Unexpected: How a Quick Trip to HomeGoods Led to a Beautiful Adoption

Adoption is a beautiful tragedy.

There’s sadness, but there’s beauty, too.

After nearly three years of wrestling with infertility, God blessed us with a miracle baby boy. But then we suffered two unexpected and devastating miscarriages that happened within six months of each other.

This led us to open our hearts to adoption. Little did we know how meaningful and beautiful our journey would become.

We recently heard a quote during the finale of one of our favorite shows that moved us so deeply.

“When you touch one life, you don’t just touch one life—you touch every life that that life touches.”

God didn’t just bring our adopted son into our lives; He brought a beautiful birth mother and her amazing family into our lives, too.

Our healing cannot be at their expense. That’s a non-negotiable for us. We want to be a part of their healing as well.

We now believe that quote could easily describe adoption and our journey.

When we started our adoption process, we had two plans.

We wanted to adopt a baby girl.
We wanted the adoption to be closed.

But God had us on a journey where, if He had told us ahead of time what would have happened, we would have been scared out of our minds. He knows what He’s doing.

“Step by step, He has allowed His unexpected plan for us to unfold in a way that has just been amazing.”

The wait was long.

When we made the official decision to move forward with our adoption, we didn’t anticipate that it would take more than three years before we would be chosen.

We were in more than one support group where every member was matched except us. We joked that we felt like the kid waiting to be picked for the dodgeball team. And also, we wondered What on earth is going on?

But then, we found out about our birth mom in the most unexpected way—through a random conversation that Zach’s mom had with our birth mom’s aunt in the middle of a HomeGoods store in the pet aisle.

Talk about a Divine appointment.

“The birth mom’s family was praying that there would be a Christian family willing to adopt her baby.”

Zach’s mom and the birth mother’s aunt exchanged phone numbers right in the middle of HomeGoods.

We first heard about the birth mom on a Sunday.

After hanging up the phone, we just looked at each other and knew our answer had to be yes. It was so clear that God had orchestrated this.

On Wednesday of that same week, the baby was born. We got the call to go up to the hospital on Thursday.

We got to see the baby, and after only five or 10 minutes with him, the birth mother said, “Okay. I’m ready to sign the papers.”

“She told us later that she just wanted to see the way we looked at him.”

We believe she could feel the love in that room and that’s what mattered to her more than anything.

We took him home the following Sunday.

So after waiting more than three years hoping to adopt, we heard about and then met our son within a week.

If you’re in the process of waiting, here’s our encouragement to you—

Keep pressing into the Lord. His timing is perfect.

Most of the time, it’s not our timing. But then when it happens, everything comes together in such a beautiful and perfect way and there’s no mistaking that it happened the way it was meant to happen.

We can’t deny God was in our story. We can’t deny that His appointment for us happened in the middle of a HomeGoods store.

He has a way of orchestrating all of these life details that happen in a moment.

The unexpected adoption journey isn’t always a straight path.

Throughout our wait, we experienced confusing circumstances.

At various points of our process, we were sure God was leading us down a certain path. We would enthusiastically say yes to a situation or a waiting child, only to have the door close.

But we now believe the Lord was giving us an opportunity to make sure our motives were right and that our hearts were pure and that we were fully surrendered to whatever adventure He had for us.

“Our adoption journey ended up being more of a walk of faith than we could have ever imagined.”

Our son continues to bring us so much joy, and God continues to redeem our pain.

Thank you.

We are grateful to Lifesong for Orphans. When we finally announced our decision to adopt, we received a Lifesong matching grant and went public with our need.

We met the match—the full amount we were hoping to raise—in only a week and a half. Meeting the match was another unexpected yet powerful part of our story—an evidence to us that God was in the details.

God moved—and continues to move—so powerfully.

Back in January, we had the opportunity to bring another little boy in our family, and he is bringing us so much joy! Remember our original plans?—We wanted to adopt a baby girl and have a closed adoption. Instead, we have boys through the most open adoption you could possibly imagine.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.