed on their hearts.

When he told me all of this on the phone, my first response was “You have been praying about this for a month and you are giving us a day to decide?” I hung up, told Josh, and we immediately dropped to our knees. We prayed hard. We even made a pros and cons list, which feels both ridiculous and very human in hindsight.

We were not ready. I did not even know how to change a diaper.

But the next morning, God made it unmistakably clear to both of us. Stop praying for direction. Start praying for a change of heart. And in that moment, we both knew. We were moving forward.

Getting to Know Our Baby Mama

Over the next two weeks, we made ice cream runs and delivered groceries. We sat with her, heard her story, and prayed with her. Her courage in carrying that baby to term and then choosing to place her with a family who could give her what she could not, left me completely speechless.

What started as grocery deliveries became something much more sacred. She let me into her home, her life, and her heart. I found myself praying with increasing urgency for God to protect her, to draw her close, and to bring beauty out of every hard thing she had walked through.

Her story is heartbreaking and beautiful. And I knew, even then, that God was doing something in those moments that was far bigger than I could see.

The Day Selah Mae Was Born

On April 19th at 12:30pm, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star played over the hospital speakers.

My sisters-in-law, who were sitting with me in the waiting room, told me that whenever that song played it meant a baby had been born. And moments later, my doctor walked toward me and placed our beautiful Selah Mae, wrapped in a blanket, into my arms.

It was surreal. Just two and a half weeks earlier I had no idea she was coming.

After tears and laughter and calling our doctor the stork and begging someone to hand me an instruction booklet, the three of us went into our baby mama’s hospital room to spend time together. We talked about the birth and about how Selah had already shown her fighting spirit. Things had gotten off to a rough start and she needed oxygen and an IV. But she soldiered on, just as her birth mom said she would.

Our time together was precious beyond words.

Two days later, we headed home to Johnsonville. I tried to convince every nurse on duty to come with us. I even offered a decent salary. No one accepted.

The long nights were hard the way they are for every new mother. But Josh would wake at 3am to both mommy and daughter in tears, scoop Selah into his arms, and she would fall immediately asleep. We survived. More than survived. We started her on a raw milk baby formula as soon as we got home, and well, as you can see in the picture below, she grew into the healthiest and happiest baby ever!

Seventeen Years Later

I wrote the original version of this post years ago, and reading it back still brings me to tears.

Selah Mae is 17 now. Seventeen.

She is healthy and strong and absolutely stunning, inside and out. She loves Jesus with a faith that is entirely her own, not inherited but chosen, wrestled with, and deeply rooted. She is gifted and talented in ways that still catch me off guard sometimes. She is kind and courageous and full of a quiet strength that has been there since the very beginning, since those first hours when she was already fighting to be here.

She is also, for the first time, in love. Watching her navigate that with grace and joy and all the beautiful nervousness of a first love is one of the sweetest gifts of this season of parenting.

I do not have words for what she means to our family. She and her brother Kicker, our son who fought cancer and won, are two of the greatest miracles of our lives. Two children who were never promised to us. Two children God placed in our arms at exactly the right moment.

An Invitation If You Are Considering Adoption

If you have ever felt God nudging you toward adoption, I want to look you in the eyes and tell you to move forward. Do not wait until you feel ready. You will not feel ready. Josh and I certainly were not. Adoption is the most beautiful story of faith and family.

There are millions of children in this world without parents, without a home, without the steady and constant love that a family provides. And if God is stirring something in you, that stirring is worth paying attention to.

Our God is so big. One of my dearest friends said it perfectly when Selah was born. “Look at how much our God cares. In order to save two lives and bring them to Jesus, He orchestrated this entire beautiful plan. That is how much He cares.”

Yes. That is exactly how much He cares.

Have you adopted or are you considering it? I would love to hear your story in the comments below. This community is full of people walking remarkable journeys, and your story matters here.

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