Some people refer to it as a paper pregnancy. It’s the process of being approved for adoption through your chosen agency, which officially happened for us in October. Then we had to wait. It’s that moment – all ready, but not yet. Do we start to plan or let it just happen? Do we get a nursery painted and register at Target or do we just keep living as if nothing is different in our lives? Being chosen to adopt a baby could take three weeks or five years.  Should we have high expectations just in case we do have a child placed with us, or do we go on with life because it might take a long time?

We chose to have no expectations. We decided that when God placed a child with us we would respond accordingly. In hindsight, I probably should have expected a bit more intently. Fast forward. It was a Thursday. I was in a meeting with Brad Lomenick and Ken Coleman talking about potential speakers for Catalyst. My phone rings, its Andre (my wife)…”Hello?” “I need to talk to you its important.” The tone was very strong and I thought she was upset with me because of an email I had sent earlier. So, I walked out of the room ready to apologize.

“What’s up?”
“We have been chosen.”
“For what?”
“Jeff, we have been chosen for adoption! And the baby has been born. It’s a girl. She was born on Christmas Eve. And we are picking her up on Monday.”

That was the phone call that changed my life forever. We didn’t expect to get chosen this quickly. We didn’t have any expectations. I didn’t expect to get chosen this quickly. Did I say that already? And when I say, we didn’t have expectations; I mean we had nothing in our house for a child. The only thing in our entire house was a crib that had been given to us a month earlier. We had nothing ready and now I’m a dad.

So, what do you do when an unusual tomorrow happens to you? You share that situation with others and invite your community to join you in the new day. We started calling family and friends to share the news. The excitement was overwhelming and the response was unending, as people and boxes starting showing up at our door. Our friend even filled out a registry on our behalf (because we had no idea what we even needed). It was an overwhelming example of love that our community shared with us in the form of diapers, formula, toys, clothes, furniture, and even a wipe warmer? Four days later, we were ready to welcome little Jada Rae into our home.

On that Monday, we had an hour long drive to pick her up and it felt like the longest drive of my life, as I looked at the car seat in my rear-view mirror. We were sweating, crying, laughing and silent – every emotion at once. We were fearful and excited in the same breath. We walked into the adoption agency and they asked us if we wanted to meet our baby girl. They brought her out and handed her to my wife. This was one of the most beautiful moments we have ever experienced. Our expectations were surpassed, our community was gracious and our fears ended.