Welcome to Audrey Adopts

Welcome to Audrey Adopts, a blog about my adoption journey for all wondering about my journey, contemplating their own journey and a place to remember this time and space that is making the way to make me a mom.

The beginning is a good place to start.

From the beginning I have always wanted to be a mom. I have a great mom. She had a great mom and my great grandmother was the absolute best hugger in the world. I come from a line of really great moms who have loved me and hugged me and given their lives so I could live mine so well and beautifully. I want to do the same.

I love children. I started babysitting at the age of 11. I led my first VBS at 13 on a mission trip. I became a camp counselor at 17 and eventually would be the children’s team leader at the camp. I have continued to live life with many children including my my nephews and nieces and godsons. They are the joy of my life.

At the age of forty I have many friends who do not share this calling. They are indifferent if they have children or have very cute dogs and cats and they are their moms. I have thought about the idea of indifference and I am an ok dog mom but the calling to be a mom of a human has never faded. This deep calling had for years now made me a hater of many holidays. I am a pastor so I do the church thing which is a trunk or treat, or Easter Egg Hunts and Christmas Eve services and Thanksgiving meals for those in need. I do these tasks with joy. I have amazing friends and family who have taken me to be part of their family. They are the highlight of holidays. Yet, each fall as I anticipate Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, there is a part of me that fills with dread and sadness. Another Halloween without a kiddo to dress, another Thanksgiving alone and another Christmas void of playing Santa.

One particular Halloween I decided to block out the entire day to pack my house and move the next day. There were no church plans that day and so it was perfect. I could hide in boxes and pretend the day was not happening. Until a friend invited me for lunch and asked how I was doing, the exhaustion of packing and the emotional charge of the holiday I thought I was avoiding made me very honest. I told her I was horrible. I was about to turn 39 and all I wanted was a kid to dress up that day and take around the block.

This was not the first time she had heard this story. So she responded by saying, “I am so sick of hearing this story from you.” She then told me that whatever story I had in my mind about how this would happen needed to be cut off. She asked about freezing my eggs and my response was, “I have investigated it but if I am going to spend money in becoming a mom I would instead adopt.”

On the way home from lunch I heard an outside voice say, “you are going to adopt and this is why you are going to South Africa.” I was preparing to go to South Africa to prepare for an upcoming trip and did not want to go as I knew I would be tired after the Holiday season. I was thinking of every excuse not to go but knew I should go.

I called my best friend who was oversees at the time. Her response was, “finally, I have been trying to tell you this for ages.”

So I went to South Africa….that is the very beginning.