“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways, says the Lord.” ~ Isaiah 55:8
We had been trying to conceive ever since we got married more than six years earlier. It was now November of 2021. Earlier, a Springs in the Desert prompt had gotten me thinking about why I wanted to be a mother. I realized that it was partly because I thought there should be more of my husband in the world. Eventually, I realized I didn’t mean more of Jeff’s eye color or facial features, as handsome as they are; I meant there should be more people of his character. And character comes from parenting, not genetics. That thought opened my heart to the idea of adoption. So, when Springs in the Desert offered a video “date night” to talk about adoption, we attended.
Kimberly and Greg shared their story of adopting their four kids, two through foster care. We didn’t know much about foster care, but something moved us to sign up for the next training session in January. My heart was fearful of the idea of having to say goodbye to a child I had come to love, but I was also drawn to the idea of giving parents the chance to keep their family together. Then I came across this article, linking foster care to the pro-life movement, which I had always been a part of. We decided to pursue one last fertility medication through June while continuing to discern foster care.
Fast forward to June 24, 2022. My cycle had begun the night before… TTC Game Over. Then news broke that Roe v. Wade had been overturned, which was a miracle that also meant more kids being born into difficult situations. Then, that same day, a friend in her 60’s showed up to our church group with a beautiful baby girl, whom I assumed was a grandchild. She wasn’t. She was her niece’s daughter. The niece wasn’t able to parent, so the baby was going to go into foster care, until my friend and her husband offered to provide “kinship care.” It felt like Jesus was on the dark runway of my heart with light sticks, waving his arms and signaling our path forward.
Two days later was the feast of St. Josemaria, to whom I have special devotion. The gospel reading for that day included the verse, “Foxes have dens… but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20) I could only think, “Whatever you did for the least of these…” (Matthew 25:40) Couldn’t we give a child a safe place to lay his head? I tentatively asked Jeff if he was ready to submit our foster care application. To my great delight, he was.
Enter the bureaucracy of the Department of Social Services… I won’t bore you with the details of our approval process. Suffice it to say, what should’ve taken four months took eight. Our new social worker finally came to meet us on March 16. She had a few final questions for us to mull over before we put ourselves on the “call list.” Realizing that the feast of St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, was a few days away (March 19), I started praying that we would be united with our first child that day, because I thought it would be a beautiful confirmation of Jeff’s fatherhood.
We got back to the social worker the next morning, March 17: “You can add us to the call list now.” Not six hours later, we got our first call. There was a baby boy ready to be discharged from the hospital. Could we care for him? An hour later, we were in the car, driving to the hospital. Then a nurse scooped up the most precious bundle in the world and placed him in our arms. We were parents. Not the usual kind, not in the usual way, but truly this little one’s parents for as long as God wanted us to care for him.
Why didn’t it happen on the feast of St. Joseph? Because God had in mind a more personal confirmation of Jeff’s fatherhood. Back when my husband and I were preparing for marriage, we realized a special detail of God’s providence: we first met on the anniversary of my baptism! Wow! We met on the day God claimed me as His own and created a path to heaven for me…a path whose name is Jeff (as St. Josemaria liked to say). We were both moved by that detail from God, but I was a little sad for Jeff, that the “coincidence” didn’t correlate with his anniversary. Well, the day we became parents, March 17, is the anniversary of Jeff’s baptism.
Eighteen months later, we stood before a judge, making our son forever part of our family. Evening prayer that day (as I happened to see in the Magnificat the next morning) included Psalm 113 and the words, “To the childless wife he gives a home and gladdens her heart with children.” A month later, we stood before a baptismal font as God made our son forever part of His family.
Most of the time, God works within our lives without leaving a trace, and we can wonder if He’s listening or if He cares. Every now and then, He “gets sloppy” and leaves His fingerprints everywhere so that our hearts will remember, “Our God is an awesome God.”
Cathy has been married to her husband Jeff for almost 10 years and lives in Maryland with their adopted son.
