Thursday, March 2, 2017
Deut. 30:15-20; Ps. 1; Lk. 9:18-25
Most of you know our family adopted our youngest son, Caden, as an infant seven years ago.
What you may not know is a year prior to this our family traveled to Colorado to pick up a two-year-old little girl whose parents were homeless and had made the very difficult decision to give her up for adoption. While we worked through the details of the adoption, the family was given shelter and food and with their help, and the help of a social worker, we put together a plan to transition her to our family. Immediately, our children Olivia and Cole were over the moon with her and could not wait to return home to Tampa with their little sister. Equally, Matthew and I were extremely excited and taken in by this sweet little girl who immediately captured our hearts. We couldn’t believe that after waiting for many years, we were finally going to be able to grow our family.
After several days of working through our transition plan, we were at the final phase which would be to have her stay with us over night and then permanently. This never happened. The family vanished and we were left dazed and bereft. We packed up our family and went back to Tampa broken-hearted, confused and worried sick about our new, little, precious friend. So many times we asked ourselves “Why?” “How could God bring us that far only to have our dream stripped away?” “What was the lesson in all of this and why did Olivia and Cole have to suffer as well?” More importantly, “Was this sweet, little, innocent girl going to be okay?”
Fast forward 1.5 years and the answer was crystal clear. God had another plan, a plan that unfolded beautifully and without any challenges or obstacles. When we believed we would never approach adoption again, He revealed a different path and taught us to let go and let God! It required faith and complete trust in God’s work. As we look back on this experience we see how we were protected, spiritually challenged and learned a lesson about God’s timing. Every time we look at Caden, we can’t imagine our lives without him and know God always had our best interest at heart.
Over the years we have continued to pray for the little girl who captured our hearts and know that just like us, God had a plan for her. Oh, how our entire family grew from this faith-filled experience!
–Kim Hoffman