“There you are!” Were the first words our Daughter heard when we saw her beautiful face. After seven years of tearful Christmas mornings, overcompensating for the missing little soul in our lives by giving each other way too many gifts, our truest Gift from God arrived at 6:46pm Christmas evening 2008. Who needs a new ipod!

This is our journey toward Liberty Grace. Her name is significant to the journey we have walked during the past dark years of infertility. Anyone who has every paced the cage of childlessness, rattling those bars in protest as once again another baby passes in front of your eyes…yet never your own; will understand why we named our daughter Liberty. She’s been the long awaited for child of our heart, whose life has brought so much freedom to the many people praying for her these long years. Her middle name “Grace” is a constant reminder of the hard lessons learned in the silent hours of questioning God’s goodness, Sovereignty and love. Now, holding her tiny little fingers, we know the answers to “why?”   God’s grace showered us with a blessing…even after some of the rotten things we shouted to Him in our struggle. 

Our journey to Liberty was an especially hard and complicated one. We had always thought we would one day adopt, but going through infertility and then four rounds of IVF treatments, kept pushing our long awaited dreams of becoming a family just out of reach. Finally, in Dec 2007 we hit an emotional breaking point as a couple. Due to the fact we were missionaries living overseas, we were told no agency would work with us and we would have to leave our home of ten years and return to the U.S.A. if we ever wanted children. This was heart breaking on many levels for us, as the huge move would mean we would still not be able to start the adoption process for another year and the young church we had only recently planted would surely not be able to survive without a pastor.

After many frantic hours searching the internet, we came across American Adoptions in February of 2008. They informed us that they would be able to work with us in our unique situation and we would not have to move back to the U.S. In March of 2008 we signed up to American adoptions and in Oct. of 2008 we were activated. We were warned that due to the fact that we were living abroad, we might have a longer wait than some of their other stateside families. So when we got the phone call just three weeks after our activation, we could hardly take it in. Our adoption specialist Kathie told us our baby girl was due to be born on Christmas day, and on top of that, she was going to be born in the state where our family lived! It was all just too good to be true.   We had Three weeks to frantically get ourselves together (during which we skillfully crashed the car and drilled through a water pipe in our house!). find a house sitter (who didn’t mind wet carpet and no heating), and tie up loose ends before we made the 26 hour journey to the U.S. Our whole church pulled together to do their part and off we went to meet our gift from God. 

From the second we got the phone call from Kathie, things could not have gone smoother. We were a unique/complicated situation, but the team at American Adoptions supported our every move. They worked with us and made compromises and never left us in the dark. Kathy became more than a specialist to us at this time as she treated us less like clients and more like friends. This was one of the biggest blessings in our journey toward Liberty. In such a stressful time, it is nice to know your not just another number on someone’s desk.

Our biggest fear was that due to our distance, we would not be there for our daughter’s birth. After much thought we decided to leave for America two weeks before the birth. This gave us the needed time to meet our Birthmother and deal with legal matters…as well as Jet Lag! To our delight, Christmas morning, just after we finished opening our gifts, we received a phone call telling us our baby girl was on her way. The whole way down to the hospital, all we kept singing were the words to Mariah Carey’s Christmas song, “All I want for Christmas is You Baby!” And that’s exactly what we got!

In the middle of the night, with a dirty diaper in one hand, soaking wet birp cloth and baby in the other, spit up in my hair and both of us in a new pair of P.J’s, I still look into that face I saw for the very first time only three months ago, and know she was always meant to be ours. Back home overseas, away from family, she is our little rock and seems to be the Hub of a lot of love in our church. We mistakenly thought this was only our journey towards Liberty. But after travelling to two states, our U.S. sending church and now back to our church overseas, we know that Liberty Grace has been the answer to two continents of people praying, hoping, and asking God to hear. His reply was, “Here is your Liberty Grace!” Thank you Lord. And thank you American Adoptions.