This Road Doesn’t End in Heartbreak

August 2, 2018

The story of our failed adoption.

I can’t think of a fancy introduction to this, so I’m just going to launch into it. Our hearts are broken. We have been pursuing the adoption of a little boy for over 18 months now and it is now over. He is not going to be our son. Or our girls’ brother. I will not be his dad and Lindsey won’t be his mom. And we are broken. He wasn’t just any little boy, but a little boy that our family fell in love with. Actually, he was a six-month-old baby that we fell in love with, who is now two years old. We haven’t kept this all a secret to those around us, but it hasn’t made its way online, so many people who follow me online likely had no idea. When we met him we had one-year-old twins and a three-year-old and were barely handling that. But he captured our heart. And more than that, we felt clear and obvious leading from God that we were supposed to try to adopt him. I know that might seem odd to many folks, but it was and has been very real to us. Before we were even married we had only two names that we wanted to name our children…Charlee for a girl…and a boy name. When we found out we were having twins, our boy name was set in stone. But they were girls, so we couldn’t use it. And then this baby boy came along, and he already had a name. And it was THAT name. Our boy name (I’m not going to write it for the sake of his and other’s privacy). Silly, I know, but it was a neat coincidence. But then other things happened…other “signs” you could call them. And Lindseywas convinced. But I wasn’t. We were drowning with children already. As someone close to me said at that time, “You need another kid right now like you need a bullet wound.” Plus, we very clearly are able to make babies (whether we intend to or not) and I’ve always felt that kids (not babies) are the ones that should be adopted by people who DON’T struggle with infertility, because there are plenty of folks who can’t have babies and would love to adopt a baby. But Lindsey kept asking me to pray and think. She encouraged me to write about it. That’s often how I get clarity and process emotions. So on a cold night in January of 2017, I made a fire in the backyard and wrote. And wrote and wrote. And discovered something: I wanted a son. Deep inside of me I wanted one. And I also realized that that’s okay. To want a son. Even though I had three daughters that I loved with all of my heart, I shouldn’t be ashamed to also desire a son. And I felt deep inside that God was telling me: It’s okay to want that and to pursue that. Go for it.

So I called my mentor and his wife and they said yeah. I called my dad and mom and they said yeah. I called one of my best friends who, with his wife, has experienced miscarriage and infertility and has adopted two babies and he said yeah. And I said to him, “But we can make our own babies, so shouldn’t we leave this boy for someone who can’t have children?” And he said, “I really believe that God puts your babies in your arms. You don't have much to do with it. I don't think it's your choice.” Which I thought was beautiful. Then, because I really wanted to be sure, I spoke with eight different black men and asked them what they thought about a white family adopting a black child. Their responses were overwhelmingly positive and every one of them was excited for us. So finally I said yes. And from that moment forward, he was our son in our heads and our hearts. We saw him weekly (sometimes multiple times). Most weeks he stayed a night or two at our house. And he just fit. I don’t know how else to say it, but he just belonged. It made sense. Like a puzzle piece we never knew was missing. And we loved him. Over the last year and a half we have seen our future with him spread out before us. Every thought we had of the kids as elementary age kids, as high schoolers, in college, he was there. We dreamt of his wedding, of who he would marry, of our grandkids from him. Of how protective the girls would be of their little brother. Of how protective he would be of them as he got bigger. We loved that our girls would have a brother throughout their childhood. I imagined teaching him woodworking (which I imagine with the girls as well) and of being his biggest fan and greatest supporter. He’s had a room in our house for 18 months. Everything we’ve done, every decision we’ve made or didn’t make was filtered through adopting him.

At the beginning we spoke to the people in charge of his adoption and they said it was a very real possibility. So we did our adoption classes (which are long and difficult to do with young kids at home and the hours I work) and our home study was approved and everything was set. It was going to happen. His GAL was totally on board and things were going to happen. We found out we were surprise pregnant with Wren the night before our last adoption class and nothing changed for us. He was going to be our son. There was no question. And through it all: God. Folks, I can’t even explain how much God has been in this. It’s too much to write out, but God has been here through it all. Faith doesn’t come easy to me, if I can be honest. The very first thing I pray when I start praying is a Bible verse in Mark, my favorite verse, that says, “I believe; help my unbelief.” I pray this because my very first thought when I start praying is, “Why am I doing this? No one is listening.” But throughout this process…it’s been different. It’s been easy to believe. God has been so present. So yeah, going back to the adoption: It was going to happen. And then…it didn’t. Months went on. The caseworkers changed and the new ones didn’t know us. They seemed to have it out for us. But still, we believed. We knew it was going to happen. And then, it all started unraveling. I’m not going to get into how, but it did. And we still held onto the strands of hope we could find. We were faithful and tried our best to act and speak honorably throughout all of the upheaval. But it has all been so hard. Excruciating. There have been so many tears. And so many prayers. At one point, through her tears, Lindsey said, “I just don’t understand, Ty. I feel like God has led us down a road that only ends in heartbreak.” She was speaking from pain and I was agreeing with her, but at the same time, something rose up inside of me later that night and the next day. A confidence...no, a certainty of who God is. And who God isn’t. God is GOOD...so good. When I am having a crisis of faith, all I have to do is look back and see how good he has been to me. And he ISN’T the sort of Father who leads his children down a road that ENDS in heartbreak. Though he most definitely leads his children down roads with heartbreak on them...because HE KNOWS WHAT IS FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD. I was so confident in that. This was a few weeks ago. And then…the end came. Yesterday. We were told that our chances of being able to adopt him were at about 0%. After everything, it was over. Why would God lead us down a road that ends in heartbreak?

Lindsey said to me last night that she’s worried about me. She knows that I don’t grieve well. I “feel” more intensely than the average person, but I’m not good at dealing with it. Like at all. It always feels like it is going to sink the ship…so I avoid it. As an example: the last time I felt pain like I have this week, it was maybe 12-13 years ago and I almost killed myself, ran away to another country to try to avoid killing myself, and buried the pain in drugs and alcohol and other things and never dealt with it. Jump forward seven years from then (5-6 years ago) and I finally decided to write about that time and discovered I had repressed most of it and I finally truly grieved about it for the first time. And it was rather intense. So Lindsey remembers that and says she’s worried about me and that, “I’m afraid you’re going to avoid it by working too much and playing video games instead of sleeping and then five years from now you’re going to have a nervous breakdown…so I really feel like you need to make sure you grieve and not repress this.”

So here I am. I’m at the shop right now. I didn’t go home this evening (we had planned this previously). And I’ve been avoiding it. I was all pumped about all the things I was getting done in the shop. And then Lindsey texts me saying I should listen to a song. She asks me to listen to the lyrics. I could tell it was important to her, so I decide to go give it a listen, for her sake, even though I was in the middle of something that I really wanted to finish. I have headphones on already and I turn it on. The sun has just set, yet there’s still light and the sky is beautiful to the west out of my big shop door. I step outside and it’s wonderful. This is the time of day I love and have always loved. I like to drive with the windows down at this time of day. When I smoked, I enjoyed nothing more than having a cigarette at this time. This time of day is connected with some of my warmest and most wonderful memories. It’s a spiritual time…the time-between-times, when the veil between this world and the next is thin. The work-day is over for most, so there’s no cars on the road out front and there’s a warm breeze, but the heat of the day is gone. I walk out and it’s quiet and still. I see a flash of light and realize there is lightning in the east. Big, beautiful, Florida summer lightning. Going every few seconds. This magical time of day with the colors of the departed sun in one part of the sky and lightning in the other is where I can see God. I know that’s silly to say, but it’s true. My wife is probably the only one that knows that those two things together make me feel more connected to God than anything else. They make me feel alive. And yet, I know her text to me asking for me to listen to that song at that exact time, when the sky was like that and there was lightning in the sky, was not at all intentional on her part. She was busy at home with kids and didn’t even know what it was like outside. You could call it coincidence. I walked out across the street at my shop to check the mail, planning to listen to the song outside while watching the lightning. But still not knowing what was about to happen. I got the mail and stood there watching the lightning and started to hear the words of the song, which is about God, and seems like they were written for me at that very moment:

I see the light
I see the lightning
I hear Your voice
Inside the cracking thunder
Singing...

Nothing stands between us
Nothing stands between us but love now
Nothing stands between us,
Nothing stands between us but love

River of gladness, take control
There's a cup of joy for every taste of sorrow

I see the light
I see the lightning
I hear Your voice
Inside the cracking thunder
Singing...

Nothing stands between us
Nothing stands between us but love now
Nothing stands between us
Nothing stands between us but love now

Have I tried to scale your walls in vain?
To cross your seas, I pushed against Your waves
What for all the miles have You to say?
Were You there beside me this whole way?

You always find me
In between the thunder and the lightning
You always find me
In between the thunder and the lightning
You always find me
In between the thunder and the lightning
You always find me
In between the thunder and the lightning

And I felt God more than I have ever felt him before. This was not coincidence. God brought me out there, at that moment, to hold me and not let go until I let go. And I started to cry. And I said under my breath over and over, angry, so angry, “Why?! Why? Why would you do this? Why would you lead us here? Why can’t we have our son? Why God, oh God, please, why?” And I walked back into my shop and I wept like I have never wept before. I couldn’t breathe. I almost threw up. And I wept and I wept and I wept. Heaving, shaking, weeping. I listened to the song four more times as I wept. And God was there. And though I might still struggle to believe in the future, like I have in the past. And though I might never know why. And though this pain might never go away. I believe right now. Not only do I believe that there is a God, but that there is a good God. And that he loves me. And that he cares about this. And about my pain. And that he loves this boy who I thought would be my son. And that he will protect him and be with him. And that we will be okay. Lindsey and I will be okay. I will be okay. And that this road doesn’t end in heartbreak. Somehow, it doesn’t end in heartbreak. He makes all things new.

Thank you for reading.