(A big thank you to Satin for sharing this guest post today!)

On a hot afternoon in Las Vegas, a young woman arrived at the hospital… alone.  Within 5 minutes of arriving, the delivery of her baby was imminent. With one final push the sweet new life entered the world.  No family was there to rejoice.  No one was there to tenderly kiss the young woman on the forehead and tell her how courageous she was.  But, God was there.

I can’t imagine the how she must have felt the moment the baby was born.  Maybe she felt relief that the physical pain had finally ended.  Maybe she felt joy as the doctor announced the baby’s gender.  Maybe she even smiled at the sound of the baby’s first cry.  But, I feel certain that any joy was wrought with indescribable pain; the pain of realizing that these precious few moments were the only ones that she would have with her little girl.  She had chosen instead to allow her baby to experience the miracle of being adopted into a family… a family who had prayed for her before she was even conceived.

As this new mom rested, a family over 2200 miles away was reading an email about a one-day old baby girl from Nevada in need of a family.  They prayed for wisdom and God was there… prompting them to act.

Initially, the agency painted a pretty grim picture…
“… I don’t think you can adopt this little girl.  Nevada allows birth mom expenses and in Pennsylvania it is illegal to pay birth mom expenses….”

30 minutes later…
“…There are no birth mom expenses…”

Our profile was sent for consideration and we were chosen to be the parents of this little Vegas miracle!

Now, we needed to get our financing in place…quickly! We were approved for a loan, but had not set up a closing date.  Originally, we had been told that it could take about a week to close. So imagine my surprise when the loan officer said, “You could close this evening if you would like!”

As the loan officer went through all of the details of the loan, it became apparent that the loan we were approved for, was not the one they were planning to honor…still leaving us several thousands of dollars short of being able to finance the adoption.

My heart sank…“I don’t understand, Lord.  We were chosen by the agency, yet we can’t pay for the adoption.  Is this really the way this is going to end?”

I would be lying if I told you that my faith was strong at that moment.  I was broken and confused.  The situation seemed utterly impossible and there was nothing I could do to change it. I immediately called my mom, crying and questioning.

She reminded me that God was in control and that although the situation seemed impossible to me, it was not impossible with God.  She encouraged me to stop and pray.  So, I did…and God heard my prayer.

Within 30 minutes, two amazing families called us, each with an offer to help. One offered to temporarily finance the adoption, the other graciously offered to give us a large donation!

If that weren’t enough, the phone rang again.  It was our loan officer who had negotiated with the bank on our behalf. The outcome: A BETTER OFFER THAN THE ORIGINAL. And, our loan officer was willing to stay after hours so that we could close on our loan later that evening.

Next, we reluctantly began to look for flights. Although, we were prepared to travel, we were feeling really uncomfortable flying until mom had signed all of the papers.  I mean, “What if she changed her mind?” I decided to call the agency to give her the details of the flight my husband was in the process of booking.

Right as my husband was getting ready to push the purchase button on the computer our social worker interrupted…
“STOP!!!  Tell him not to purchase those tickets.  Mom as gone MIA. She discharged herself from the hospital and we can’t find her.  She gave me a cell number which has been disconnected. Don’t travel yet! I will begin looking for her first thing in the morning.”

The next afternoon…
“Satin, I still haven’t heard from mom… I am just praying we find her.”

About an hour later…
“…Great news, we found mom.  I am going to pick her up later today to take her to my office to sign.”

Little did we know that our social worker had started to fast and pray that mom would be found and she paid the outstanding balance on mom’s phone to have it reconnected. Fifteen minutes later, mom called her. Less than 24 hours later we were looking into the eyes of our four-day-old baby girl, whom we had prayed for all of these years. And God was there.

I must admit that initially, being in “sin-city” conjured up negative thoughts in my mind. But during my stay there, I learned that God meets people in Vegas.  Many go there looking for a second chance at a career or to party the pain away. But, by the grace of God, HE strips them of their own agendas… leaving Jesus to fill the gaping, empty hole within them.

As I looked out across the flashing lights and the neon signs brightening the night sky, I couldn’t help but to think of how Jesus adopted me many years ago. Not because I was talented enough, pretty enough, or perfect enough… but because He knew I needed his grace.  HE gave me new life and now he calls me…”HIS child.”

Looking down at the tiny frame nestled comfortably against my chest; I thanked God for our “little Las Vegas miracle.” And I thanked God for the women who had brought her into this world. I wondered how she must have felt walking out of the hospital with empty arms. My prayer is that God would meet her in Las Vegas someday too.

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(To read more about Satin’s family & their adoption, please visit her blog, Freely Adopted.
Do you have a positive adoption story of your own to share? If so, contact me!

In 1983, after our first daughter was about five years old, we came to find out that for us to have another child through natural childbirth was not going to be possible. After a few failed medical procedures, we decided that adoption would be our next step.

We prayed about this decision and we would trust in God to where or who this child would be. We did not have a gender or nationality preference specified. We went through a Christian agency that was assisting young pregnant woman through counseling, so they could decide whether to keep or give the baby up adoption.

Part of the program was to have several meetings in small groups with a few other couples who were interested in adoption. The guests at these meetings varied; from people who had adopted, people that had given up babies for adoption, and people who were adopted as babies, just to help share their stories regarding adoption.

This interview process was very important for the birth mother because she ultimately made the decision to choose the family for her birth child. The way the program worked was to find out that our family had been chosen just a day or so before we were to pick up the baby! This was to ensure that once the young woman had given birth, she had no regrets and she was certain of her decision.

We had submitted applications that included many questions on how we would raise our family.

It was about six months since we began attending the adoption meetings that our social worker called us in for some final paperwork we needed to complete our application package. Before I attended the meeting, my wife asked me to ask the social worker how one particular girl was doing; we had met her on one of our first meetings. My wife said; “She should be about ready to have her baby by now and she has been on my mind.” I did ask our social worker and she said the young lady was doing fine.

Yes, you may have guessed it; the young woman we were asking about is the one that had chosen our family for her baby. The social worker later told us that she was shocked when I asked her that question because the birth mother was in labor at the time, and later delivered a healthy baby girl. We received the “phone call” about two weeks later, when everything was finalized and she was ready to hand us our new baby girl.

I remember praying and wondering: how will it be possible to love this child as we do our first daughter who is our own flesh and blood? The answer to that question came as we received the baby in our arms; there was no difference, they were both a gift from God, they just came to us differently.

We wanted our daughter to always know she was adopted verses her “finding out” some day. We accomplished this by using the court date, December 13, 1985. This was the finalization of the adoption, which in our state was six months after the placement of the child. We turned this into her “special day” of celebration. It has been 25 years since that day, and if you ask our daughter today, she will tell you that the most special occasion of the year to her is the celebration of her “special day.” Because she was so inquisitive in the early years, we gave her a picture album with some pictures of her birth mother along with snaps of the courtroom along with various other photos. To this day, this has continued to be one of her favorite possessions.

We were informed shortly after our adoption that our daughter had a full biological brother who was also adopted by another family. When our daughter was about five years old, we were put in touch with the “other family” and we met. The brother was about fifteen months older and we were amazed to see the two siblings together, comparing their likenesses and personalities. Since this family had another adopted son and we had two daughters we along with the other parents decided that it would be best if we introduced all the children as brothers and sisters with no distinction of blood relationships. All four of the children were equally excited about meeting their new brothers and sisters. Since that reunion, it was just normal to the kids to have brothers and sisters that met at all the special occasions and other family functions.

Our adoption was an open adoption; this was considering if both parties agreed to be in contact with each other, using the agency as a liaison. Kimmy was always interested in meeting her birth mother and knowing more about her background. When she was about seventeen, we gave permission for a meeting to take place. Kimmy and her brother decided they would meet their birth mother together. Since that time, they have been able to stay in touch with each other and there have been no regrets with the reunion. It helped to answer questions that naturally the children had.

Our oldest daughter now has five children, of which the last two are adopted, so the inspiration lives on.

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(Jim is the founder of Jireh Ministries Foundation, and now lives in Uganda with his wife Robyn, as they personally minister to the people of Uganda. Read more about Jim and this ministry on his blog: Believing He Will Provide.)

Eighteen years ago this May (2010), I placed my baby girl into the arms of her adoptive mother, literally. Wrapped in the grace and peace of my Heavenly Father, I was able to do so without regret or remorse. Even before that day, I was filled with indescribable peace regarding my adoption decision…the peace that passeth all understanding, to be exact.

It was September 1991. I was 18, unmarried, and relocating to Seattle from Phoenix with my boyfriend.

Upon confirming that I was indeed pregnant at a nearby Planned Parenthood facility, I was strongly advised to have an abortion. By advised, I mean locked in a room for 45 minutes and lectured on the virtues of abortion even after I had said I wanted to have my baby and parent my child.

Things in my life changed dramatically in those first few months. After a visit to my sister in Alabama and huge fallout with my boyfriend, I found myself back in my parent’s home in Phoenix. It was a strange time. I didn’t have a plan for the future and they never brought it up either. To that point, about 3 months along, I hadn’t had any prenatal care.

One morning I woke up to hear the inaudible voice of God telling me to get the phonebook and find an adoption agency. Adoption had never crossed my mind. In fact, it had been mentioned once during the abortion lecture and I had responded, “Oh, I could never do that.”

While I had always admired those who placed their babies for adoption, the thought of doing it myself made me think my heart would be ripped in two.

Knowing that adoption was not my idea, I immediately obeyed. I flipped through the phonebook while still sitting in my bed. There were a few pages of adoption agencies, some ads were bigger than others, and I was drawn to two ads in particular. I have no idea how long I sat reading, pondering, deciding which agency to call. God was gentle with me. He was patient. I never felt like he was tapping His foot waiting on me to make up my mind. Of course, He already knew.

I don’t recall much about that phone call except that the adoption counselor scheduled an appointment to visit me the very next day. She was so kind and thoughtful. At the same time, she was very upfront about what I was getting myself into. Adoptions were closed. I would sign away my rights to my child and never know anything about them or their family. Adoptive parents were required to send one year of photographs at least quarterly to the agency. The photographs were then placed into our adoption file and I would be notified of them if I wanted to see them.

She talked about legalities and medical assistance and what would happen if I changed my mind. Even then I said, “Oh, I’m not going to change my mind. This is God’s decision for my baby.”

It seemed like an eternity from that first call until the day I was actually sitting across a table from the woman who would become my daughter’s mother. And yet, these past 18 years have flown by too quickly.

God has been faithful throughout this journey. At the moment I chose to obey Him, He became more real to me than He had been in all my church-going life. He blessed me with an open adoption that I didn’t even know was possible. And He blessed my life with “extended” family. I remember having lunch with her mother when the baby was 4 weeks old. A woman at the restaurant saw her and asked, “Who’s the mother?” Her mother got this big grin on her face which made me smile too and she replied, “We are.”

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(Read more about Anne-Marie and her adoption experience at her blog, The Mom-O-Sphere.

Do you have a positive adoption story of your own to share? If so, contact me!

(Thank you to Melissa for today’s guest post!)

It is very apt that I am writing my adoption story today. It was exactly four years ago that our sweet Gabriella Rose was handed into our arms by the nannies from the Chinese orphanage. One day after she was born, on September 16, 2005, she was found abandoned on the steps of a large financial bank in China. She was taken to live at the Welfare Institute of Suichuan County, China and named Mei Qian (May Chee-in) Long.

When we adopted her she was only nine months old, on the younger end of children adopted from China. I can still see her round face with almond shaped brown eyes staring at me for the first time on Father’s Day in June of 2006. We had been praying for this moment for over a year and a half.

I believe each person’s journey to adoption looks different. I especially believe that the reasons behind why people adopt can vary greatly. For us, it was an obvious calling from God. I suppose the Lord knows we are the type of people that need a bright neon sign in order for us to see what He wants us to do. So that’s just what He did. I hope to be able to tell my story in as few words as possible, however that will be challenging. This was one of those few times in our lives where God touched and communicated so vividly to us, it often left us in tears and astonishment, it’s a story worth sharing and telling over and over.

I had already been blessed with two wonderful biological children, therefore adoption really wasn’t on my mind. My oldest was seven years old and my youngest was five years old at the time. Even though I had always had a hole in my heart that there was supposed to be another child, we had unfortunately not been able to conceive again. This feeling of an absent third child had often troubled me emotionally, but seeing that my youngest was going on six years old, I was gradually accepting that perhaps that was not to be.

That was until one day in October of 2004. Our home school co-op group was meeting to study about birds and specifically we read a book on John James Audubon. I was the one assigned that day to read the book to the children. Upon the pages of this wonderful book Mr. Audubon came upon a beautiful flock of wild swans. I remember being oddly drawn to this painted scene. However the day went on as usual afterwards.

The next morning I stood in my kitchen getting my morning cup of coffee and peering, as I often do, out my back window. Behind us were open fields which were part of a horse farm. However this particular morning, something made me take a second look. Way out upon the ridge stood a very large white bird. It was too far for my morning eyes to focus in on, so I grabbed my binoculars.

By this time my children had taken notice of my excitement and ran to the window to see. Before I could bring the binoculars to my eyes, the kids were shouting out that it was a swan. I dismissed them saying that it was probably a wild goose or something. There was no reason for me to think a swan would be in the middle of a horse field. As I brought the cheap binoculars into focus, my jaw dropped. Sure enough the children were correct.

There stood a magnificent, white swan. My mind immediately flashed back to the day before when I saw the scene in the John James Audubon book, and I marveled at the coincidence.

Now, I’m not normally the type of person who calls up people out of the blue and asks them if we could come see the swan in their horse field, but yep, that’s just what I did that day. Turns out the swan belonged to them, and mostly stayed down on the other side of the ridge where the pond was, out of our sight. But the horse farm owner explained that for some reason that day he drifted up on the ridge. She went on to explain that he had just recently lost his mate. I embarrassedly fought back tears. I don’t normally cry for swans, but I mourned for that poor bird. He was all alone.

She gave us permission to get closer and informed us that he would not let us get that close. Well, he proved her wrong. We got right up close to that beautiful bird and took several photos.

When my husband got home that day I shared with him about our adventures and showed him the pictures and even told him about the strange coincidence from the day before.

I don’t remember how much time passed after that day, it might have been a few days or a week. But one morning soon after as I sat at my computer sipping on my coffee, I opened an email article written by Stephen Curtis Chapman and his wife. If you are familiar with them you know they have adopted little girls from China. This article was all about their adoption story and by the time I was done reading it I was sobbing in tears of conviction. I remember asking the Lord questions such as: “Are you serious Lord?” and “You want me to go to China, God?” and “Lord, you know I’m terrified to fly, and you’re asking me to go to China?” and “Lord, that costs a lot of money, you know that right?”

I immediately called up my husband and informed him of my super huge conviction to which he became silent for a moment and then started asking me a hundred questions, such as “Are you sure?”and “Whoa, we’d better think about this,” and so on. We agreed to let it sit for a few days, pray about it, and asked God to bring us obvious signs.

Well, the feeling wouldn’t rest and we found ourselves surfing the internet reading China adoption stories. We eventually made note that in almost every story we read there was a picture of the family at a certain same hotel. When we had stumbled upon yet another picture with the same hotel background scene we decided to read the caption.

The caption read: “Our adoption group at the White Swan Hotel.”

Yep, there’s our neon sign, huge and bright. We looked at each other in amazement.

After a long silence, my husband simply said…”I guess we’re going to China.” At that very moment I felt my heart grow larger and I fell in love with a little girl in China that I hadn’t met yet. There in my heart existed a hole that God would fill with her. That very hole that had been there all along and I didn’t understand why it hadn’t been filled, until now.

Thus the beginning of a year and a half adventure filled with many more neon signs that I could write about and fill a book with. You see God didn’t leave it there, He reassured us the whole way of what we were doing. Gently guiding us, even through my fear of flying half way across the world. International adoption is a big deal, lots of red tape and hoops to jump through, but our eyes were always on that precious little girl who was waiting for us. She needed a family, and we needed her.

The day she was handed to us, it was as if she had been waiting for us. She was so calm. She smiled a charismatic huge smile that we were sure the nannies had taught her.

We had many adventures in our two week trip to China. And yes, we too stayed at the White Swan Hotel.

Today our lives are blessed each and every day by all three of our children. Some people look at adopted children as standing out, being different from the biological children, but we don’t. In fact, when people look at us funny as we pass in the stores I forget about the reason why they are probably looking at us that way. Then I remember that I have two blue-eyed, blond haired children and an dark haired, dark-eyed Asian child. They are all beautiful to me and all belong the same.

Gabriella Rose is growing up fast, almost five years old now. Each day I’m reassured of her blessing to our lives and cannot imagine our life without her. Distant feelings of a hole in my heart surface up when I think about that. Thank you Lord for the neon signs. And thank you for blessing us with your precious little girl.

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(Follow along with Melissa, at “In the Sparrow’s Nest.” Do you have a positive adoption story of your own to share? If so, contact me!