Adopted

By Mary Bruno

As young girls, it is not unusual to speak about our future children as if they already exist. “I will never let my son play football because it is too dangerous.” “I hope my daughter will be a dancer like me…

Most of us expect to get married and get pregnant without giving much real credit to the possibility that we will become 1 in 8 infertile couples.

I was no exception, except my daughter would play volleyball like me. I got married to my wonderful husband, but our hearts broke a little more with each passing year as reality set it in. We felt like childless parents. My husband and I felt a deep desire and call to give ourselves in love to a tiny human of our own, but it was just not happening.

Adoption became the natural next consideration. But I feel embarrassed to say that I never considered adoption until it became evident that we couldn’t achieve a pregnancy. Why do so many of us wait until we are infertile to consider it? Why isn’t it talked about more in church and in our homes to be open to this beautiful pro-life option to growing our families?

For me, it meant accepting that I would never bear children, which was a lie from the enemy that only fed my fear. Thankfully, God blessed me with a husband who was not limited by these thoughts and patiently showed me how to experience the freedom of putting our plans in God’s hands.

Just over one year later, we welcomed our baby girl into the world via another woman’s womb. The whole experienced changed us forever as we stepped into unfamiliar challenges and opened our minds and hearts. Bella’s “tummy mommy” appeared weak to the world, but brave, strong and incredibly selfless to us. She sacrificed herself in many ways to give both us and her child the priceless gift of life.

Our docility to the Holy Spirit gave birth to actual parenthood, which was desperately longed for for years.

Parenthood did not come in the way we expected, but came in the way we didn’t even know our hearts desired! This is the result of trusting in a loving father who truly wants what is best for us. He turns even the most hopeless of prognoses into the most beautiful victories for us, his own adopted children.