Quite unexpectedly in the midst of our grief, God has placed us on the path to adoption. It started as a providential meeting between myself and another woman in our local pro-life movement and it ended up being a call for my husband and me. A woman who is in her second trimester was considering an abortion and she needed people to minister to her. The main woman helping her asked me if my husband and I would consider adopting her baby if the chance presented itself. She had seen my sign praying in front of our local abortion clinic that shared my 4 miscarriages. My husband and I replied with an emphatic yes. In that yes, we realized that adoption, regardless of the outcome of this particular situation is where God is calling us to be “fruitful and multiply”. Thanks be to God the woman appears to have moved completely away from abortion!!!
It does not appear that we can have anymore biological children. I easily get pregnant, but I lose the babies around 7-8 weeks and after four losses the grief has been profound. Our daughter is nothing short of a miracle in our eyes, since she is the only one to survive to term. While my doctors are perplexed as to my issues–even with hormone treatments–it is a reality nonetheless. My hormone deficiencies do not appear to be treatable with hormone treatments at this time. My body cannot seem to produce enough progesterone to keep the child alive past a certain point. My levels didn’t raise a single point even with progesterone shots, suppositories, and HCG shots.
Many of you have read my story over the past few years. Quite a few of you have read my recent articles over at Catholic Exchange and The Federalist about miscarriage and my grief. It’s a painful road to lose a child, let alone four children. I have had to walk deeper into the mystery of the Cross through each loss, and recently, even deeper as I pray in front of our local abortion clinic.
God is now asking us to transform our grief by once again opening up to love. There are so many children worldwide in need of homes and we want to provide a child or children (if we can get the monetary help to do so) with a loving home. Plus, our daughter will be the best big sister ever! We are called to provide for orphans:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world. James 1:27
When people hear my story, they ask me if my husband and I have ever considered adoption. The answer has always been yes. We discussed it while we were dating. We have four adopted nephews and a friend of ours adopted her son. The last few years we have been focused on having biological children and we were going to look at adoption in a few years. It is now apparent that God is saying now not later. We cannot have more biological children, which has made us shift focus earlier on adoption. God is using the brokenness of my body for good, as is His will.
The problem for us now is cost. Adoption is prohibitively expensive. The average domestic adoption runs $20,000-60,000. Thankfully our local Catholic Charities tends to top out around $25,000. Most people do not have that kind of money lying around. We certainly do not. This is one of the great frustrations for people who want to adopt or even for people who are open to adoption, but haven’t fully considered it. We do not understand why it is so expensive to provide a loving home to a child or children. Nevertheless, this is the system we have to operate within to adopt any children.
After much prayer and a lesson in humility, my husband and I have decided to start an online fundraiser to raise the money we will need to adopt. The more we receive, the more children we can adopt, but we are going to start with an initial adoption cost. Private adoptions are cheaper, but still expensive, so if we are called to adopt this woman’s child we will be able to move any extra proceeds over for our next adoption. All money we are given will go to adoption fees and expenses. If there is an abundance over what we need for our adoptions, then we will donate the money to help other families adopt.
You can access our YouCaring account by clicking on the picture above or on the sidebar of my blog at any time and I will post the link as soon as we are up. You can provide an online donation through PayPal and share the fundraiser in social media. You can also grab the widget on the fundraiser page in order share on a blog.
Thank you to those of you who have been praying for us throughout our grief. Please continue those prayers since the loss of a loved one never fully heals and we are still grieving Andrew a great deal. Pray for all families grieving lost children. I have some friends who are really struggling with their losses from miscarriage. Thank you and may God bless you always.
You can read our story, watch a video of our daughter expressing her desire for an adopted brother or sister, and donate here:
https://www.youcaring.com/constanceandphilhulladoptionfund-680004
I also recorded a video for all of you to say hello and thank everyone for their support in my writing and in this new adoption adventure. You can watch it here:
Swimming the Depths 