Our Story

Our story started about 12 years ago. Before Chip and I were married (before we were even engaged, in fact) we talked about our children. Sitting in the car outside a restaurant, we named our children. We would call our son "Miles Alexander" and our daughter would be "Hannah Claire". We somehow knew in our hearts we would have those two children. I even knew that our son would be born first, and that he would have blonde hair, and that our daughter would be second, and that she would have straight, black hair.

We got married in October of 1997. Six years later, we had our beautiful son, blonde hair and all. While we were overjoyed at his arrival and treasure him to this day, the pregnancy was not what I had hoped for, and the birth itself was traumatic for me. Then that first year with an infant was the hardest year of my life. I'll spare you all the details, but in short, I felt I could not go through that experience again. So I began to wonder, why was it that God had revealed my children to me, years before they were even conceived, only to give me just one of them?

I struggled with this for the next four years after my son was born. Finally convincing myself I must have been mistaken in what God had showed me about my children, I pushed every desire to have a daughter deep into the back of my mind and heart. By suppressing any thought of another child, I was able to temporarily fool myself into believing that I was meant to have only one child. I clung to that idea with desperation, telling myself how lucky I was to have it so easy with just one child to raise. But something small and quiet, back there in the recesses where I had hidden my supposedly forbidden desire for another child, something began to fight to be heard. That "something" was God telling me, "Yes, what I showed you is true. You will have a little girl. You'll find her in China, and you will go there, adopt her, and bring her home." No, I didn't literally hear those words; what I felt was God touching my heart, telling me what I needed to do.

So now it all made sense. A little girl from China would have straight, black hair! I just had to bring it up to Chip, which I was not looking forward to. So one evening after he got home from work, when he was playing on the couch with Miles, I casually asked him, "How would you feel about adopting a little girl from China?" And his response was, "Yeah, sure." Of course, I was shocked, expecting him to react very negatively to my idea. He had seen the pain I'd gone through with the birth of our son and he'd agreed with me that we shouldn't have any more children. But now I learned that he always knew we would adopt; he was just waiting for me to be the one to bring it up. He knows me so well. He knew if I wasn't ready for the idea, it would be a big "no" for sure!

So here we are now, beginning our journey to bring our little girl home. When I even allowed myself to consider adoption in the past, I always dismissed the idea immediately because of the costs involved. "There's no way we could afford it, so stop thinking about it", I would tell myself. But now it is all different. I know now that God will provide. We will have to raise this money, and we believe can do this. And God will be there all the way.

To read more along our adoption journey, visit our blog:

http://ourjourneytohannahclaire.blogspot.com/