God shows up: the Noah's adoption story

Posted with permission by Gary and Catherine Noah, who have attended Oak Mountain for the past eight years and who recently adopted Mary Blake. Here’s their story of God’s faithfulness:

Adoption is all about taking the next step, even when where you’re headed isn’t clear or visible. You take the next step because God has called you there and He promises to show up. That’s all you have to go on, usually. And that’s all you need.

But it’s hard. Hard to trust that there’s a point to the story when you don’t even know which story is being told, when you don’t know what comes next, when you don’t even know the ending.

It’s there in the confusion, the frustration, the anger, the despair, the aimlessness that God shows up.

Adoption was like that for us—not knowing the whole story but fighting to trust God to show up in the face of seeming impossibility. Here’s how He showed up for us:

We knew that we were called to adopt even before we were married.  We made the decision to pursue getting pregnant first, but after two years and much disappointment, we decided it was time to pursue adoption.  While this wasn’t plan B and we had always felt like the Lord would one day grow our family through adoption, it was heartbreaking to not experience pregnancy.

Little did we know, the adoption process would be heartbreaking in its own way.

While preparing our application for Lifeline Children’s Services, we were contacted about a baby that was up for adoption through another agency.  We jumped right in, even going to the hospital and meeting the baby and birth mother at delivery.  Just a few days later, the birth mother changed her mind.  We were devastated.  

We decided to continue the adoption process and filed our paperwork with Lifeline as originally planned.  Several months later, we got the call that a birth mother had chosen us.  We were thrilled!  We were able to meet her before the baby was born and then go to the hospital at delivery.  We felt confident that this was our baby, but a week later, we got the news that we would not be getting the baby.  Our hearts broke again.

Shortly after, another birth mother chose us.  This time it was twins.  Again, a few days after delivery, we received the call that she had changed her mind.  We couldn’t believe this was happening to us for a third time, but we held on to the fact that the Lord had called us to this.  He never promised it would be easy or painless but He did promise that He would be with us along the way and would give us all that we needed to continue the journey. It’s all we had. And all we needed. But it was hard. Really hard.

Just a few months later, the rest of our story was written and Mary Blake Noah was born.  We got the call when she was five days old and had her home in our arms when she was just three weeks old. Now, at 13 months old, she is a daily visible reminder of God’s faithfulness to us.

It’s not the road we would have chosen, but it’s the road the Lord had to lead us on to teach us the things that He did. His kindness came to us through the people of Oak Mountain. They spoke truth when we needed to hear it, they reminded us of the gospel when we struggled to believe, they prayed for us, encouraged us, and had hope for us when we had none. OMC’s Porch Light Ministry also helped us financially by giving us a matching grant that helped with our final adoption cost.

In other words, God showed up. He always has. He always will. To God be the Glory, Great things HE has done!