[OUR STORY] - [OUR STORY]
Thank you for visiting our website. We are currently in the process of international adoption to South Korea. Please feel free to read our story, or you can check out our [VIDEO] to learn more about how God brought us to international adoption. To stay up-to-date on the current status of our adoption, check out our blog.
OUR STORY
After a storybook wedding in August 2003, Drew began studying at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Two years into Drew’s Masters, we began to talk about starting our family. We had the ‘perfect plan’ for our lives. Although the idea of starting a family sounded daunting, we were excited. We still remember calculating how we would share with our families that we were pregnant and how much time we would have to read all the popular parenting books. We remember feeling anxious about all we needed to get done before baby Schmitz arrived nine months later.
It’s been over three and a half years since we considered such feelings.
Month after month went by and we weren’t pregnant. Anxiety filled our hearts. For the first time in our lives, we genuinely grasped that we weren’t in control. The feeling that God really is in control and would do whatever He wills scared us. Even more frightening was the thought that God might not desire for us to have children.
Quickly, weeks turned into months and months turned into years.
Finally, we decided to go to a doctor in order to find out if there was anything medically wrong with us. We never imagined walking into the office of a reproductive endocrinologist.
But after several months of tests we sat in our doctor’s office hand in hand and the doctor leaned forward over his desk and explained, “I do not have any biological reason for your infertility. You should be pregnant by now."
We’ll never forget that moment. It was when light turned on. We realized that this was truly the hand of God. Our doctor might not know the reason, but we knew the reason. God is in control. In that moment, we felt an overwhelming sense of joy and peace and freedom.
We knew that God was in control. Don’t get me wrong, we always knew this. However, it wasn’t until this moment that we understood this magnificent truth. Pregnancy was not in His plan right now, or possibly ever.
We were reminded of Job’s words, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You…” (Job 42:2, 5)
During those difficult years we had discussed the possibility of adoption. Yet it was here that adoption became much more relevant. Through much prayer and counsel, God had opened our hearts to adoption. But only God can work on our hearts for those three years preparing us for what He had planned for us all along.
We now know that adoption is God’s heart for our family, and we are so excited to share His heart by reaching out to a child in need of a mother and father.
We wouldn’t trade our infertility experience for anything. Through the times of questioning, God was there. During the times of perceived silence from Him, He was there.
We are different today because of this difficult season. We are experiencing the immense joy of knowing we are in God’s will. Our eyes are opened to God’s heart for the fatherless and we would never have known this but for this experience and His decision to not allow us to get pregnant. God has given us His heart for the fatherless and that is why we are adopting.
{ to learn more, watch our videos by clicking on [VIDEO] }
{ to learn about the current status of our adoption, click on [BLOG] }
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