Miracle Story #15 (Part 3 of 3)
“When Cade was about ten or eleven months old, we were going to a youth conference and so I stopped nursing him. And again my doctor was like, “Okay, get after it. Start trying.”
And we tried. And we tried. And we tried. And we tried.
Nothing was happening.
And this time we actually did make it to the fertility clinic. For real this time.
Another two and a half years had passed. And they just run a lot of tests. And so we started some fertility drugs, and then shots. And then we did end up doing the turkey baster, that’s what we call it…with the IUI, where they spin out his stuff and then they turkey baste it in.
It’s really, really romantic. (laughs)
Five hundred dollars every time. And I had sonograms. And I’d give myself shots.
And it was brutal.
So, that was not working either. And that was as far as we wanted to go with it.
A new test came out at that time, and it basically measured the viability of your eggs. I can’t remember how they did that, but anyway, I had some sort of procedure and then they tested.
And when my doctor walked in that room she said, “You can keep doing this as long as you want Laci, because I’m never going to give up for you. But I want you to know that as soon as your egg leaves, it starts to disintegrate. It’s like you’re eighty years old.”
And I was like, “Okay.”
So this was after we’d already had two IUI’s, three maybe. And so I went home that day and said to Chris, “Are we doing it again? Are we wasting our money? I don’t know.” I was doing it for my desire to have another baby.
Here I am again Lord.
And we just decided to take a little break. But it didn’t mean we weren’t going to do that again.
You know, to try.
I went in to work out at the YMCA and I ran into this girlfriend of mine there, who I hadn’t seen in a long time. And she had maybe three or four children at that time. They were very blonde, very fair- skinned. And she was pushing this little stroller with this dark-skinned, dark-haired little boy and I was like, “Oh my gosh, how are you Lori?”
And we started talking.
So it comes about. She said, “Well we adopted.”
And I said, “I was gonna ask you if you were babysitting because I was thinking all your kids are super fair skin, freckled, blonde...and you have this little one.”
And so she started laughing and she said, “We adopted. You’ve been on my heart. Have you ever had any more kiddos?” Because I hadn’t seen her in years.
And I was like, “No, just the boys. We tried.” And I kind of told her the story.
And she was like, “Wow. So you’re the one I need to give this number to. You’ve got to call this number.”
She wrote this name and number down and handed it to me.
And I was like, “Oh actually, I don’t know if you know our history, but we adopted and, no. That was so painful, I don’t want to put my boys through something like that.”
I was just like, “Thank you but no thank you.”
And she said, “No. You are to take it. You can do whatever you want with it.”
I didn’t even work out that day. I went back out to my car and I just busted out crying.
God, I’m confused.
I didn’t feel like I was done with trying to have another child but I also didn’t want to open that door again, I didn’t think.
Because it was painful.
I didn’t know until that moment that I had not healed from that first adoption experience. I thought I had. I thought I had truly seen that I would never have been able to take care of Carter, this sick baby with a NG tube, had the adoption gone through. I got it. I thought I saw it.
And at that time, I hadn’t even talked to our first adopted son’s mother again. I didn’t know the rest of her story. I just thought that was His plan, you know? We were supposed to learn something and then I was pregnant and now I can see why we didn’t do that….in my own little world view of things, where everything fit into the puzzle piece, you know?
There were way more pieces that I would later find out but…
So I called Chris and I was just bawling. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to shut this door, but it seems painful. And real heavy. And open.”
And he was like, “I don’t know. Just put it in your purse and we’ll talk about it tonight.”
We prayed and prayed and prayed about it.
And we finally decided there was no reason we couldn’t do both. Why not fill out the paper work and see what happens, but keep moving forward with our fertility plans of taking a few months off and then trying again maybe.
So that’s what we did.
So we filled out all of this paperwork, which kind of led to other things. We started learning about that again, because it had been almost twelve years from when we very first started. And so things were very different. Things were like, internet and online. (laughs) As crazy as that sounds.
And so we started researching and filled out our stuff. We got a new packet. Looked into international adoption, filled that paperwork out. So we really started digging into that, meanwhile not getting pregnant.
Now we were in the middle of deciding that we were going to go with Nepal. Because in Nepal, this is crazy, but if you had biological children, they had to be the same sex. So if you had a boy and a girl, you were out. They either had to be all girls or all boys. Or you could just have no children at all, from infertility. And whatever your children were, you would get the opposite. So I had two boys, so they would only allow me to have a daughter. Which was fine with me.
So we had started filling all that out. We kind of had settled that we were going to go international. I’ve always had a heart for that kind of stuff.
And then we got a phone call that one of the places that we had submitted our stuff into, had matched.
Now mind you, the time that had passed between the time we had filled that out and the time we got the call, was not long.
At all.
When we filled out the paperwork, we had told them we did not care if it was a boy or a girl, race or nationality. Almost nothing. We had checked every box as, ‘Fine. Fine. That’s all fine.’
We didn’t care.
I really think the time between when we filled it out and that call was like, three weeks.
Not very long.
And it was this little southern girl and she was like, “Ma’am, I can’t believe this, but you’ve already been matched.”
And I was like, “What?!?!”
Wait! Maybe I’m not ready...
All of this stuff flooded into my mind. ‘How do I talk to my kids about this? What do I say? What if something happens?’ It was just pouring out of me.
And this lady was due in February.
And so she was like, “We’d like to get you on a call with her. She’d like to meet you.”
So I called Chris and he was like, “Laci, yes! Say yes. This is why we did it.”
And so I called back and we set up a call.
This was on a Monday night and we talked to her. And I was scared as I’ll get out.
All these emotions.
That’s when I realized that I hadn’t really healed, really. That, and when I talked to my friend Lori.
So we talked to her. She said, “Yes, I want to stay with it.” She was having a baby girl, due in February.
This was probably October.
I talked to her a couple of times and the following Monday was a holiday. We were going to send her money and different things like that. Well I had forgot that it was a postal holiday, and so I couldn’t send anything. So I was going to call her that night and tell her.
I was out to dinner for one of my friend’s birthdays and I got a call. I saw it was her and so I answered it. I was like, “Oh my gosh, I was going to call you tonight and let you know that I couldn’t wire that because..etc, etc.”
And she said, “I can’t do it.”
And I got up from the table and I went to the bathroom, and I talked to her for a few minutes. And I was like, “Okay. I get it.”
So I hang up. And I couldn’t even get myself out of the bathroom.
I was like, ‘This is why I wasn’t going to do this.’ You know?
I had to call Chris. I had to go back out there to my friends. I was going to ruin dinner. Because I couldn’t get myself back together.
And they were of course, very kind. I don’t even know that either of them even knew my history. And so I had to tell them that.
And they were like, “Let’s go. Let’s just go home.”
So I came home. And my mom and my sister, in an effort to protect me were like, “Ugh! This is why we didn’t want you to do that.”
So anyway, I called the agency the next morning and I told them. And they said, “Given your history, we will give you your money back.”
We had already paid. It had been a week but we had paid them right away.
They said, “Normally we roll it over into another adoption, but we get it.”
And so Chris said, “Just give us a couple of days. Can we please pray about this?”
So two days pass.
It was a Wednesday. We were youth workers at our church. I was at church upstairs, and I saw all these kids just like, everywhere. I could see them mouthing my name and I thought, ‘Something is wrong.’
Chris had taken the boys and I started to panic because I thought something was wrong.
But they were like, “You’ve got to call Chris right away.”
And I went to get my phone out of my car. (laughs) Because again, it wasn’t like today, where you leave your phone by your side.
And I run to my car and I get it and call him and he goes, “Hurry up! Hurry up! You need to call them. We’ve already been matched again!”
I was like, “Whoa whoa whoa, what?!”
“Everybody’s okay.”
“No way. Uh-huh. I thought we were going to get our money back.”
We kind of got into this like, discussion. And he was like, “Just call them!”
This was two days from the day the lady changed her mind.
So I called them. I was shaking.
And she was like, “Laci, you just matched. But this is a baby that is already born.”
“What?”
I was so confused. I first thought my kids were in a car accident or something, and now I was switching over to this.
I was like, “What?”
“Yeah, I know. We didn’t take your application out of the file. And you matched.”
Oh my gosh…
So I hung up and I called Chris back. We talked details. I called them back. I called Chris back. I called them back.
And on the last call, Chris was like, “I don’t really care, but is this a boy or a girl?”
“I forgot to ask. I don’t even know!” (laughs)
So I called her back and I said, “We don’t care, but is this a boy or is this a girl?”
And she was like, “Oh my gosh, we didn’t even talk about it! It’s a girl!”
So I talked to Chris and we decided to discuss it that night.
And so the next day we got on the phone with them. And we hung up.
And about an hour later she called me back and she said, “Can you come and get her tomorrow?”
And I was like….’Can. I. Come. Get. Her. Tomorrow….’
Wow.
From start to finish, we’re talking like…three weeks.
We got in the car.
We took our kids out of school.
And I bawled the entire way there.
From the night that the first mom had told me on the phone that she couldn’t go through with it, at my friend’s birthday dinner…to the time that we were in the car driving to pick up our daughter….
Five days.
God, really?
Crazy.
So we were in the car. I was trying the best I could, to speak to an eight year old and a four year old about how we were going to go meet this baby. And that it didn’t necessarily mean that it was their sister, and that God had plans. I was trying to teach them that actually I had been there before.
I was scared to take them in.
And we pulled up to the house and I said, “Boys, please just be quiet. I don’t know how this is going to go. We don’t know what’s going to happen, or what God’s plan is. We hope this is our sister, but it’s not always how it looks. Sometimes He sends you on a different mission. You just don’t know it.”
So I was telling them all this.
And we walked in, and my four year old looked at the baby and he goes, “Can I hold my sister?”
And I was like, “Okay, great.”
The lady, the social worker, was like, “Sure!” And she picked her up. It was so funny.
And so he was holding her and we were talking. And I was just a nervous wreck.
Is this going to go through? What’s going to happen?
Because she was already born, we could go anywhere there was a notary public. We could go to the bank. We could go anywhere. And I was like, ‘Really? Is this how this transaction looks?’ There wasn’t a waiting period, because she was already born.
So we took her in the car with us. We went there. They signed the papers.
And it seemed like an eternity.
They walked back out, and she held up the paper. Which basically meant, ‘We got it.’
And it was done.
Like that.
Wow.
I had always wanted the name Harper to be my daughter’s name, if I ever had one. And Chris looked at me and he goes, “I just don’t think I really like that name.”
“What?! I’ve got this baby in the back seat, and now you tell me! Are you kidding?”
“Yeah, I think Chloe.”
“Really? Chris. Carter. Cade. Chloe. And Laci? Really? No. We’re not doing that.” (laughs)
So we were in the front seat, with this infant and two little boys in the back seat. And I said, “Boys, what do you want to name her?” (laughs)
Where is my head? I’d never done that.
And they were like, “How about Ella?”
And I was like, “Really? Okay. Well she should have a proper name in case she ever needs to…” Who knows what I was thinking. (laughs)
“How about Isabella? And we’ll call her Ella.”
So that was how she got her name.
Ella Claire.
It was the most surreal thing.
So we went back to their house and they just kind of wanted to give us all of this stuff.
I asked them to write her a letter.
And they did.
They gave us all of these things. An outfit that had never gotten out of the box, from her dad. Just all these things.
We did have to stay in the state, because it was a different state. An inter-state compact has to go from state to state and then back, before you can leave the state. So we had to get a place.
Well we just so happened to have friends who had friends, who had parents who had…etc. etc.
When we walked into the door and went and put our bags down, there were two things that stood out to me.
On the wall, was a scripture. And that scripture had been something that for the last twelve years, I had prayed.
It was Philippians 4:6-7:
“Be anxious about nothing. But in everything pray and make your petition known to God, and the peace that passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Jesus.”
And I just always prayed that.
Because for twelve years, I was anxious. I wanted to be a mom. I had wanted a baby. I had wanted two babies. And then I had wanted three. (laughs)
I kept knowing I had wanted for more.
And I was like, ‘God, I’m not trying to say I want for more because it’s not satisfying me. I just always wanted to be a mom.’
If I had had it my way, we would have had six kids. But Chris was like, “We’re done.”
But I had written that verse so many times. I had it posted in my office at my job. I had posted it at home. And it was in the room where we were staying.
On the wall.
It took my breath away.
I took pictures of it.
Whoa.
It was like God said, ‘Here it is.’ You know?
I had to pray that, even when I was anxious. You’re telling me not to be anxious, God. And to be thankful. And to just have that peace that there’s no way it could be explained...except through Him.
And it had healed me. In every way. From an adoption thirteen years previous.
And that’s the peace that nobody can understand. He had allowed it.
All of those years of infertility. A failed adoption.
God brought multiple women into my life that needed to hear my story.
So they could have hope.
So that they could know that God had not left them.
He was there the whole time.
And so I just kept looking at that.
Then, I walked into the bathroom.
And the lady who owned the house had this little devotional open, and I have to take you downstairs so that you can see it because it is literally in my daughter’s bathroom.
It’s in Romans.
And it said, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, so that my power might be displayed for the whole world to see.”
And that was my daughter’s verse.
Because there was no way, from three weeks start to finish, that I was holding this little girl.
It was done.
She’s my daughter. It’s unexplainable. People don’t adopt and fill out paperwork in three weeks.
People were calling me, “Who is it? Who did you use?”
And I was like, “It wasn’t the agency. That agency told me six months to a year. It just so happened that that was God.”
He knew that I couldn’t wait through another pregnancy. You know what I mean?
And it was just done.
It was done and I didn’t have to worry about that.
The funniest part about it, is that she is fair-skinned. She has eczema like her brothers. She was also a little funky on milk, like her brothers. Her cough was the same.
Every time we went to my pediatrician here in town, he’s a Christian, he would come in singing Bible songs to the kids and stuff. And he forgets all the time that she is not biologically our child.
He’s like, “Ugh! I know. You’ve told me this a thousand times and I forget, every time. Because she is your child.”
I think if we did a test, she’d biologically be my child. That’s just how much. (laughs) And I always tease because even on the third one I couldn’t get anyone with olive colored skin, even when I was trying. (laughs)
People talk all the time about how much she looks like, or is built exactly like me when I was young. Or that she acts like one of us did.
We have a “Gotcha Day” on October the 12th.
I have a sign that says: I have three children. One of them is adopted. I just forget which one.
Recently I spoke. I speak all the time now at all of these events. And I brought my kids on stage and I was talking about it, and I said that. And Ella goes, “But Mom, it’s me!” (laughs)
She doesn’t get it.
We celebrate Gotcha Day every single year, even though her birthday is in August. She was seven weeks old when we got her.
And ironically, one of the craziest miracles of all, was that we got our paperwork on the 12th, the day we got her. And we were home in three days. But that paperwork had to travel to Kansas and back.
When the lady called me she was like, “I’m not calling you to tell you that we have the paper work in Kansas. I’m calling you to tell you that it’s here.”
I was like, “Where?”
“Already back on my desk. I actually don’t know how that happened. There is no way we could have sent it, it got there, and already come back. Sometimes it sits there on their desk for days before they stamp it. But I literally just sent it on the 12th. And it’s the 15th and it’s already back on my desk.”
I just giggled.
It was my sister’s birthday. And we got to come home.
We were prepared for it to be a couple of weeks. But what were we going to do with the kids? Chris was working and he was going to have to go home.
But we all just came home on the 15th.
So that was pretty cool, the miracles surrounding all of that.
And to talk to the first birth mom again, how that all evolved...
So that’s our journey from infertility to parenthood.
I guess the whole way through, I experienced everything that any normal person would.
Pain from wanting to have a child.
I thank God all the time that I got to experience pregnancy. I have friends that never did.
And my heart does break for them. (crying)
I know that having a child that is adopted, but I really can’t tell the difference. So they don’t miss out on any of that. And I’ve told them that before.
“I promise you…I don’t love Carter and Cade any different than I love Ella.”
And I forget, that I didn’t have her.
And I laugh when women compare like, “Oh I gained sixty pounds.” (I did gain sixty-three pounds with Carter) And then only forty with Cade and thought I was a rock star. And then I found out that people only gain thirteen! Are you kidding? I gained that in a toe. You know what I mean? (laughs)
I owned that pregnancy.
But to having her….there’s no difference when you first hold them in your arms. There’s no difference in how you love them.
The only thing you don’t have is that feeling of carrying a child inside, and for that, my heart breaks.
But at the end of the day that only lasts a short amount of time, and for a lifetime after, you have that love between you and your kids.
I do consider myself so blessed. And when I look back, in each of those times…
All my kids are three years and ten months apart. And that almost four years in between, and the four years leading up to Carter...just every step of the way...
Sometimes in the middle of it, you can’t see it. And that to me, is when you really have grown…in the middle of something, when you can see it. Right?
I feel like each time, I got better.
Each time God showed me, ‘If you’re walking with me every single day, then when these things come, they’re not as difficult.’
He taught me to be in His word and in prayer. Every day.
The highs. The lows. In good times. In bad times. In just normal times. In the ebbs and flows.
Because then when those things come along, never are they a surprise to God. You know? He has His hand in all of them.
Never.
It’s never a surprise to Him.
If He allowed it to pass through His hand, then it’s meant for me.
And so in each of those, He had taught us so much about even just our daily walk with Him. And how to see it in the middle of it.
Most of the time with Carter, it was way after the fact, as I was growing in my faith. With Cade, it was a little quicker, because I’d been through it. But then with Ella, I just knew the whole time that He had us.
That He had a plan.
You just have to walk it out.
And He’s going to do so much in it.
And then, sometimes it’s not about you. Sometimes it’s about the people He will bring to your life.
Nobody can understand infertility unless you’ve done it.
You can’t.
Like losing someone…if you’ve not ever been divorced you can’t talk to someone who is going through it the same as if you’ve been through it.
That’s just how it is.
And so, sometimes it’s not about you. So to allow whatever it is that He’s doing in your life to minister and bless somebody else, that’s not that far along in that journey.
You never forget it.
Every Mother’s Day, when I get to stand up...I remember the years I didn’t.
And I think to myself, ‘There’s somebody in this room wanting to stand up. And they can’t.’
And so I’ll stand right there in the middle of it and pray.
God, whoever it is sitting in that chair right now, dying inside, that wants to have a child, I’m just going to lift them up to you right now. That you make a way. And a path for them.
I don’t care how old I get, I will never forget that either.
You don’t forget those things.
They’re all three miracles.
There are moments in time that Chris will say to me, “When I look in their eyes, I literally see God.”
And what a blessing to have that.
And then there are days that I want to just bat them upside the head. (laughing) You know, normal parenting. We all have that, no matter what it is.
But truly, I am so thankful for all of those moments in my life because we grew in our walk. We grew in faith and knowing that God has the perfect plan.
He does.
All those years I wanted it, it wasn’t the right time. And I look back and I think, ‘It was. It was so perfect. I would’ve had kids a lot closer together.’
But now I get to stretch out college and all that for sixteen years. (laughs) I was thinking about how my oldest will leave in a year, and I’m not ready. Right now he’s a junior and at every senior event, I am the one bawling. Worse than the senior parents, just thinking about next year.
And I tell him that all the time.
If all my kids were real close, that would just happen so fast and it would all be over. And right now, he’ll leave and then Cade will go into high school. And then he’ll leave, and then Ella. So I’ve got sixteen years of this and it’s probably good.
Because I probably would’ve went crazy thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, all my kids are going to be gone!’
It’s such a special thing to look back and see how God molded and changed us...just every step of the way.
I wouldn’t change any of it.
I would literally not change any of it.
It set in motion a faith that allowed us in so many other areas of our life, that have nothing to do with infertility, to walk through it. You know?
I get to be a mom.
And I’m so grateful. And grateful for the things He taught us.
And the things He brought into our lives.
That’s our kids.
That’s our story.
And my sister…shethinks about it and gets pregnant! (laughs) To think that my fear was always for her, and it turned out that she was easy breezy.
I had a hysterectomy at thirty-five and obviously that meant that I was never going to have any more children, that way anyways. But I already had Ella at that point.
That was probably one of the best and worst days of my life. I really had to close the chapter on that.
Even though in the back of my mind I go, ‘Wouldn’t that be cool if I could just get pregnant.’
I wouldn’t even say I was done.
I tell Chris that all the time, that I think God’s going to do something crazy.
And he’s like, “Yeah that would be crazy.” (laughs)
We went through foster care and adoption classes and I always think….I don’t know. I think there will be something in that some day.
But who knows.
I’m always open to it.
But Chris is like, “I don’t think God’s going to do that. I think three kids…we’re done.”
Never say never. "
*On July 28, 2014 Chris and Laci founded RHope, a non-profit organization that helps children all over the world by supporting them financially and praying for them daily.
To learn more visit: http://rhope.life/
“On my first trip to Africa, God woke me up in the middle of the night with a God dream and told me we needed to help these precious kids with support for school fees, uniforms, food, clothing and other needs. I had no idea it was going to become RHope....all glory to God. Starting in Africa and now India, we will love, serve and lead wherever God sends us.” ~Laci
© 2016-2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.
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My name is Laci, and I live in Kansas.
In the midst of years of infertility and adoption, I AM Miracle Story #15.