Adoption Story - Traded Dreams

I'm super excited to share this adoption story with you.  Lauren is an amazing writer and a very big inspiration to me.  She adopted the sweetest baby boy in 2011 and just brought home the most gorgeous baby girl last month!  Lauren writes about adoption, and life, in a way that cuts right to the heart.  You can read the rest of her story over at Traded Dreams.

Our Story of Redemption

by Lauren Casper

A few days ago a friend posed a question to a group of us adoptive mothers: “If you could choose one word to describe the adoption process, what would it be?” I thought for a minute before replying with a heartfelt, “redemption.” Many would read that and assume I meant the redemption of the child and their history and what could have been their future. I do mean that to a certain extent, but when I wrote that word I was selfishly thinking more about myself and the redemption that God worked in my life through our two adoptions.

My husband and I got married young. I was 21 and not quite finished with college – John was 24 and a recent graduate. Nevertheless, we still desired to start growing our family right away so not too many weeks after we said, “I do,” we started trying for a baby. 

I was young, naïve, and immature. I assumed that because my plans were good and harmless that God would bless them and things would go my way. I had no understanding that sometimes God takes away the plans we make for ourselves to pave the way for a better plan… for His plan. Because I couldn’t see this with my dim vision that was clouded by a lack of eternal perspective, the following few years were very hard on me.

Just under a year after we first started trying for a baby we discovered with joy that I was pregnant! Any of you who have received that news know the celebration that went on in our hearts. We were overcome with excitement and the next few months were special times of planning for little feet to be running up our halls. 

But then our dreams were shattered to pieces when I found myself laying in a hospital bed and hearing a doctor say over me, “I’m sorry, but your baby has died.” No words have ever caused me more pain and grief. My heart broke for the first time that day and I honestly couldn’t see how it would ever heal.

I went home from the maternity ward with an empty womb, empty arms, and a broken heart. 

I clung to the truth of God’s mercy and the hope of eternity in heaven. I read the verses that promise that God will work all things together for good, but I truly couldn’t see how this could possibly be made into something good. Clouded vision and immature faith caused my season of grief to be harder than it had to be and just ten months later I sobbed on my bed over the loss of our second baby.

Months went by and through chronic pain and a traumatic surgery it was discovered that I have a chronic and incurable disease as well as a “malformed” reproductive system. We were told not so gently that we would likely never be able to get pregnant again and if I were to become pregnant it would highly unlikely that I could carry the child to term. 

We were crushed as the plans we had made for our life together were thrown in the dirt and trampled on. The next year was a surprisingly special time of healing. I was struggling with my illness and found myself forced to be on bed rest often and in the doctor’s waiting room regularly. Those times of sitting by myself waiting for injections or therapies were oddly soothing and reflective.

For the first time since we were married I was able to surrender my life plans… my hopes and dreams… to Jesus. I opened my hands and asked Jesus to take my broken heart, my broken body, my crushed dreams, and to please make something beautiful out of them. I opened my heart to say yes to the story God had been writing for me all along… and He exceeded my wildest expectations!

Today I hold two children in my arms. Two beautiful babies with bodies and hearts just a little bit broken like their mommy. Two precious lives who previously had no hope. Two little ones who were left to die are warm and safe in my home. Their journey was hard and it came with lots of heartache for many people, but they are no longer called orphans… they are my son and my daughter. 

The world may look at them and say “malformed” just like my own label – but God took their broken pieces and my broken pieces and saw that they fit together perfectly. He knit our family together by his own beautiful design and I weep to think that I could have missed out on it. 

But I didn’t. 

I said yes to Jesus and He wrote the most beautiful love story of all. He took all of my brokenness and all of my children’s brokenness and he redeemed it. He gave us beauty for ashes and I am forever grateful for the work of God’s redemption in our lives through adoption.