When You Don't Move the Mountains

One last shot. We had a glimmer of hope that they would see our hearts and help fight for us to keep him in our home.

We prayed. And prayed. And prayed some more. Our nightly routine with our other two boys is to watch worship videos on YouTube. So this night it was no different. But every song stood out to us. Particularly "Trust in You" by Lauren Daigle.

"When you don't move the mountains
I'm needing you to move
When you don't part the waters
I wish I could walk through
When you don't give the answers
As I cry out to you
I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you".

This was it. Julie, with phone in her hand, made the phone call we were waiting on. It didn't go as planned. They were continuing to pursue placement of the boy we had known and grown to love as our own since July.

Devastated. Angry. Scared. Hurt. All of these feeling flooded our hearts as we knew that soon we would have to say goodbye to our son's half-brother. But as the lyrics said, no matter what, we would trust in the Lord.

"Truth is you know what tomorrow brings
There's not a day ahead you have not seen
So let all things be my life and breath
I want what you want Lord and nothing less"

Wanting what the Lord wants above what we want is not easy. Don't you hate lyrics like this? You'll be singing along and BOOM! The words hit you in the face. I do want what He wants. But to the extent of wanting it more than what I want for myself, it's tough. But, when you really do more than just sing it, and you BELIEVE it, amazing things happen.

My wife and I went to bed that night crying and praying for God to help us understand. Hoping for peace about the days, weeks, and months to come. We talked about our future and what that would look like without our sweet boy. We talked about whether or not we would ever be able to foster/adopt again. We talked about how we would help our older two sons understand this loss. We both agreed that the Lord wasn't done with our story yet. We had no clue what that would look like, but we knew that we didn't have to. God knew and that's all that truly mattered.

Earlier that day, our sweet boy had a physical therapy appointment. Julie was explaining to the therapist that we would be discontinuing therapy since he would be leaving soon. Our therapist was sympathetic and understanding and told Julie she would be praying for us in this transition.

We knew many people were praying. And we could feel the prayers. But this journey ahead still felt suffocating. Somehow we managed to fall asleep that night. The pure emotional exhaustion, coupled with having a baby that hardly slept, really took a toll on our bodies.

That next morning, I was out running errands when I got a message from my wife. It was a screenshot from a text Julie had received from the physical therapist. It stated that she had done an evaluation on a family that brought a friend with them who was expecting and needing to find an adoptive home. "It's a boy! Are y'all interested?!"

Julie sent me a screenshot from the therapist and a short message asking, "What do you think?" We've had our hearts broken so many times before with texts like this or situations we thought and dreamed about for years that never came to fruition. But for some reason, my immediate response was, "Wow. Let's do it."

And so we did. We called this expectant mom and met for lunch the next day. We found out her story. We heard the love she had for this baby and how she wanted to place him privately and in a home where he could be loved.

Was this real life? Were we really sitting at the table with this lady who could be carrying our future son? It all seemed too good to be true. But we remembered the lyrics to the song, "Truth is you know what tomorrow brings..." It was literally tomorrow and the Lord was bringing so much to us.

Weeks went by. We attended appointments and grew a friendship with this expectant Momma. She became more than to us. She became our family. One of our best friends. The days were long, but the weeks flew by.

We still had our sweet foster son in our home. Legal documents holding up his departure from our home. We treasured every extra second we got to spend with him.

The day came for him to leave us. In the early hours of that Saturday morning the moment came for him to be taken from our arms. It was the HARDEST day of our life and our marriage. For 7 months we loved him and in the matter of minutes we said our goodbyes and he was gone. The door closed and the car drove away and we fell to the floor in tears. All day Saturday we mourned the loss of a living child. It was the weirdest feeling in the world. We knew God was working, but in those moments, we felt empty and alone.

Sunday came and we went to church. We watched other babies in the church be held and loved and had to sneak in multiple snuggles from each of them. Our arms felt weird being empty. We made it through another day. Then Monday rolled around. If Monday's weren't bad enough on their own, it was a long day without our sweet boy! And with two more weeks before the due date of the expectant mom, we felt like it was more of an eternity.

Julie and I sat on the couch that night after a terribly long day and cried. We felt like our hearts were literally ripped out and stepped on and thrown into a blender and then flushed down the drain. Okay, okay, a little dramatic, but seriously we were hurting. I posted on Facebook how terribly low we were feeling and I got a text from a loved one that reminded me of a song. "There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning."

We went to bed that night crying. And praying. And wanting to feel the Lord's presence. We counted the number of hours we would get to sleep without a baby to wake us up. It was bittersweet. We hated having an empty bassinet beside us, but were looking forward to a full nights sleep.

At 1:07 that morning we were awoken by a phone call that would change our life forever. She was in labor! We headed to the hospital as Julie's mom arrived to stay with our older two sons!

It was Valentine's Day! What a beautiful story of love being written that day. Love from our Savior shining upon each of us involved.

In that moment he arrived we knew he was so loved by so many. But the most important love we knew he was given was the love of the Lord. The provision He had on his life, his birth-mom's and ours.

"You are my strength and comfort
You are my steady hand
You are my firm foudation
The rock on which I stand
Your ways are always higher
You plans are always good
There's not a place where I'll go
You've not already stood"

It's not easy to see that His plans are greater than ours. How can that be, when sometimes all we can see on the earthly side is heartache and pain? How can good come from losing a child? How can good come from terrible situations that sometimes result in pregnancy? I don't have all the answers I would like to those two questions! Or to the questions you may be asking yourself in whatever storm you are facing. But what I can testify to is this. God is already there. He is already moving that mountain. He is already parting the waters. He is already on the other side of that storm, waiting for us to make it through.

I share this story of Kyan's journey to us to say this. Beauty really can come from ashes. Redemption can be found when we surrender ourselves wholly without knowledge of what road we may travel. Without knowledge of how we will get where we are going, but trusting that we will get there and we will never be alone in that journey.

I am so thankful for this 1 month old baby we hold in our arms and call our son. I'm thankful for the birth-mother who placed him in our care, and I'm thankful for the Lord that knew we would experience great joy and great loss to get here, but would fill our every need along the way.

Thank you to those that donated money towards our adoption expenses. Thank you to our family and friends that experienced heart-break along with us but continued to love each child the Lord has placed (no matter how long) in our home. And thank you to "Kallen", the sweet boy that the Lord used to bring us to our forever son. You will forever be a part of us and our love story written and directed by our AMAZING and POWERFUL God!