"For You created my innermost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb." Psalm 139:13
As a family we began praying earnestly for our expected wee one. No one knew when, how or what fashion God would deliver this precious bundle of joy, but we believed with all our hearts that a plan for adoption was in our future.
Several months passed. I was busy driving Jeremy to and from his developmental preschool while still recovering from breast cancer. Megan was now in school full-time which made my life a little simpler. Still I tired easily and worked to ease the mental pain from having had cancer. The thought of adding another child to our family was both exhilarating and scary. We wrestled with the usual worries of any soon-to-be parents.
As the fall season gave way to winter I began to experience the blues typical for those in need of sunshine. Christmas was a reminder of past difficult times for me, including my abortion and then, diagnosis of cancer. I looked for outside activities to keep me engaged and less focused on myself and planned outings with friends as often as possible.
Then on one chilly morning in November Rick attended a businessmen and women's breakfast. The guest speaker was someone from the Lighthouse, a Catholic home for unwed mothers. As the speaker told about the Lighthouse's mission for the Kansas City community, Rick later said that his skin on the back of his neck started to prickle and that he was overcome with the urge to speak personally to this woman. From talking with the speaker Rick learned that the Lighthouse was looking for women in the KC community to volunteer time towards helping the many young women living in their facility. Rick excitedly told me about his encounter while encouraging me to volunteer at the Lighthouse. I wasn't too sure; I was already busy enough.
Soon thereafter a dear friend of mine, with whom I'd shared our secret, excitedly called to tell Rick and me about her sister who was adopting a child through the Lighthouse. Imagine how excited we were when Laura shared, "You know, Kathy, my sister tells me that there are several children to be born this summer, and the Lighthouse is looking for adoptive families to help place these babies when they're born." Maybe it was time to contact the Lighthouse after all.
After speaking with the Lighthouse's volunteer coordinator I agreed to share my heart during one of their chapel times. I wanted to encourage these women as they walked forward in life -- unwed and pregnant. The best time for me to volunteer, I was told, would be in mid-January of the coming year. So I waited and did my best to move through the holiday season.
January finally arrived and I led chapel time one Sunday afternoon. Afterward I noticed one young woman walking by who didn't look pregnant and I remember wondering about that. She turned to me, saying, "Thanks for speaking to us today. I enjoyed hearing your story." That was it. Rick and I believe this young woman to be Rebekah's birth mother. Arriving at the KC Lighthouse just weeks earlier --Krista* was about three months pregnant making Rebekah's probable conception date around the middle of October. (Remember, Rick had begun journaling about the need for our family to begin praying for our new baby and for the birth mother in mid-October.)
After much prayer, Rick and I officially moved forward with a plan for adoption through the Lighthouse.
I wish I could say the process was easy, but it was not always so. We had many forms to fill out, pictures of our family to be taken, home studies to be completed by a social worker and money to be paid for lawyers. After the initial rounds of application for adoption papers were filed in early March, we waited for a letter of acceptance from the Lighthouse. My mind wrestled with doubts. Amazingly we received our acceptance letter just a week or two later.
We were then required to complete more legal forms which included the hiring of a lawyer to help move the process of adoption along. At that time retaining a lawyer for adoptions cost $500 which seemed like a HUGE sum of money for us at the time. And frankly, we didn't have it. Rick had only recently started his own business and I wanted to stay at home with our children. I brazenly threw the paper-clipped papers onto our dining room table and saying aloud, "Okay, God. If you want us to move forward, You will need to give us $500 --- and make sure we know it's for this adoption." I just couldn't see how we would be able to move forward any other way.
A few days later a friend of ours visited Rick at his office. Rick and he talked for awhile, then handed Rick a sealed envelope before leaving. To Rick's utter amazement he found a check for $500 in that envelope! Again, we were overwhelmed with the perfect timing of God's provisions!
Clearly God was providing us with everything we would need to move forward with this adoption. We filed our last set of papers, along with a $500 check, and waited for our next communication with the Lighthouse. It was now mid-April 1997. We wouldn't hear from anyone until the middle of summer. And then the process would begin to move along more quickly. Our precious newborn baby was being nurtured and prayed over by the many volunteers at the Lighthouse as well as by our family. And we waited.
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