Our Miracle Adoption Story (God answered after infertility & loss)

So good to see you guys. Welcome to our living room. We're the Spoons. So glad you're here. And we wanted to share our adoption story finally. We had thought about doing this many weeks ago and then our miracle daughter came very quickly and she's actually home right now. Right here. He's right down here. So he hears some cooing noises or if I end up wearing her We wanted to make sure we sat down and told our story. Really it's God's story in our life because it's so special and I just feel like he really is telling a story and letting it take glory and it's our responsibility to share and it's our joy to share. It's a crazy story in my opinion just because of all the details and we've waited so long. Of course we know all the details and so when we look back over the last six or seven years of our journey of growing our family it's amazing to see all the highs and the lows and how God was in every single detail and so it's amazing and so we want to share with our friends today. When you've been waiting for for so long I feel like, this is just being honest, it can almost feel like it wears off to people who haven't. Like there's some people it's like oh no that was a miracle and then it's like okay they've moved on and obviously we haven't. Like we'll be telling the story for the rest of our lives because it's such a huge part of our lives. We waited for six years. I Days, moments, mornings, nights, prayers, like awaiting. We had two miscarriages during that time. We've been married for 10 years actually this year which is so exciting but during that time we had two miscarriages. One in 2021 that was a blighted ovum. It was the first time I ever got pregnant and I was 11 weeks pregnant when we found out that I was miscarrying and it was a blighted ovum which you can look that up what that means but basically I still don't really know. There's a there's a gestational sac but by the time we looked in the ultrasound there wasn't actually a baby in there so either the baby had passed away early or it was a chemical pregnancy or something. There's really no knowing. That was my first ultrasound and then we went through four years of nothing. No positive tests, no answers, unexplained infertility and really that four years I've shared this in a blog that I'll link. That four years for me totally changed who I was. God transformed me during that time. He met me really powerfully. A lot of that was because of Brian and the way that he helped me navigate anxiety and things like that but those four years was just so transformational in my faith and who I am as a woman and experiencing God still brings so much purpose in the middle of awaiting and just getting to the point where there was a resolve of even if this doesn't happen it's our lives aren't about the the miracle happening. Our lives aren't about the prayer being answered like that can't be what it's about. Our resolve, our life has to be about the fact that we have access to God all the time and he's near to us that he is our friend that he is our Lord that we can have life abundant with him anyways and it was during that time where I found that resolve. Yeah I think if you walked with the Lord for any amount of time you can look back and realize that he uses these seasons to grow you closer to him. I think that's kind of a general way of saying like he was taking us through a fire at several different fires that turned into one big season. But basically what Lanisa said where you know God was growing the Lord was growing us closer to him and he was basically molding and shaping the things that we thought we desired the most and what's interesting and we're going to share the details of our story here in just a moment but what's interesting is it was just a few months before we found out about our placement that I felt like we both found that resolve kind of on our own not together necessarily to where we were realizing that and I actually wrote a song about this that there was only one thing and basically I was sitting in a hotel trying to write music I'd gone away on a retreat just to try and write music and I felt like the Lord said to me this is in 2025 2025 yeah we had just we were just kind of getting some bad news and we'll talk about that in a minute but I'm sitting in this hotel and I thought the Lord said you've held so tightly so long to this desire this promise that you think I want to give you and you think that that's the thing that's going to satisfy you that it's going to fulfill you but the truth is when you get it no matter what that thing is for whoever's watching or listening but when you get that thing that you've prayed for you've waited for we've been through a crazy waiting season when you've waited for it when you get it it's not the thing that's going to satisfy you the only Christ does that and once I heard that wrote about it and then realized it started to sing about it I felt like the Lord resolved in my heart that he would meet the need or he would keep the promise but it wasn't about the promise it was about the person promising and so and Brian's been waiting a lot longer than I have and it has shifted it's shifted the way that I look at many things but the way I look at this part of growing our family it's an incredible blessing but at the end of the day this is all about Jesus and he is truly honestly the only one that will ever fill those voids that we have in our lives yeah so let's tell a story let's do it I again I shared most of our story in a blog but I'm just going to quickly start in 2025 which is last year because that was really a I was blindsided we both were blindsided kind of year it kind of felt like the final push year that we didn't think was coming because we started 2025 hopeful um full of faith yeah I mean I wasn't full of faith but I got a few words when people are like this I really believe this is the year and I'm like okay I'll hold lightly to that because I've gotten so many words over the years like this is gonna you know God's gonna do it and then you wait six years so I won't go into a lot of detail for 2025 but I will say it was the final push we started 2025 doing some um fertility treatments and I ended up doing an IUI and we thought that was going to be it like we Ryan was you could not talk me out of it like I just knew like knew that I knew that I knew like as much as I know that when he's just sitting here right now that it was gonna happen this is the one we were gonna do and there was a lot of little details in that too I don't know if you remember like people that came up to us and gave us words during that time just the timing of the IUI happened at the same time I had my last miscarriage like we just thought this is you know when you see things kind of pan out or or you look at it from a view you're like oh that could be a really cool redemption story okay well the IUI ended up becoming an ectopic pregnancy it happens at crazy timing because we found out about it on Easter Sunday and we had to go get it treated around Mother's Day we both work for a church so we were working services during that time and it was just it was devastating it truly was devastating um so I went through that ectopic pregnancy just a few days before and during our refresh retreat that we hosted so that was wild again you can read the story more but we went through that and it was just it shook it shook me a lot yeah it really did shake my faith I didn't understand I prayed specifically God if you grow our family if you let me get pregnant please I'd just rather not get pregnant if I'm gonna have another miscarriage and then those things happened the things that I was kind of holding on to like if this doesn't happen or this does if I get these types of results back then everything will be okay and when those things aren't okay you're left with well how am I gonna be okay and that's because of the Lord alone so you want to share the next part which is in September we got word yeah so in September uh we got word that why don't you why don't you I don't know what you want me to say oh the adoption so throughout our infertility journey we thought kind of this gentle leading to adopt yeah it wasn't this big lights in the sky thing we knew we wanted to do it we just didn't know when we wanted to do it yeah we talked about it since we were dating we're like yeah we would adopt one day if that was kind of it so I don't even remember when we started maybe 2023 yeah we started the process of our home study and everything like that took some time we ended up getting approved and then we were just a waiting family for about a year and a half yeah of hearing nothing okay we got re-approved again so during the during my ectopic pregnancy 2025 that happened and I was like well it's time to renew our home study I don't want to I I don't feel like anything is going to work at this point so we did it straight out of faith there was no good feelings about it and if I wouldn't have had that ectopic pregnancy I don't think we would have like if that pregnancy would have been successful yeah I don't know if we would have renewed our home study at that time I don't think we would have yeah so we renewed our home study continued to wait and then September of 2025 comes around get a call and we get a call from our friend and we'll call her Birdie that's her nickname for her um we get a call from Birdie yeah so Birdie basically she reaches out and says hey my daughter um is pregnant and will you just pray for her and that was it that's all she was asking for um Birdie is a close friend of ours years ago I used to work with her at the church that we work at shout out Wellspring she's my boss she was just my friend she walked with me through so much miscarriage because she herself had been through that she's the reason we ended up with this specific adoption agency yeah because she had adopted from that agency prior yeah so she just reaches out and asks us um as well as a few other people to just begin to pray for uh baby's mom and we are of course all in because we had seen this mom grow up from around age 13 14 and just watched everything that she had gone through and walked through and so we began to partner with her and pray yeah yeah and then a few days after that Birdie sends another text and she's like hey so my daughter's getting on a bus she's coming down here she's gonna go be with this adoption agency and it was our adoption agency and immediately I was like this is our this is our baby I feel like I feel like I feel like we were both that way but we didn't say it to each other I like I remember laying in the bed hearing that and I was like is it happening right now you really get like what's the word we're just like hesitant to to go all in in your excitement because of all your cautious like yeah experience we've had I think that's one of the phrases we've used a lot in the last six years is caution cautiously optimistic like oh my agent would tell me that all the time and I'm like I don't want to be that I want to be excited full-on okay um so yes and we just I just felt like we knew and so we just continue to pray like God really put this birth mom strong on our hearts again we're friends dear friends with this family already we've known them for years and a few days after just praying for her knowing that she was down here at the adoption agency we get a text from our adoption agent that says hey can I give you a call which we really don't get calls from her unless there's and we get a call and you know what she said I don't remember the details I just remember it was a um we have a match basically she was like this is a rare experience I really don't see this often but this birth mom doesn't want anybody but you guys she just keeps saying ryan lanisa ryan lisa ryan lisa that's who I want and she would like to match with you and we were just like what do you mean what do you mean what do you mean and so we took the weekend to pray we did pray but it's like we didn't really need to pray like come on and we ended up responding giving our answer which was yes we would like to be matched with her yeah it's just crazy I mean just crazy just to think about 25 like the the highs the lows the like I mean the one thing that comes to mind is the people around us who cared for us had faith for us yeah loved us I mean we are I mean just a plug for community in your life like you have I don't know what our 2025 would have looked like without oh my gosh our pastors our you know people that we do our lives with and I mean there's a few special people who really walked with us through all of this and to be honest with you they have stayed locked in like we have somebody coming to our house tonight to um to like be here with us just so we can rest and I think a lot of times you don't want to share all the lows with people especially if it's a fertility journey because it's like I can't manage other people's emotions like I'm barely managing mine but we've seen that it's been really powerful I mean they've told us that our friends have told us the fact that we and our family have been able to pray with you gotten excited and then been devastated with you and now to see the answered prayer it's just built our faith so much as well and it's just that you have to you have to God moves through community and if you feel like you're not experiencing God it might because you're not in community like it's just true so that happened we got the call in September and what's funny is again we got the call just a few days before our second refresh retreat which was wild but we got the call the first mountain retreat it's the first mountain it was really fun but our agent said okay you're matched so what happens when you're matched is you have basically 24 hours to pay your deposit that's our story anyways I'm not sure if it's like that yeah everywhere but so we had to raise eighteen thousand dollars to you know solidify our yes so we did well we say we did but we did we really our community our community did it and our pastors led the way on that and within three hours they had raised the first half of our adoption fees basically and so many special people that have just been praying for us just sewed in it was crazy how quickly it happened and you know typically finances are something for me that I struggle with but I feel like once we said yes to this it wasn't it wasn't a worry for me like I didn't I don't I didn't even think twice about it it was like I had this piece and then of course once the community stepped in and and it happened it was like let's go I know I was never worried about the fine I mean it's expensive to adopt and our agency was a little less than normal but I was just like that's the least of my words like I know it's gonna I don't know why but I just wasn't concerned about it so we went away did our mountain retreat shared the news with all the girls that attended and we were just in bliss came back home bought a rocker for the baby and sent an email to the birth mom and just started you know this process of waiting the rocker is specifically I don't know if you can see it back here in the background but that was specifically a move for me we've never gotten anything for starting to let my heart go there and so we were a few weeks into this process and again when you're in the adoption process as many of you have you have to enter with some caution because there's a lot of details that can change and so yes when we bought this rocker it was like it's time to start getting ready and so that's something that sticks out in my head is buying the rocker and starting to make home and get ready for to bring home this little baby the nesting was strong yeah immediately for me yeah so baby was due to be born on February 28th of 2026 right and the cool part about that and just a god detail is that which is today by the way when we're filming oh my gosh it's your due date that's special yeah that's cool so today's our due date okay she's obviously came early but which means that she would have been conceived she would have come into the world come into being around the same time that I was finishing up my ectopic pregnancy and that's crazy detail to me like around the time where I was just devastated questioning god like felt like I had lost a baby god brought our baby knit her together and that's just wild it is wild that he meets you in those details I mean some people like would say you know that's just coincidence but if you've walked with the lord long enough come on somebody please zoom in you know there's no there's no coincidences with him and you know as we've reviewed and gone over these details of each other it's like is that is it possible that she was conceived the same time we were literally finishing this and then talk about talk about your due date my due date yeah what do you mean you when you were pregnant oh well yes I'll do that in a second okay so we had a match wait a few months well in October I think it was maybe it was November in November we're chugging along just bought the recliner just bought the recliner we got another text from our agent had heard from her in a bit so I was just checking in we got a text from her and she said hey there's been some developments can you give me a call so I gave her a call and basically she ended up leaving the agency and they were like she could come back we don't know but unfortunately at this point the adoption's off yeah and for two months we thought the adoption was off and we didn't hear any you know updates like oh it's possible it's gonna come back on like no it just was just like lights off it's done and we didn't have foresight to see that she actually was going to still come but god you know people have free will and god allowed us to go through those last two months November and December of 2025 and for me those were the darkest months of my life and I've been through two I've been through a lot too much because Ryan's been through so many things but for me it was the darkest time because it it seemed like every door to getting to growing our family was was closing I mean getting pregnant adoption everything was closing and it's like what do you mean like it like this is the biggest disappointment tease hurt heartbreak no hope and then at the same time I had kind of gone back to my fertility doctor and just gotten news that some of my fallopian tubes have been jacked with the ectopic like it was just this like whirlwind of devastation yeah I mean same it was like what you're describing like we've tried every avenue now again I will say that I got to a place in the whole thing where and I had some friends accused me of just kind of protecting myself but I'd gotten to a place where I realized that like that god that if the lord wanted to give us a child he was going to give us a child and so I was we probably were in different places because you were in full devastation probably more more so than any any part of this so far and then I was in a place of okay like this this might not happen you know yeah I mean that was a reality and I was becoming okay with it and what's funny about that is sometimes we have to get to that place before god will move and what's weird is I feel like we did get to that place on a certain level before that point like we've had people say oh that's and it's this is what humans do they try to rationalize and make sense of difficulty and so people have told me oh you just have to get to that place where you fully surrendered and I'm like but I did fully so like I over and over again like had moments where I fully surrendered but this was like another level and it came back again to just that resolve like well what else do we have I the only thing that will never be taken away from us is God and access to him and yeah Jesus Jesus taking care of us even in the the craziness and there is life to be had even if this doesn't happen which I don't even want to go there so November and December were devastating truly we're not going to sugarcoat it was hard how do you even transition to December so some things changed and uh yeah so we um I don't remember I don't remember even getting the call I just remember oh no no so Lenisa Lenisa's a preacher if you don't know that and so she preaches our church four or five times a year and on December 7th she was in our prayer area our green room in the back getting ready to go out for her first service of the day first of three yes I mean one of my stories I was going to share was about our failed adoption okay I'm getting ready to go out and our lead pastor who is right up in the middle of this whole thing yes the birth family comes in and says have you heard the news I'm like what are you talking about he's like have you heard what did he say and I was like are you serious like I started getting an inkling of what he was talking about and he was like your birth mom's back at the agency she she's gonna go forward with the adoption two minutes on the countdown two minutes on the countdown before I walk out on stage and somehow preach a sermon I'm like what is the most information like how are you telling me this well what's funny is he walks out he walks out and I'm sitting on the front row and he leans over and he's like you're watching this you're never listening he's not he's not this far into it I can tell you that um I he leans over to me and he says did you hear birth mom's back in and I'm like no that's crazy I react in some way but then point of this is he says yeah I just told Lanisa and I was like you what he's like yeah I told her and I'm like you told her before she goes on on the stage to preach and he was like yeah I'm like would you like it if I did that to you and he was like oh no and when his wife found out April was like what the why would you I was squirrely so that's how we found out that's how we found out a few days later we got another text from our agent she confirmed it and she was like cautiously optimistic you know you just never know she could leave again whatever it's just adoption you don't know until it's done and I was like I don't want to do that but we got word that she's like it's back on and babies do end of February you know you have a few months to get ready that was December probably 9th or something yeah so we're just like okay we have a few months and we started getting more excited yeah oh yeah and then I think it's important to note that I was like we gotta get this house ready yeah like we gotta oh yeah we gotta go all in now like this thing's six weeks away like yeah only six weeks away we have everything is on pause other than the glider recliner back here we have nothing ready to go and he was like you need to start a registry and I was like no she well you didn't say no you were just like okay okay okay and then would do nothing and so guess who started the registry your boy so I started it started putting some stuff on it and I'm like hey what do you want for this what do you want for that well Anissa's just a little bit crunchy and so I was putting stuff on there that I would just get and she's like what did you put that's probably the best way I got her into it was putting stuff that wasn't non-toxic and organic on it and then she had to get in and start actually putting the stuff that she wanted on there and then we kind of took our time because we knew once baby was here we're gonna have to pay the second half of the adoption fee so we kind of took our time telling a bunch of people fundraising that because we were hesitant still a little bit I think um cautiously optimistic but it got to the point we were like we just have to do this so we bought a cute little onesie that said tiny little miracle on it and we took nox her dog and we went to a nature preserve and we took pictures that announced our pregnancy or our adoption and we posted it and actually we didn't post it yet we just took the pictures and then that night we went over to our best friend's house and we were going to tell them the gender because we had been able to go and visit birth mom she had ended up going into the hospital um for some things and so we got to go visit her and hang out with her and we just laughed and talked about all sorts of things and while we were there they um leaked the gender we didn't like fully want to know but as soon as they leaked it we were so glad that we knew the gender and so we went over to our best friend's house that night we were going to tell them the gender we were there and we were just kind of hanging out and literally probably right before we're going to tell them the gender I get a text message from the agency saying baby might be coming tonight what what this is still in December right yes this is still in this yeah obviously this is still in December and you can you imagine getting a text message like that and I'm like oh my gosh right though they're like listen I was as Ryan is I don't know I can't explain it it's just who I am I'm like freaking out I end up going on their trampoline jumping and getting energy out and so they're like we'll let you know the doctor's coming in at that point we were still expecting a couple weeks right yes we were still expecting a mid-January which was six weeks early yeah like bare minimum we knew she was going to be coming early we knew she wasn't going to make it till February 28th no it wasn't we knew she wasn't going to be coming February 28th we knew she was going to be born early because of some complications but we thought hey she'll come at you know mid-January and then we get this text message in December and she's like the doctor's in here I'll call you as soon as the doctor leaves and I'll update you on what the plan is an hour goes by longest hour of my life and then she calls us and she's like okay everything's kind of stable right now but baby is coming in the next few days so what do we do go to target our best friends are like I feel like we should go to target we should do a target with like we're gonna buy me some stuff we're gonna like so we all cram into college again yeah we all cram into our cars drive to target and just have like the best time just like buying all this stuff and our friend glenn he's like you're crunchy right these diapers say pure pure you want the pure ones yeah we'll get this whole box toss them in there hey you're gonna need this feeding thing you know you're oh you're gonna be rocking and posting on instagram you're gonna want to feed her look at that they're just tossing all sorts of stuff in there so much fun it was so fun and then after that what do we do we went to a steak and shake and got some skinny steak and shake fries and a milkshake we did celebrated and we're like holy cow yeah I don't think it still really hadn't hit me like at all I mean no even in target I was just kind of like wandering around like you were I was like where is Ryan he disappeared really happening yeah I've been waiting a long time for this and yeah she's here so the next day um we decided to post put it out into the world baby's coming and surprise we're adopting and we've been matched and baby's coming this week and we have to raise fourteen thousand dollars and in three hours again we raised twenty two thousand dollars insane um so a few days goes by we're kind of just like lingering at home waiting we start looking at baby names and books to try and decide and make a list yep and then on December 30th we get a phone call that says baby's gonna be born today we're pretty sure yeah and I was like can I go to the hospital like I will just wait in the parking lot but can you give me the word and I am on my way there like I want to be there yeah so we went so we went to the hospital and we sat in the waiting room for she was born at like 2 30 in the afternoon 6 30 6 30 we got there at 2 30 yeah just one grin we ordered some panda express yes and uh we were just waiting to hear first time in that waiting room first time walking through those doors and just like hanging out waiting to hear the noise over the remember that yeah you know the music they play in the baby's bed come to find out they don't do that until a couple hours after but we're just waiting waiting for some sort of news waiting for some sort of news and we're waiting in the waiting room and birdie comes downstairs and doesn't know we're there doesn't know we're there but sees us we haven't seen her in a few years and we're just like we hug her we're all excited she's like can you believe this like who would have thought that our stories would collide in this way and we would be becoming family and it was just such a special moment um birth mom knew that we were there and she was just so kind i just remember the first time we met with her her just saying such sweet things it just felt like a movie almost and i don't say that lightly i i used to cringe when people would say this kind of stuff guys but it truly was like she was like what are you guys gonna name it and oh let me show you our phone this is how big baby is and just like always saying that we were the parents and that she always wanted us like it was just it was very special that in the world of adoption where you can be competing with other families and just like it can just be weird dynamically relationally this isn't this is like the most perfect story for us and our personalities the fact that we know this birth family that we're friends with them that our girl will grow up fully knowing her story and how loved she is like it just makes it so easy it's like in the world of adoption um so we're waiting in the waiting room and um the agent comes down and she's hanging out with us um while birth mom goes into a c-section and she comes down she's so kind she's just yapping with us and we're laughing talking about who knows what hearing her stories um and then all of a sudden she's like oh are you ready yeah and you were like yeah let's go we're going we're going up to the room remember yeah she's like i got a picture we're like oh the baby's born yeah yeah yeah yeah we were like we thought we were gonna get to go back that day not the case she shows us the picture and it it's hilarious uh he's like a spot what is it called i was spatchcock chicken spatchcock chicken just like this her lips are like this she looks pink and covered in cheese so cute she was born early perfect two pounds six ounces yes two pounds six ounces and so she immediately goes to the NICU and so our agent's like okay i'm gonna go up there and see if we can get you guys to be able to go up and see her yeah we waited a while and she comes back down she's like they changed the NICU rules and unfortunately you're not able to go up until consents are signed which is 48 hours after birth or at discharge in the state of florida so everyone and at this point like you just have we we were open hands at that point like we were so excited that it honestly wasn't that big of a deal i feel like for us like it's it'll be okay so we went home waited you know 32 hours or whatever it was and then we came back to the hospital um on january 1st and we got to meet with birth mom and whole birth family and just laughed and hang out one more time and it was so special and then they finally gave us wristbands and we got to go up at like 11 p.m that's right it was late i remember that that was so special to go in and see her and again if you've ever been to a NICU or anything like that like she was in this spaceship you know like and so we were only able to put our arms in so tiny covered up just cords yeah and to be honest i don't even think about that whole lot anymore because we don't have the cords and the c-pap and all this stuff but like that was a really special special night it's very special a lot of god details our nurse's name was nicole it's my best friend's name her little roommate's name was arabella which is one of our close friends who own the house we live in right now um we rent it from them and their daughter's name was arabella and when we moved into this house they still had their child locks on all the cabinets from arabella and i just remember being like lord let this be like a little wink from you that we're going to bring a child home here so it was just really cool and here's the funny part okay ready my due date for my ectopic pregnancy was december 28th of 2025 and eliana joy spoon was on december 30th it's two days later like at the same time just like this is the baby that god made for us and she has this beautiful adoption story adoption is a biblical story we will she'll grow up knowing her story um and so she came born at 31 weeks 31 weeks and three days so we got to spend a lot of time in yeah going every single day and it was an incredible blessing oh it was incredible blessing to the nikki was such a gift the nurses and just all the staff there like uh it was it did get hard at times of course um the drive and exhausting nothing compared to now but no um but it was a gift in a lot of ways it really was how was it a gift for you just one way i think that the most obvious way is that she was supposed to still be in the womb for another two months and instead of in the womb she was with us like we got two months extra with her yeah and i think that's the most impactful time like the most impactful detail about the nikkiu um the relationships that we formed with the nurses like was really cool um i think you know some of the little like one of the things that i tried to do with her every day was um take her on an adventure and so we would i would make this deal with her um that if she gained x amount of grams right we're talking about grams here uh that we would go on a trip and all these trips or trips that lenise and i have been on at some point or to a place that i grew up or something but every day we had story time and it was it was so much fun to just to be there and just to be a part of her story yeah so elliana joy means god has answered elliana means god has answered my god has answered yes joy is our middle name because ryan got his joy back yeah i feel like in 2025 was the year god restored my joy which thank you lord because going through that year without joy that would have been scary i can't imagine no i can't imagine and then spoon he's the big spoon i'm a little spoon we refer to her as our teaspoon teaspoon the nikkiu was a gift for me because i i was so triggered by medical things regarding babies um and even though elliana was born so early and so little she was fine like she was on c-pack only never on oxygen she got off c-pack after like 10 days with me she had nothing else no other issues she was just little but she was doing she was like you can't tell me i'm little like she was doing everything right she was just you know waiting to get to four pounds how many times did we hear people say like she's a rock star she's a rock star she's an overachiever she's like she started latching and not latching but you know feeding so quickly and easily to a bottle they kept telling us don't expect her to do well like she might do 10 and then the next day okay so our expectations were low or realistic and then the first day she did like 80 and then the next day like within three or four days she was hitting all of her goals dog was just like just like pouring out and that was really soothing to me because my brain naturally was bracing for bad news regarding medical stuff but the nurses anytime they would have to come in because one of her alarms was going off or anything like that they were so calm they're like she's fine it's all right she's gonna be okay and that was like oh okay yeah it's like it was a really it was a gift for me in that way it brought me a lot of peace um so yeah what else so nikki was nikki was awesome we were just waiting on her to get four pounds and then oh okay this is the last so our pastor um oh gosh again he's not watching this video no he's the kind of guy that uh he likes to hold things above your head no i'm just kidding no he he basically listen at the end of the day it's prophetic i want to say a week into eliana being in the nick you he was like so what are you thinking when she coming home and i'm like i don't know i mean sometime in february hopefully he was like she's coming home on february 14th valentine's day i'm like valentine's day and he said it over and over and i'm like and then to be honest with you she was on track to come home earlier and so i kept saying now it's going to be earlier i'm saying february 9th february 9th random day by the way and uh but he kept saying no it's february 14th she's coming home on february 14th and sure enough like the the two days before they're like she's probably going home on saturday and i'm like february 14th she got discharged on valentine's on valentine's day four pounds four and a half ounces looks like a little doll and we brought her home and had fish been quietly like along with our people surviving somehow being here with the baby that's ours yeah she's perfect it's crazy poor nox his uh his whole his whole life has been shaken up if you can i don't know if you can see him back there in full sleep mode it's like i didn't think yeah we've just been we're so blessed and so grateful um to have my baby shower like it's just been really cool you did and it was i mean i wasn't there but it was it was lenisa style like done in only the way that she would do it and why because you've said so long that like i don't want to do a normal baby shower like i i don't want the the things that i don't enjoy about the baby shower i don't want my baby shower to be that way and so not to mention that it was beautiful thanks to you know our incredible friends who did all of that and but it was really a celebration it was a celebration and the lord was the lord was worshiped he was honored worship was about that and and yeah it was very special and since we've been home two weeks today right yep we have been i'm again this is not a video about community but they say it takes a village i mean like we have been so blessed by some very close friends of ours who have just done everything they can to make this transition easy for us from bringing us meals again we're not talking about like they're bringing us meals we're talking about they cook dinner at home and then they bring us dinner and then they sit with us and then they are remodeling a nursery for us and then they come and bring us food and hang out how we our best friends glenn and nicole the other night come over and brought dinner i was sleeping for the first half while they were here while i get up and lenisa's about 30 minutes into me being up she's like i think i'm gonna go to bed and it was like 7 30 at night and um late yeah which is prime sleeping time right now and so they ended up sitting here with me for another five hours just hanging out holding her just holding yeah just being here like if they hadn't been here i would have been sitting on the couch what with her probably watching you know some sort of sports video or something just trying to stay awake and it's made all the difference if you don't have a village be the village like be the village and reach out that's one thing i would just say as we end this like you can go through your life quiet and not sharing what you're walking through with other people and being very vulnerable with them and you will be lonely and you will be anxious yeah like it's just the reality of it and people process things differently i'm not saying you need to process things like i do i'm just saying god has people around you but it's gonna take you being willing to share your story with other people and hey i'm going through this hey this is what i'm walking can you pray with me can you encourage me can we go get coffee like i just need some people right now and you'll be surprised i believe how god will show up for you and care for you through those relationships you have to be willing to do it it's a common theme in this story for for the last several years we've been very open about sharing our story this entire time every devastation every loss every celebration and because of our community who celebrate with us who mourn with us who push us who when we don't have faith they have faith yeah i mean just so so grateful and now you're alone you're a dad and our little girl should we show her right now right there she's in a basket that's so cute little moses basket she's precious so we love you guys yeah thank you for listening to the story you made it all the way through that's awesome um if you know of someone that needs a lift and encouragement in their faith please share this with them if there's anything i want you to know from this it's not that you're gonna get that answer to prayer because i i don't know how god's gonna answer your prayer but i do know that god sees you because if he sees us he absolutely sees you and the theme of my life and i've built been coming around this is have a resolve to not give up on it's good i'm gonna also just last thing i want to say and this is not a plug for the music or anything like that but i want we're gonna link this song satisfy you can stream it anywhere um but just hearing the story um our story it's the it's the message behind that song and my prayer we wrote this song for our church and um it has ministered to a lot of people there so my prayer is that as you listen to it you will just grab on to that theme that no matter what it is and our story right now has been growing our family but there will be other things in our lives that we strive for that we look to to fulfill us and so no matter what your thing is my prayer is that you realize that jesus is the only thing ever that will fill the and satisfy us and so we'll link that on there so you guys can listen to that and pray pray for you we love you thanks for listening bye