The Story of Sam
FOUR MAJOR TRUTHS I LEARNED THROUGH ADOPTION
Adoption is messy and beautiful and broken and redemptive.
I am not one of those women who always knew they wanted to adopt someday. Quite honestly, ten years ago I wasn’t even sure I ever even wanted children.
God had a completely different plan. He is responsible for changing all of my plans and used motherhood to bring me to places of sacrifice, unselfishness, and dependance that I never knew could exist within me.
The journey of each of my four babies coming into this world, and into our family, is beautiful and worthy of their own story. But the most spirit changing and soul sanctifying addition to our family has been Samuel. He is my youngest. My only boy. My only child born from the womb of another woman and brought into our family through adoption. The journey to Sam changed all of us for the better. God used each moment in mighty ways, to reveal beautiful truths of His love for me, truths about who I am as His child.
It is my prayer that through our family’s adoption story, these truths find a home in your heart and resonate within your soul the way they have mine.
Left to right: Adelaide, Isabella, Samuel, Josephine
1.) God’s Pursuit of Us Knows No Bounds
Have you ever sat in a church service totally tuned out of the sermon because you were just too busy having your own personal conversation with God?
Just me?
On June 29, 2014 I was in church having one of these side convos with God about the five year plan my husband, Chris, and I had been creating the night before. I don’t even remember the sentence I’d just finished in my head; but clear as day I heard God respond, “And you’ll adopt in the next five years.”
This is the only time in my life I’ve heard God so specific and clear. It was beyond the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart. I always describe it as the “inaudible, audible words of God.”
On the way home, before I could say anything, Chris starts telling me that God was putting the idea of adoption on his heart during the service. God was reminding him of how we are all orphans welcomed and adopted into the family of God. At the time our oldest two were only 2 and 6 months old so we had, in no way, been planning any new family adventures. But hey, when God speaks, you listen!
“God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ according to the pleasure of His good will” Ephesians 5:1
I spent the next weeks praying about what exactly God was calling us to, but I’d always had one major fear when it came to the idea of adoption:
Could I love this child the way I love my own children?
I now HATE that I even asked this question, but it was the honest fear within me.
Two weeks later, God in all of His goodness addressed this fear and gave me one of the best gifts of all time:
During a Sunday church service a family walked in and sat in front of us. They carried a beautiful newborn boy, fluffy baby hair and all. As I stared at this baby a very familiar feeling washed over me like a flood. It was the same feeling I had in the last month of pregnancy. It was the feeling of deep, intense, irrefutable love for someone you’ve never met. The kind of mother’s love that aches just to kiss her child’s face and hold them close. I started bawling right there.
In this very clear moment, I knew
my son.
From that point forward there was absolutely nothing that could stop me from pursuing my son. There were plenty of unknowns and overwhelming obstacles. But the TRUTH is this:
It didn’t matter what happened, what obstacle presented itself, I had a baby who would call me Mommy and abandoning the idea of adoption would mean abandoning my child.
THE GOD TRUTH:
God loves us so much like this. Sure He knows the obstacles. He knew sin required the ultimate sacrifice of His son. But just like He was willing to speak out from heaven to declare our son’s position in our family, He was willing to step out of heaven, humble himself to human status, and be our salvation and way “home”. He has declared our position in HIS FAMILY.
There is no limit to God’s pursuit for your heart.
If me, in my humanity, can possess such resolve to bring my child home no matter where he was or what his circumstance; how much more does our God resolve to do the same in our lives?!
2.) God Wants YOU to Be A Part of Other People’s Stories
After we first heard God’s direction we spent a lot of time trying to gain knowledge about adoption. There are so many different avenues to creating a family and we really had no idea where to start. Once we started asking questions, we were amazed at how many people knew someone who had adopted. Everyone was so willing to tell me their story and give me all kinds of information. Since we knew God had a newborn son in mind for us, we felt like that took international adoption off the table. We considered foster to adopt. However, someone explained to us that the goal of foster care is to reunite families whenever possible, but with such a specific calling for our family, we knew our goal was to be a home for a child who didn’t have family reunification as an option anymore.
This left domestic newborn adoption. And of course as we gathered info multiple friends kept pointing us to the same domestic newborn adoption consultant firm, Faithful Adoption Consultants… because God.
Three and a half years and another daughter later, we found ourselves ready to move forward and start our adoption journey. I know it seems like a long time to wait to get started, but I will reserve those details for another time. I will say though, it was like the thing that had been growing and growing inside our hearts had finally reached its time to bloom.
Our Adoption Announcement
So in January of 2018 we applied to become clients with Faithful Adoption Consultants. (SIDE NOTE: Best decision EVER!)
In February we were accepted and they held our hands through every step of the very scary and overwhelming paperwork process. Honestly, I’m not sure I could have stayed above float without them!
At the beginning of June we became “active”. That meant we would start receiving cases via email with information on women who where desiring to make an adoption plan for their unborn (usually) child.
Some days we got zero emails. Some days we would see five cases.
If we felt like it was a situation our family could say yes to, we would. Then our profile book (a book with pictures and information all about our family) along with others would be shown to the expectant mom. Then came the wait.
Every time we said yes to a birth mama, it felt like I was stalking my phone like a 15 year old girl waiting for her crush to call her. It was nuts.
Then we got the no’s.
There were more no’s than I even remember.
There are a few that, for whatever reason, hurt worse than others and I remember the feeling of loss each time I’d get that email saying she went with another family.
It was such an odd feeling. Here I was hoping for our family’s completion but at whose expense? On the other end of these emails were women in pain. Or sometimes the families chosen instead of us were families who were unable to have biological children and had waited years to hold a child that would call them mommy and daddy.
These times of waiting with expectation, followed by disappointment, gave me the opportunity to get to know the stories of over thirty women who I would have never known otherwise. I got to read about their lives, hear about their struggles, pray over them and their babies.
Up until this point I can’t say I’ve met many Americans who’ve been addicted to drugs or alcohol, been at such a level of poverty they have no hopes to be able to raise a child they desperately love, been homeless, etc. Yet there I was, hurting, at times crying, at the thought of what some of these women were going through.
THE GOD TRUTH:
How can we pray for and love on people we never get to know?
Sure, I never got to meet any of those women face to face. But I knew enough that God could use me and my family to intercede on their behalf. We took part in their grief even though they never knew us.
Those families I’d hear about who were holding their first child after years of battling infertility or miscarriages; I would cry out with joy that God was writing redemption plans for both those babies and their families.
I have a new appreciation for the verse, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn” Romans 12:15. By living this verse out with people I will never know personally, people with much different stories than mine, I was reminded of just how beautiful it is when we ACT like the church. God has given each of us people to pray for, to step out of our comfort zone and love. While you may think you’re doing these things FOR the other person or FOR God; really He is doing this all for your soul growth and benefit.
3.) God Wastes No hurt: The Wilderness Before The Promised Land
After four weeks of seeing cases and hearing no’s, we got our YES! It was July, and we were visiting my Florida family for summer break. While there, we were matched (that means we said yes to an expectant mama who said yes to our family) with a woman living only an hour from where we were staying! For this blog we will call her Mama J. She was due with her baby boy in October, just under four months away!
Match Announcement on Vacation
We spent our last few days of vacation getting together with Mama J. She met our kiddos, we went to the aquarium, we had girl time; it was such a rare opportunity to build memories with my future son’s mama. “Think of all the details I’ll get to tell him!” I thought. (Side note: I’d love to go into more details about the mental shift from fearing open adoption and knowing a birth mom to desiring that relationship, but this is already a novel so just shoot me a message if you have questions!)
Over the next several months Mama J and I developed a good relationship. I went to visit her for her birthday in September and we did a 4D ultrasound together. We both cried as we heard our son’s heartbeat and saw his beautiful face.
As we neared her due date we had our bags packed, our plans for childcare made, and our phone ringers up high. Eventually she went passed her due date and had a doctor appointment planned on November 1 to schedule her induction date.
As November 1 came, the day got later, and I wasn’t hearing anything; I started to get a very scary feeling. The agency kept texting and calling her with no response.
I was nauseas.
I knew in my gut something had gone terribly wrong. No one could find her and I asked Chris to come home because I was just too much of a mess alone with the girls.
He had been home for about five minutes when the owner of the agency called Chris’s phone. In the midst of dinnertime chaos I tried to listen in on the conversation. This is what I heard:
“I’m so sorry to have to say this. It just makes me sick. As you know the girls have been trying to get ahold of ‘Mama J’ all day. She finally just responded with a text. She said she’s moving and is going to keep the baby.”
To remember this moment is hard. Tears well up as I put myself back there.
I lost it.
I started to hyperventilate as I ran upstairs so my kids wouldn’t see mommy freaking out. I locked myself in my closet and cried harder than I can ever remember crying. My head ached from the pressure built up from the flood of tears trying to escape. I kept screaming “NO, please no!”
And then I called Jessica, our adoption consultant who had become such a support through the process thus far. When she picked up the phone I just cried out, “She changed her mind!” We talked for a while through my sobs as she helped me process what this meant and how I was supposed to feel about this deep heartache. While I’ve never had a miscarriage and in NO WAY want diminish the emotional grief and physical pain than comes with one by trying to say I get it; but this moment was the closest I’ve ever come to even remotely understanding what a miscarriage might hurt like. The pain of expecting and loving a child you’ll never hold, who will never call you mommy the way you envisioned. That pain I understand now.
The thing is, that boy was never really mine. He was always hers. Our family simply said yes to opening our home and promised to love this little boy well. But we also loved Mama J. In the process I got to know her and I knew how hard this adoption was going to be for her. Understandably so! I was never mad at Mama J for changing her mind. She did what her mama heart told her to do. At the end of the day this boy and his mama I’d spent time loving were going to have each other, and that was and is something I will always be thankful for.
THE GOD TRUTH:
The week after this “failed match” was hard, and the grief would come in like waves.
Still, there were a lot of really beautiful, soul growing moments.
The first was with my girls. As they stared at their mama broken on her closet floor, teary-eyed because they knew something was very wrong, I explained how Mama J changed her mind. I explained how sad I was and how my heart hurt very bad. But I also explained that God promised that our family would adopt a son and God does not break his promises.
I got to look my girls in the eyes, tears and all, and remind them that God is still so SO good and He still has the most perfect little boy already picked out for our family. I would ache like this a hundred times if it meant my children would know the truth of God’s goodness through dark times.
The second was with my dad. I called all of our parents that night once I’d composed myself a little (or there was just no water left in my body, I’m not sure). My dad was with us when we were matched in Florida months back. He saw first hand all of the details that brought us and Mama J together. It was beyond obvious that we were supposed to be matched with her! So my dad says, “I just really thought this was meant to be.” To which I responded (honestly this was a God moment kind of response), “Dad, it WAS meant to be. It just wasn’t meant to be in the way we planned. It was meant to fail. There’s a reason for it”
I had the opportunity to share God’s sovereignty and perfect plan with my dad.
Honestly, there are so many conversations and moments and “reasons” I’ve seen come from one of the hardest moments of my life.
God wastes nothing my friend.
Your grief, your pain, your struggles, the chains you used to (or still do) wear.
The story won’t end with us in our darkest moments.
I could have said I’m done. I could have decided that the pain was too much to bare and give up on the idea of starting all over again. It would’ve FELT a lot easier to go that route. But by saying yes to continuing in God’s plan, we said yes to allowing pain to be part of the story, not the ending.
In Christ, we are given that same opportunity in our spiritual lives. Being “dead in our sins” is not the end of the story when we accept Christ. Accepting Jesus as our Savior means our story is no longer a tragedy but an adventure story where a hurting person now has a purpose through their pain. It’s now a romance novel about a groom pursuing his bride; or a feel good film about a parent who is reunited with his lost child.
I want to encourage you that when life hurts more than you thought, or you ended up in a life you didn’t plan, God will waste NONE of it if you give Him room to work. Press in, invite Him in, and see Him move in beautiful, unexpected ways.
Jesus promised: “In this world you will have troubles. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
4.) Hold Tight To What You Know
Once we dusted ourselves off a little and took a day to breathe we started over again. We saw cases, but this time we were a lot pickier about who we thought would change their minds. Truth is, we were scared. The first few no’s this round were excruciating. I would think about how I wasn’t “supposed” to be going through this again. But then God would remind me, “Yes, yes you are. You are exactly in the difficult season you need to be in to continue growing and learning.”
November and early December were full of pain, but equally full of revelation. Every time I wrestled with God we came out closer on the other side.
THEN, December 13th came and I got a text from our consultant Jessica. She said there was a girl in labor with a baby boy and she’s looking at families now (Don’t asked me how she was having contractions and thumbing profile books?! She’s a champ!). We had limited info but knew we had to say a big YES!
The next day, as I fed my babies lunch my husband called me. The most memorable phone call of my life! He said, “Honey we have a son! I’m leaving work now! We need to leave now and go get him!”
I screamed and cried and jumped and kept asking if he was sure.
He was sure.
Very quickly a flood of information came our way. Information about our son who had been born the day before, information about his first mama and first dad. We were connected with all of the adoption agency people in his state who were going to be working with us while there and through finalization.
We rushed to pack our things and arrange childcare. As quick as we possibly could we got in the car and drove through the night. The agency had sent me his picture and I would just stare at his face and cry while Chris tried to stay awake for the full drive.
Us haphazardly trying to take our last picture as a family of five.
On the road and ready for our twelve hour drive.
The picture I stared at for hours of driving.
We got to the hospital at 3am and they walked us back. His bio mama had already left and he was just there in his little bed waiting for his family.
Leaving the hospital with Sam.
Take home outfit.
THE GOD TRUTH:
As I walked into that room I picked up the promise of God. A promise spoken to me in an unexpected way and brought to fruition through an unexpected journey.
Samuel Andrew-Immanuel Kavcsak
Sam with our consultant Jessica. We honestly couldn’t have survived this without her.
It took an absolute resolve to walk through the toughest parts of this journey. My feelings were like a rollercoaster, but at every wonky, nauseating turn I knew deep in my soul that at the end God was holding the child he wanted to place in our family. It was just a matter of time before He would place that child in our arms. We just had to hold fast to what we KNEW and not how we FELT.
I can look back on so many experiences from earlier on in my relationship with Christ where my feelings would hurt or grieve and my world would just crumble. I would allow everything to be questioned because of a little wave or a little wind in life. I’m so grateful God waited to put me through this process until my faith had been tested, until He knew I wouldn’t let go of Him when it got hard.
Sweet friend, as you read this thing through, let me leave you with this very amazing truth: Hold tight to what you know. We know God is good. We know God works things for our good. We know God keeps His promises. We know God loves us. We know He forgives us. We know he never leaves our side or turns His back on us in hard times.
So as the waves crash over you and the wind roars in, as they are most assuredly going to do; hold tight to the knowledge of Christ. He will hold tight to you. He will see you through to the end, I promise.
“Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep His promises.” Hebrews 10:23
Brittany Kavcsak
Brittany Kavcsak is a former elementary teacher turned stay-at-home-mom to her sweet babies Isabella, 6, Adelaide, 5, JoJo, 2, and Samuel, almost 3 months old. Her and her husband Chris have been married for eight years and are currently living in Troy, Ohio. Her main passions are body building, running, writing, reading British classics, living room dance parties with her kids, and quality time with her husband. Brittany began learning about Jesus through middle school youth group and accepted Christ as her savior at thirteen. However, it wasn’t until her time in college ministry that she truly understood what it meant to have a relationship with Christ and to live as his disciple. She has a huge passion for being purposeful and significant for God’s kingdom right where you’re planted. Right now that means intentionally connecting with other moms in her community. Brittany is excited to partner with Agape Moms in hopes to create a space for women in her area where all are welcomed and loved, and the Gospel can be lived out.