Joy for Sorrow: Our Journey to Adoption

For those of you who may not know how we came to pursue adoption, here’s a brief story of how we got here…

A few years ago we pursued starting a family.  After no success through natural means, with no medical reason why, we sought bringing children into our lives through adoption.  Now, keep in mind that attempting to start a family took several years and was a frustrating, heartbreaking, and sad time for us when our plans weren’t going as we had always thought they would.  However, during these months and years God was not out of tune to our heartache.  No.  He was working in our lives and hearts and planting seeds of desire towards adoption in us.  He brought a very dear friend into my (Julie’s) life who had gone through the same pain of infertility and who had chosen adoption (from Russia) about 15 years ago.  I (Julie) recall listening to her story of that journey in her life and feeling so interested and excited at the thought of us possibly venturing down that same road someday as well.  So about 2.5 years ago we got to a point in our lives where we could wait, pursue reproductive technology, or pursue adoption.  We started researching the different types of adoption and discovered that we had been ignorant to the huge number of children who are waiting to be placed in a forever family.  We discovered that having children through adoption is not second best.  We discovered that although we may have plans for our lives, God does too – and His plans are far better than anything we could dream up for ourselves.  We discovered that adoption is not God’s Plan B.  We discovered that we experience joy in looking beyond ourselves and looking at how we may bless others.  We discovered that God can replace sorrow (for our plans that didn’t “work” as we thought they should) with joy, and He can replace despair (the pain of infertility) with peace.

We are no longer sad that biological children have not been bourn to us, and we are actually so excited, humbled, and thankful to have our eyes opened to adoption and to have the privilege of bringing children into our lives through the process of adoption.  We are so filled with anticipation on how this story – our story – will unfold and what lies in store for us on this amazing journey.

 "...you have taken away my sorrow and surrounded me with joy.  So I will not be silent; I will sing praise to you.  Lord, you are my God; I will give you thanks forever..."  ~ Psalm 30:11-12

The start of our adoption blog -

We started this blog to post what is happening with us, specifically regarding our adoption process as we venture on this journey. 

Why the name “if we only knew that…?”  Well, we are starting this blog because of our adoption journey – as I mentioned above – but we would also like to continue it after we bring our children home so that we can post what is happening with us as we bond and grow as a family.  So we didn’t want to name it something only related to adoption.  Our not-so-naturally-creative brains came up with the phrase “if we only knew…” and thought it would be a cool phrase to springboard thoughts or updates on what is happening with us.  However, this particular phrase was not available, but if we added the word “that” at the end, it was.  So became our blog name.  And here is our first comment regarding such –

If we only knew that this journey to begin a family would take longer than we originally thought it would we probably would have begun down this road sooner.  However, we believe that God can take all things and make them beautiful.  So even our procrastination in beginning the family journey can be turned into an awesome adventure that happens in His perfect timing.  Thank you for reading and sharing this adventure with us.