I met Terrie a little over a year ago. She shared with me her story of losing four pregnancies and waiting seventeen years for God to bring her a little girl through adoption…and holding onto hope through it all.
Growing up, Terrie always wanted to be a mom. So when Terrie and Bruce started trying to have children a few years later, they thought everything would go smoothly. Terrie became pregnant and they enthusiastically prepared for the baby’s arrival.
But five and a half months into her pregnancy, something went terribly wrong. Terrie says, “I’ll never forget the moment when the doctor told me there wasn’t a heartbeat. It was like I lost my mind for a moment and nothing was real. But then I felt God grab me and wrap His arms around my heart.”
The loss of her first child devastated Terrie. Unfortunately, it was only the first of that kind of grief for her. Yet in the midst of her struggle, God was using her to touch the lives of many little ones along the way, especially the children in the daycare she ran. Through her work at the daycare God began to open Terrie’s heart to adoption.
Medical difficulties were now pushing her in that direction as well. Doctors had not been able to determine why she kept losing her pregnancies. Then a doctor told her she might have lupus and that if she had a baby, that child might be born blind.
Terrie decided to seek a second opinion and what she heard next shocked her even more. That doctor told her she was already going through menopause despite only being in her early forties. At that point, Terrie and Bruce began actively pursuing adoption.
Terrie soon got another surprise, but this one brought a different response. Her friend Kathy’s mother had died recently and Kathy became wealthy overnight. Kathy came to Terrie’s home on December twenty-first, handed Terrie a blank check, and said, “I was a foster parent for years. I never had any control over who ended up getting the children. But now I can make a difference. I want to pay for you to adopt.”
Terrie recalls, “I couldn’t believe it. It was a miracle! We all just hugged each other and cried.” Terrie would later discover that Kathy gave her that blank check on the very same day her daughter was born.
Terrie and Bruce were both forty-five when their adopted daughter Bethany finally came into their lives. Terrie laughs, “Our combined ages were the same as Sarah in the Bible when she had Isaac after all her years of waiting!”
Seven years have passed since the wonderful time when Terrie’s prayers were finally answered. She says, “Ninety-nine percent of my healing happened when Bethany was placed in my arms.” But she hasn’t forgotten the pain of the seventeen years she waited. Terrie exclaims, “You don’t really know what it means to be a desperate housewife until you’ve faced infertility!”
Looking back on the incredible path she’s traveled, Terrie has this final encouragement to share with her fellow travelers: “I think one of the most important parts of this journey is learning to trust God. I don’t mean the flippant kind of trust. It’s easy for people to say, ‘You just need to trust God.’ It’s much harder when you’re in the middle of all this pain. But He is trustworthy. Through it all, God has given us an amazing story. I wouldn’t have chosen this road, but He has been with us. I can look back and truly say every step was worth it.”
