We feel that God is present with us in our excitement and our planning and has been whispering to us “it’s time to grow again.” Time to grow our family, time to grow our faith, time to grow our hearts.
Meet the Caldwell's! Tiffany shares in her own words how their walk with the Lord has impacted their desire to adopt...
Due to infertility issues, my husband and I are not able to have biological children. For 7 years we struggled with infertility, miscarriages and 7 failed fertility treatments before considering adoption. Bryon and I both love children; even before we got married, we both knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we wanted to have kids and that having a family was a major priority for us as a couple. Both of us were blessed to have grown up in loving Christian homes. We have basically always known Jesus and count ourselves extremely fortunate to have such a solid background.
Our infertility struggle for those 7 years was difficult and painful. We had to wade through a great deal of loss and truly deal with our grief to get to the other side. We feel that our infertility struggle of miscarriages and then the realization of not being able to have children biologically was our metaphorical walk through the fire. But we came out on the other side refined and more closely in tuned with the Lord because we know that He was walking with us.
We were fearful at first because the unknown can be scary, and at the time adoption was not how we thought we would build our family. But after much prayer and seeking wise counsel, we looked into adoption and decided to trust in His guidance and take a leap of faith. Thankfully we persevered towards our ultimate goal to become parents and in the late summer of 2016 through a successful domestic infant adoption, we adopted our daughter and what an absolute joy and perfect gift she has been to both of us (and our entire extended families) since the day she came home. They say "hindsight is 20/20" and knowing now what we know about how wonderful and beautiful (although complicated, broken and messy) adoption can be, we love telling anyone and everyone who will listen that adoption can bless you in so many ways you never even imagined. We have an open relationship with our daughter's birth mother and are so grateful that our daughter will grow up knowing her.
Now that our daughter is a little older, we are ready and so excited to add a second child to our family. We want her to have a sibling to play with, grow up with and become lifelong friends with, just the way my husband and I are with our siblings. We feel that God is present with us in our excitement and our planning and has been whispering to us “it’s time to grow again.” Time to grow our family, time to grow our faith, time to grow our hearts.
We also see adoption as a living example of the Gospel. We believe that just as God has adopted us as sons and daughters, we are called to bring others into our family through adoption. What a humbling thing it is to get even a small glimpse of that unconditional love we feel for our daughter, knowing that is just how God feels about us. We have been praying for our family, for our future children and now for our future birth mother (and birth father) for a very long time, basically since we first got married. While we are not perfect and don’t claim to be, we are saved by the grace of God and have a renewed purpose because of that. Becoming parents is just one more way that we can live into our faith. We know looking back on our life together that it is no accident and that adoption was never God’s plan B for us. He had our family’s story written in the stars long before we even could imagine it. We are so excited to see what other children God will bring into our family.
Because of generous donors and runners, RGT is helping the Caldwell's bring their second child home. Stay tuned for an update from Tiffany!
