In The Beginning

In the beginning, like 10 min after we were married, people asked “When are you having kids?”, and it made me mad. At that time I didn’t feel like having kids, I didn’t want kids, I wanted to go to Mexico on my honeymoon. Right after our first anniversary, we moved to Siloam Springs, AR, and it was easy to give a reason why we weren’t having kids, the next year we bought a house, but eventually I ran out of excuses as to why we didn’t have kids. The question was still asked, and I didn’t know what to say, the truth was I didn’t want to have kids.

I never had that “Oh, I want to have kids” bug, the thought of pregnancy was just terrible in my mind. I had no desire to go that route, and it made me feel guilty. Actually, I let it make me feel guilty. I let the question “When are you having kids?”, really get to me, especially being a Christian in a smallish city, my husband and I were the odd ones out. We were close to 30, been married for five plus years and no kids, but I still had no desire to have my own children. I can tell you it was during this time, I wanted to have friends and fit in and be involved, but I used the fact I didn’t have kids to distance myself from those my age who did, because eventually the question would come up, and it was the last question on Earth I wanted to answer. It wasn’t just that I had to answer the question, it was that I felt like I couldn’t just tell people, I don’t want kids.

I am an Athletic Trainer responsible for taking care of 7th-12th graders in all sports on a daily basis, and I love my job. I felt like I was really hitting my stride an Athletic Trainer when my husband and I were discussing expanding our family, and I didn’t want to be unable to do my job. I am a worker, it’s what I do, even my fun hobbies are work to most people. My ideal vacation is hiking as many mountains as possible till I am so physically exhausted I can’t move, it’s great. I truly love moving and being active and working. The thought of baking my own human for 40 weeks still makes me cringe, it’s just the way I am created.

Time ticked on, many discussions went by, and while we never hard core actively tried to create our own human, it didn’t happen naturally. This lead to more discussions, several doctors visits, and in the struggle and battle what did come naturally to us was adoption. I remember a late night dorm room conversation with my suite mates, “I think I will adopt kids”, I didn’t know that almost 10 years later that is the exact route I would take. I honestly always thought that eventually something would make me want to have my own biological child, but that still isn’t the case.

I could easily see that my husband was and is dad material (the man already has an arsenal of dad jokes), and overall I tend to fair pretty well with kids. All my nieces and nephews managed to survive my care for some extent of time, so I felt like we both had what it takes to be parents, but still NO desire to have my own biological child. So we began our adoption process. The process started slower that a turtle walking through molasses, but we eventually pursued adoption through DHS, to make a long story short, it was very clear very fast that was not our route. Then a quick Google search had us on the website of Abba Adoption, and from the first few minutes on the site I knew they were the agency I wanted to work with.

Abba Adoption, is based out of Benton, AR. Ran by a lovely lady named Kandi, whose passion and life’s purpose is to partner birthmoms and adoptive parents together. Abba seems pretty normal, the exception is Abba is 100% Christian owned, operated, and partners exclusively with Christian couples seeking to adopt a child. It was too obvious, this is who we were supposed to work with. Kandi came to our home in late January, and spent about two hours getting to know us, and our relationship with Christ. Ever since then it has been adjusting to the idea and concept of adoption. It’s been discussing different potential names, boy or girl, both, or twins. It’s been an emotional roller coaster to be honest, but the one thing that has really kept us grounded and on the path is the amount of support we have received from family and friends.

So welcome to our adoption journey, we look forward to growing spiritual, physically, and as a family with you.

Tiffany.