1 Kings 3:16-28

“Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One of them said, "My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me. The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us. "During the night this woman's son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast. The next morning, I got up to nurse my son-and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn't the son I had borne." The other woman said, "No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours." But the first one insisted, "No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine." And so they argued before the king. The king said, "This one says, 'My son is alive and your son is dead,' while that one says, 'No! Your son is dead and mine is alive.'" Then the king said, "Bring me a sword." So they brought a sword for the king. He them gave an order: "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other." The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, "Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!" But the other said, "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!" Then the king gave his ruling: "Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother." ~ 1 Kings 3:16-28 NIV

Adoption is a subject that is sure to evoke an emotional response. While our society (especially in Christian circles) is quick to rejoice when Mr. and Mrs. Childless Couple adopt a baby, they don’t know quite what to say to the pregnant woman who announces that she is placing her child for adoption. Whether it is spoken or not, the question that hangs in the air is “How could you give your baby away?”

We hear it all the time in the counseling room at the pregnancy care centers. The client comes in and she is planning on having an abortion if her pregnancy test is positive. We share the truth with her and talk to about her options. One of the options we always want to talk about is adoption.

The most frequent answer we hear is this: “I could never give my baby away.” A logical thinker immediately identifies that the two thoughts are diametrically opposed to each other. You are planning to terminate the life of the child that you love so much you can’t ‘give it away’??? Ludicrous? Yes. Tragic? Most certainly. But this unreasonable response is all too common in our self-centered society.

The story from I Kings that opens this account exemplifies the kind of sacrificial love that is required for placing a child for adoption. The birth mother who stood before King Solomon was willing to give up her rights to her child so that he would have an opportunity for life. Birth mothers who have this kind of courage are heroes and should be revered in our society.

Throughout history mothers have sacrificed much for the sake of their children. The mother who chooses to place her child in the hands of people who can care for it and love it and provide a family is making the greatest sacrifice of all.

There is such a mother somewhere in this world that I will be eternally grateful for. I have never met her or talked with her, but I thank God every day that she was honest enough with herself to know that she was not prepared to raise a child. I thank God that she wanted something better for her child than she could provide. I am an adoptive parent, and this is my story of how God brought children to our home.

We married young and had such beautiful dreams for our future – for the goals we would accomplish and for the family we would raise. There would be a little girl who would look just like her daddy and wrap him around her little finger. There would be a little boy who would look just like his mommy and grow up to be someone important. But there was a carefully timed schedule, too. There were careers to build, homes to buy, and educations to complete. The fear of pregnancy at the “wrong” time was the constant daily reminder to be careful and use birth control faithfully. The years flew by, and the “right” time came; we were ready for the Parenthood Phase of The Plan For Our Life.

We were still ready the next year, and the next. We made the rounds, visiting specialists and fertility clinics. I took fertility drugs, and had tests and various ‘procedures’, and on our ninth wedding anniversary we were told that we would probably never conceive a child of our own.

We decided it was time to move on with our lives. The Things To Do list included Travel, so we took our savings, bought new luggage and went to Europe. The excitement of planning the trip helped take away the dull ache of knowing we might remain childless. We promised our friends a big party to share pictures when we returned. The trip was wonderful; the photographs were better than we could have imagined, and the dinner party was on for Friday night.

I spent most of the day in bed, knowing that I was coming down with the flu. I was just so tired. I slept late in the morning, napped in the afternoon, and was ready for bed by 9 PM. Yes…you guessed it. I was pregnant. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles. Like Hannah*, God had granted us the petition that we had asked of Him. Our son was born 9 months after our European vacation! After a year or so, we began to pray that God would send us another child. That little girl was still a dream that we held dear.

One year – two years – three years. No baby. Quadruple doses of fertility drugs. At some point in time you start to ask God, “Is this what you want us to do, or is there another way?”

We began to explore the possibility of adoption, and connected with a local Christian agency. We were approved and our baby was due on our 14^th wedding anniversary. We waited with baited breath for the phone call. The call came, but it was not the news we had been waiting for. “The birth mother has decided to parent the baby. We’re very sorry, but you knew all along that this was possible.”

Yes, we knew – but we never believed that it could happen to us. “Was it a boy or a girl?” was the only response I could come up with. A healthy baby girl, but

*Read Hannah’s story in I Samuel chapter 1

don’t worry, we will just put your name back in the pool and our next baby will be yours.” Disappointment and anger warred for first place in my emotional responses. Somewhere deep down I did trust God, but my human reaction was overriding my trust. Wasn’t that OUR baby girl, God?

Of course our son, now 4 years old, had questions of his own. Being a lawyer’s son, he thought we should probably sue someone! In explaining to him that God’s ways are not our ways, I began to experience peace in my own heart. I really did believe that God was in control.

Two weeks later I received a phone call from one of my best friends. She and her husband were friends with a young pastor and his wife who lived in a nearby town and they had gone to visit them just days before.

They were surprised to learn that the pastor and his wife were caring for a little girl that was the granddaughter of a lady in their congregation. The teen mom was really struggling and was considering the possibility of placing the baby for adoption. The pastor and his wife were the natural choice; they had two little boys, had been told they couldn’t have more children, and desperately wanted a little girl. It seemed like the perfect answer for everyone involved.

It just wasn’t God’s plan. In casual conversation, my friends asked this sweet couple to pray for us – their friends that were involved in an adoption that fell through. They drove home and never gave the conversation another thought.

But the pastor and his wife gave the conversation much more thought. They couldn’t sleep that night. They stood over the crib where this precious baby slept and prayed for God to show them what to do. They were already in love with her. They already thought of her as their child, even though the legalities were not initiated. They talked about what it would be like to accept the fact that their family was complete without a daughter.

Over the next two weeks they talked to the birth mother, to the grandmother, and reached their decision. This was not their baby; it was ours. They made the phone call that morning and just a few hours later, my daughter was in my arms. The consent forms were signed by both the birth mother and father in the next 48 hours and we had miraculously become parents again!

Isaiah 60:22b says, “I am the LORD; in its time I will do this swiftly." Wow! He certainly was. We had so many opportunities to tell people how God had worked in our life. We were filled with great joy because we believed we had seen His hand at work. One of the precious confirmations that we saw happen was the day we went to pick up the baby.

Before they brought her out to meet us, the pastor and his wife just shared some things with me about her life up to that point. She was almost 6 months old, but because of the lack of attention, was not very responsive to outside stimulus. In their words, “She just kind of lives in her own little world. She doesn’t cry a lot, but she also has never smiled. She doesn’t like to be held – most of her time before she came to us was spent in an infant seat. The pediatrician says all that will change in time, but don’t expect too much too fast.” My heart rose to the challenge, but I cautioned myself to take it easy.

Before we left our house that afternoon to go and meet the baby, I let my 4 year old look through the baby toys we had purchased just weeks before. “Would you like to take a toy to your new baby sister?” I asked him. He chose a huge, brightly colored rattle and we were off.

We sat in the tiny living room of the pastor’s house and held out our arms to receive this child that the Lord was delivering into our hands. She came to me without hesitation, but with a somber face.

My little boy approached her tentatively and held the rattle out to her. Her precious face lit up with the biggest smile in the world – it was like God’s rainbow of promise was all over that little living room! Every adult in the room was in tears – God’s goodness was so evident and His Spirit was so present! The pastor and his wife both said later that if there had been any lingering doubts, God erased them all with that smile!

We had our miracle son when the doctors said we would never conceive. We had our daughter that was provided by His gracious and generous plan. We had just built a new home that was designed with the faith that there would be a second child someday. God had allowed us to achieve most every dream that we had put on that list so many years before. As I look back, I realize that we were almost smug in our satisfaction with the place where we had arrived.

This would be a perfect place to end our adoption story, and refer you back to the passage in I Kings about the sacrificial love of birth mothers. I was certainly thankful for the heroic birth mother who had recognized her limitations and loved her little girl enough to place her in the arms of a loving family who could provide for her and protect her. I was so glad that she had chosen life for this child and not abortion. But the story didn’t end there.

Almost six months to the day that we became parents of this beautiful little girl, someone knocked on my door. I was so surprised to see the pastor’s wife standing there. Of course, as an adoptive parent who had seen all the TV movies, you always think, “what if she ever tries to get the baby back?” When I saw this woman’s tear-streaked face, I feared the worst. She came in and sat down and told me an amazing story.

“Do you know anyone who might want to adopt a little boy? We really didn’t know this information six months ago, but apparently your daughter’s birth mother was already pregnant again when she signed the consent forms for the little girl. Maybe she didn’t even know that she was pregnant again. She delivered prematurely almost two months ago. They didn’t think the baby would live, but he has proven to be quite a fighter. He was in the hospital neo-natal unit for 6 weeks. She has been living in a car with him for the last two weeks and now he is very sick. She is ready to give him up – she knows she can’t take care of him. Do you know anyone who might want him?”

Sometimes the obvious is very illusive. I referred her to the attorney who had handled the adoption for us. Days passed and my husband and I talked about other families we knew that might want to adopt.

In the meantime, the mother had signed consent forms and custody of the baby was temporarily placed with the attorney. A medical examination revealed that the baby had pneumonia and he was put back in the hospital. (Months later the pediatrician said he didn’t believe that the baby would live.)

We finally came up with the name of a couple that we knew were praying about adopting. My husband called them, explained the situation, and was met with silence on the other end of the phone. “Hello – are you there?” he asked, assuming that the good news had rendered the man speechless. Our friend cleared his throat and stumbled over his words, “Um – isn’t that – I mean, I think that’s YOUR baby.” Silence again. Both ends of the line this time. Then a commitment for them to pray for God’s wisdom.

My husband called me to relate the details of the conversation to me. I already knew. I had known the moment the pastor’s wife told me the story. My husband knew. He knew the moment the attorney, our friend, called to say she had signed the consent. But our lives were perfect and we weren’t looking for anything that might change our little plan.

But God has gifts in store for us that we can’t even dream or imagine. We talked, we prayed, and we spent a weekend thinking about it. We discussed it with our extended family. I went to my mother’s house for the weekend and talked with her, with my grandmother, and my favorite aunt.

No one thought this was a good idea. People said things to us like, ”That’s just what you need…another baby. You’ve got your hands full with these two kids…why do you need another one?”

I left there on Sunday afternoon feeling drained and more confused than ever. To make matters worse, my daughter screamed for most of the 3 hour trip home, and my 4-year old son joined in when the frustration of not being able to make her stop crying set in. I drove down the turnpike in tears myself; knowing what God was telling me to do and wondering if I was able to do it.

As I thought about all the arguments for and against adopting another child, I realized that all of my reasons for saying no were the same reasons that people use to justify abortion. God allows a life to be formed and women decide daily to snuff out that life because it isn’t convenient.

This teenager had given a precious gift to the world in that baby boy – having already faced the pain of placing one baby for adoption, she could so easily have chosen to abort this little boy. God had spoken clearly to me. He had put the same knowledge in my husband’s heart, so we took lots of deep breaths and took the parental plunge one last time.

We brought him home from the hospital on a Monday. It was the day he was actually due to be born and he was already two months old, even though he only weighed seven pounds. He and his sister have birthdays that are just ten months apart and our life was a little crazy for a few years…making the adjustment from ten years of childlessness to a crew of three!

I like to explain it to people this way: our first son was a miracle and a testimony to the fact that God can prevail, even when the “experts” tell you no; our daughter is a testimony to the fact that God wants to give us the desires of our hearts, and God knew we wanted that little girl – but this last baby – our unexpected son – is testimony to the fact that God just likes to give us gifts!

We have been blessed beyond measure by a teenager who loved her two babies with a sacrificial love. I pray for her every year on their birthdays, hoping that God has rewarded her for her sacrifice, that He has blessed her with other children, and that she is at peace with the decisions she made those many years ago to give these two babies a family.

~ a grateful mom

Hope Pregnancy Centers

Broward County, Florida

P.S.

Oh, yes – one more miracle…remember the struggling pastor and his wife who couldn’t have any more children? Just about a year after we adopted our son, she became pregnant and gave birth to a little girl.

When the kids were teenagers, we had the opportunity to visit with them and hear their perspective of those few months – about the pain they experienced when God instructed them to give the baby to us, and how He had walked them from the valley of disappointment to the mountaintop of having their own little girl! God had blessed their ministry and had prospered them financially as well.

They are serving today as leaders in a large church in another state. The home where we visited them was so beautiful – quite a far cry from the little place where they lived when they placed our daughter in our hands! The fabric of our lives is forever entwined with other believers…I’m sure we will never know the fullness of it until we sit with Jesus in Heaven and have the holy discussions that begin, “Remember the time….?”

Buy Stories of Hope today, at the link below.