“But It’s Not My Story!” – Pt. 2
This is part 2 of the Hallgren Family’s adoption journey.Brenda began the adoption process as a single adopter. During the “waitâ€, Brenda was set up on a blind date that changed her life forever! Kirk was able to go to China with Brenda and her mother to bring home their daughter, Lillian. Two weeks after their return from China, they were married. But their story wasn’t done yet …
Two years after we were married, we started the process of adopting again from China as having a biological child seemed impossible. I miraculously became pregnant during the paperchase, but suffered a miscarriage at 9 weeks. We were devastated by our loss, but knew the Lord had a plan and there was a beautiful child waiting for us in China. We continued the paperchase and sent our completed dossier to China in October 2006.
In February 2007, we found ourselves miraculously pregnant again! Nine months later, as we were on the way to the hospital, the phone rang and it was AWAA on our caller ID. “Don’t answer it!†I screamed. (Don’t mess with a woman in labor – of course, no one answered the phone.) We hadn’t shared our pregnancy as I greatly feared that I would not only loose our biological child, but also our child from China! Emotionally, I had to make sure all was well with Jessica before making that difficult call to America World to have our dossier pulled. The policy at that time was suspending the adoption if you became pregnant during the process. On September 18, 2007, after a very difficult pregnancy, our beautiful daughter Jessica was born! A week after Jessica’s birth, I called our family coordinator to share our great news, thinking we would then have to pull our file. However, we prayed that the Lord would somehow allow us to continue with our second adoption from China. It seemed impossible. But, God is bigger than China! That AWAA phone call while I was in labor … well, it was our family coordinator calling us to tell us about the concurrent adoption program! This program was not in existence when we were pregnant the first time. The Lord once again heard my prayers, as we were able to continue with our plan of adoption and have a biological child!
For us, the delayed referrals were a blessing as we needed Jessica to be at least 12 months old at referral. However, we never imagined that Jessica would be 15 months old and we would still have a 2-3 year wait ahead of us! Kirk and I had many conversations and prayer times about the long wait. That would put us in our mid/late 40’s and we couldn’t imagine coming home with an infant! So we prayed for clear direction. Pulling our file seemed to be the logical choice. We have two amazing daughters and we should be content with that. Still … we didn’t feel our family was complete. So, we prayed for guidance.