I couldn’t sleep at all that night. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Earlier that day, we received an email that a birth mother was making an adoption plan and that she could be a potential match for us.

I was at Bible study and immediately forwarded the email to Tad so that he could review it while I was tied up. My heart was racing. Could this really be happening already?

I briefly scanned the email and saw that a baby boy was due in June and needed a family quickly. They would be presenting profiles to the birth mother tomorrow. In that moment, the details of the situation didn’t even matter to me. I immediately began thinking of baby names, making plans to have our home “baby ready” by early June, and envisioning becoming this baby boy’s mama.

I called Tad about an hour later, and he proceeded to share some of the details of the situation. I will spare any information about the birth mother or child for privacy’s sake. However, I will say that had this situation played out the way that we hoped, I would have had a baby boy in my arms in less than 2 months.

Unfortunately, as I was crafting the email with our required documents to present our profile, we received an email from our consultant that the agency had already received enough families to present. This was in less than 2 hours from receiving the initial email.

I was consumed with disappointment. I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in a matter of two hours. Because this was our first situation, we did not know what to expect or how much time we would have to make a decision. In my sadness, I appreciated Tad’s perspective. He said, “God won’t allow a situation to work out that isn’t meant for us.”

It reminded me of a saying I heard years ago: “If it’s not God’s plan, you can’t force it. If it is God’s plan, you can’t stop it.”

Since that day, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about and praying for this birth mother and her baby. In her handwriting, I read of a scared young woman who was in a situation that made it extremely difficult for her to raise a child. In one email, we knew everything about her. Adoption became real for us in that moment. It reminded me of two important points about this journey:

1) There is no moment in life that I can think of where joy and grief are more present than in adoption.

Adoption is born out of loss.

Joy out of pain.

Continued joy out of continued pain.

There is so much pain in placing a child for adoption. And there is so much joy in adopting a child. May we be sensitive to this and never forget this.

2) Adoption can change your life in an instant.

Had we moved forward with presenting our profile and been matched with this birth mother, our entire lives would have changed in an instant.

We don’t have a nursery yet.

We don’t have the funds yet.

We don’t have any baby stuff, period.

BUT, we fully trust God to provide when the time comes and our hearts are completely invested in this process. So, we are ready. And we cannot wait to receive the call telling us “you’ve been matched”.