The Confession of a Hopeful Adoptive Dad

Chapter Five: March 2019

Within the adoptive community, adoptive dads often catch a bad-rap. It is true, often women are the ones with the compassionate desire to adopt and men tend to be much more hesitant. I am thankful in our story, Suzanne was very patient while I processed the idea of adoption. I can recall Suzanne talking about adopting a couple years ago saying, “If we are serious about adopting, we should at least begin the process.” She would say, “We don’t want to get to the point that we’re ready to adopt, or we see a need, and we have a lot of paperwork and a long process to walk through.” While I agreed with her, I wasn’t ready. Honestly, I had unresolved questions in my own heart. Not questions about if I wanted to adopt, but how? More specifically, how could I love a child that didn’t share my DNA, if I’ve never known the love for a biological child? Thinking through that now, it seems so selfish. If I had allowed that fear to take up residence in my heart and mind, I would have missed SO much that God had in store. 

It wasn’t until I read two chapters from Counter Culture by David Platt that I realized my ‘delayed obedience’ was, in-fact, disobedience. Platt writes,

We must be finished and done with talk in our homes of “not wanting to adopt until we have children of our own” or of “wondering whether we could love a foster child as much as we love our own child”… We have not been put on this earth simply to preserve our genetic material. We have been put on this earth to portray a gospel message, and that gospel message crosses physical barriers and transcends biological bloodlines.”

God used these chapters to convict me and brought me to a place of total surrender in His perfect timing. I’m learning that, in total surrender, God’s will is far greater than I could ever imagine. If you have read Suzanne’s first blog “The Story of Baby Bracci,” you know that God’s conviction came hard and our surrender to adopt came quick. God’s sovereignty has been made unmistakably evident, as we now know with a great degree of certainty that the very night Suzanne and I said yes to adoption, was also the same night that our son was conceived. Sometimes when God calls us to something, we have to wait to see it through, other times it is due to an immediate need, even if we are unaware of that need at the time. We didn’t know it then, but His timing was perfect, regardless of my fear. 1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love cast out fear...”  The truth God taught me was my fear was not in my ability to love (though that was real), my genuine fear was in my ability to relinquish control. If I have learned anything through this process, it is that I’m not in control, and that’s okay. 

The first time I saw my son he was just the size of a gummy bear in the nine-week ultrasound. I had no clue the emotions I would experience throughout the following months. Since Suzanne is not physically carrying him, it’s easy for me to lose perspective of how much life will change in just a few short weeks. It wasn’t until the 26-week ultrasound that I began to realize how K was growing, not only in her womb, but also in my heart! This was the first sight of his tiny fingers and toes. With a click of a button the super vague shadow of a face became a much more pronounced 3-D image and I could see my son’s facial features for the first time. The first week of March, I truly began to grasp the fact that K was coming; our SON is coming! 

With every week that passed, his biological mom would send us pictures of him growing in her belly and we fell more and more in love. I began to really think through becoming a father. Would I be a good father? What would my son look like? Would our hair be similar? Will he be athletic or artistic (or both)? I began praying fervently that above all else he would love God with all his heart, going anywhere God called him to go, doing anything God called him to do. That’s not to say it has all been easy. Deep down inside of me, I knew the greater my love for our son grew, the greater the fear grew, as well. Could this all be a dream? What if she changes her mind? Even now, the thought of that grips my heart. Thankfully, I am reminded in Deuteronomy 1:30-31, “The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son.” 

God is a God who goes before us and fights for us, but He is also a God who carries us. I am thankful for this adoption process because, until now, I have never truly relied solely on God to carry me. Go and prepare a place before me? Yes, please. Fight for me? Yes, and amen! Surrender to the point that He carries me? Too scary, yet so loving. Sometimes when we hear God calling us to something and we can’t clearly see the finish line, we need simply to trust and obey, because He is in control and promises to carry us.