How it all started...

We are so excited to share with all of our family and friends that we are adopting a precious little boy from Eastern Europe named Micah. We cannot wait to bring him home. We’ve never done a blog before, so this will be something new. We want our first post to be “our story” so that you can follow along in this journey from start to finish. It’s a long one, but for those of you who are curious about how we got to this place we hope to answer your questions…

I remember as a little girl being really interested in adoption. It was something that would enter my head from time to time for no particular reason. The older I got, the more I felt that someday, sometime, I would adopt. When Cliff and I met in high school and started talking about getting married I remember telling him that I hoped he would want to adopt someday because I felt that God had called me to do that. Honestly, I can say that the thought crossed my mind that maybe God has placed this burden in my heart for kids without families because I was not going to be able to have biological children. This particular thought nagged at the back of my mind for many years. About a year after Cliff and I got married I started investigating the idea of adopting internationally. At my first teaching job I had had a little girl in my class who had been adopted from Guatemala. This was my first experience with international adoption and I was very intrigued. Once I started investigating, I realized that we didn’t meet ANY of the requirements at that time in our lives—we weren’t old enough, we hadn’t been married long enough, and we didn’t meet the income guidelines. So, although it never left my mind, the option of international adoption was put aside.

By the time we reached the age of twenty-five (the age that you are allowed to adopt internationally) we were expecting our first daughter, Olivia. Life was busy with a new house, new job for Cliff, and a precious baby girl who brightened our lives! In less than two years we welcomed our first son, Sawyer to our family--happy to have another child to love. It was at about this time that adoption stated to come back into my heart full force. Again, I had had a student in my class right before Olivia was born who had been adopted internationally and it sparked my interest once again. Cliff and I discussed it, but we were scared to take the leap of faith into the unknowns of international adoption. Instead we decided to try to adopt domestically through Pennsylvania’s SWAN network. The children would be legal risk adoptions because some of them would not have had parental rights terminated. We chose an agency, went through ten weeks of classes, completed the homestudy, and we were put on the list. Then we waited…and waited…and waited some more! At about the time we had been placed on the adoption list, Pennsylvania had taken a turn toward pushing “kinship” care above “cold” placements with an unknown family. Adoptions slowed way down and we received no calls.

When we were about two years into the waiting process we got a call out of the blue one day from a man at the church were Cliff pastors. You see, the word had spread that we were interested in adoption and this call came as a result of that. This man had been at the mall and had come across a young lady who was visibly upset. He stopped to talk with her to see if he might be able to help her. He found that she was struggling with the decision about whether or not she should abort her baby because she had little support from the father of the baby or from her family at that time. This gentleman talked with her and tried to convince her that she should not abort her baby. In the end he offered to help her find a family who might be willing to adopt her baby since she expressed that she did not feel that she would be able to parent her child. He went to the church, stopped in the office and asked one of the pastors if they knew of anyone who might be interested in adopting. “Call Cliff and Erin” was the response!

We were in touch with this young lady for many months. We visited a lawyer and prepared to adopt her baby boy once he was born. As her delivery date started to get nearer she started distancing herself from us and in the end she decided to keep her baby boy. We were so happy that she felt settled enough and supported enough by her family to be able to do so. We strongly agree that the very best place for any child is with their biological parents, if it is a healthy enough environment for that child to be loved and taken care of. Despite knowing in our hearts that that little boy was in the right place, there was still that tinge of regret that adoption still wasn’t working out for us. 

We had welcomed Collin to our family by this time, I was working full time again (and had been since Sawyer was born), and life was even busier than before! Still, adoption never left our hearts. It was at about this time that we started considering getting involved in foster care. We decided that that might be a quicker means toward adoption and frankly, we were sick of waiting! So, we filled out the paperwork, and jumped on board. When our home study ran out at the three year mark with our original agency, we did not renew it, but decided to just stick with foster care and see where that led us. It took many months before we had our first placement. We had a little two year old girl come and stay with us for two weeks while her foster parents were out of town. We enjoyed her stay!  Many more months went by before our next call. This one was an emergency call from Erie County for a little three year old boy on the night before Thanksgiving. He came to us at eleven o’clock, frightened and confused. I slept on the floor that night by his little toddler bed hoping that he wouldn’t be too scared when he woke up in a strange house, surrounded by strange people in the morning. He transitioned well though and stayed with us for several months before he was eventually placed with a relative. 

Shortly after he left our home we started making plans to move to our new house. That was a crazy time in life: preparing our home to sell, and then came Cliff’s fall and hip replacement, followed by Olivia’s diagnosis with ITP, and then the death of our ten-year-old dog whom we had had since we first got married. What a time we had!  But, God was faithful to bring us through those storms and onto the other side.  Because the home we were buying needed totally remodeled before we could move in, we remained in a state of transition for many months. Once we were settled in our new home we had our third foster care placement, a lovely young lady who came to us through a church friend. She was a blessing to us and we were happy for her, but sad for us, when she moved away! It wasn’t long after that that we found out that little miss Makena was on her way to join our family. Every child has been a blessing to us and our family was looking forward to this newest addition! 

When Makena was four months old we received a call for an emergency short-term placement of two little girls, ages two and four. We said yes and welcomed them to our home. Because we had such a young baby, and I was still working full time, this was a difficult time for us. This was the first of our foster care placements where the girls ended up staying much longer than originally planned and there were many unknowns. We found it to be very difficult, emotionally, for us to navigate the foster care system. We really struggled with the placement, through no fault of the girls, but because of our own uncertainties about what foster care is really about. When the girls left, after having been with us for seven months, we were tired out! I told God, “I really need a break from thinking about orphan care for a while!” 

Ha! God had other plans! When God burdens your heart for something that is close to his, it is impossible to run for long! Although I didn’t tell Cliff right away, I almost immediately started thinking about international adoption and the original call I felt that God had put on my heart all those years ago. Often throughout the years of waiting to adopt, I have questioned why God put this passion in my heart for something that never seemed to come to pass. There is no denying that the need is great. There are 160 million children worldwide who do not have a mom and a dad to call their own. That’s 160 million little hearts that are without a home! My mind can’t even comprehend that number. So…why was it proving so difficult to bring a child to our family? Well, although I won’t pretend to know the mind of God, I can say that I’ve considered the possibility that for us, it may come down to obedience. You see, I believe that God placed this call on our hearts from the beginning and although we had discussed the possibility many times throughout the years, we have always been afraid. Afraid that we could never come up with the money. Afraid of the travel and having to leave our children. Afraid of the unknowns. The problem is that God is not a God of fear but he asks us to trust and, in this situation, that is something that we had failed to do. 

So, fast forward to little Micah! In the adoption world there are a few key places that are well-known for their service to the orphan and I was familiar with many of them from having navigated the world of adoption for so long. Somehow Reece’s Rainbow had gone under my radar though! One evening I stumbled upon this ministry and was interested in find out more. Reece’s Rainbow is an organization that advocates for children with Down Syndrome and other disabilities, who live around the world. They help families in their fund-raising process to be able to bring these precious children home. As I looked at the children, my heart was stirred. It wasn’t long before I went to Cliff saying, “What do you think? Could we do this?” We talked and decided we would think and pray about it. A few days later I received a text with a picture of a t-shirt that Cliff had designed as a possible fund-raiser for an adoption. I texted back saying, “What is this? What are you saying exactly?” His response was, “Let’s go for it!” I could hardly contain my excitement! 

It wasn’t long before I stumbled on the picture of Micah. I showed it to Cliff and he smiled and was quiet. The next day I contacted Andrea from Reece’s Rainbow to try to figure out what country might be best for us to pursue. Micah was one of the children she pointed out to me, and I just knew he was the one! As we moved forward we became even surer that we were to become his mom and dad. Olivia, Sawyer, and Collin are so excited and they can’t wait to meet him (and Makena will love him too, I’m sure). Their prayers for him are priceless to hear, and their questions of concern about him are precious. The boys wanted to know right away if he could be in their room! 

We wish that love was enough, and that all we needed to do was to jump in an airplane and fly across the ocean to get Micah. The reality is that it will be many months of paperwork, visits from social workers, trips to have things notarized, and payments made for all of these different services. International adoption is an expense endeavor and as we shared already, this is probably the one reason that we haven’t taken this jump any sooner. We have determined to trust God in this though, believing that because he loves the orphan even more than we do, that he will supply all these needs, every step of the way. So, when we start to fear about the money, we are just going to remember that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and surely if he cares for even the sparrows that fly in the sky he will care for Micah and our family as well. Might you be a part of caring for the orphan through our family? Throughout the coming months we will be posting different opportunities for our family and friends to come alongside us and help us to bring Micah home. It is with deep gratitude to each one of you that we ask you to consider giving toward Micah’s adoption fund. Each gift, big or small, will bring us that much closer to him! 

Please pray for us and for Micah. Your prayers mean so much to us and we are grateful to have friends and family who will come alongside us, lifting our needs to the God who hears us and moves on our behalf. We look forward to sharing this journey with you!

Cliff and Erin