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Refuel Your Wait is the story of how I was able to find hope and peace in the process of becoming a parent through adoption.

As a girl from South Louisiana my well-meaning family was alarmed at the fact that I remained single and unspoken for as I quickly approached the age of thirty. Thankfully, in early 2005, just in the nick of time, I stumbled upon and met the man who quickly became my husband. We had a whirlwind courtship that included a move across the country after a year into our relationship. My family also became alarmed at this move with no sign of a wedding ring on my finger. In 2008, we married and my well-meaning family became my husband’s well-meaning family also.

In 2010, after appreciating life as a couple with plenty of travel, abundant excursions, and generous dinners at nice restaurants, we decided it was time to start a family. In 2012, after one year of trying to conceive naturally and then one year of fertility treatments, we chose to move on to the adoption process. We had discussions early in our marriage that if we couldn’t conceive for any reason we would adopt. Some of our very dear friends had built their family by adoption and we mistakenly thought we knew a bit about the process. It was a natural and easy decision for us.

It was during our adoption wait that God decided to speak directly to me. As he and I were early on in our relationship, it took me some time to recognize his voice. I imagined God’s voice would be a scary and booming sound cutting through silence. And I have to tell you, prior to my personal experience, if someone claimed they were spoken to by God, I probably stopped listening pretty quickly. But then I heard him, and his voice wasn’t weird or scary or booming.

My Heavenly Father, who knows me very well, spoke to me delicately and gracefully. Early one morning in the fall of 2012, I awoke from a dream with a specific date lingering in my thoughts. The date was April 10. I remember no other details of the dream besides the specific date and my deceased grandfather being present. I searched my memory to find the significance of the date as it may pertain to my grandfather, but it didn’t. I almost discarded the thought but decided to journal about it instead. You know, in case God was speaking to me. I shared the experience with my husband and a few close friends. After a while, the experience started to fade away as life and the waiting continued.

About six months later on April 9, 2013, we received the call that every adoptive family is impatiently waiting for. That call was our agency telling us about an expectant mother who was making an adoption plan and wanted to meet us. And on April 10–the date in my dream–we met the woman who chose us to parent her unborn child. God spoke to me with a dream, a date, and confirmation that this was the child we would parent. It would be a long seventeen weeks before the baby was born and the expectant mother’s decision was final. Even with this confirmation from my Heavenly Father, the waiting experience was a test of faith.

Refuel Your Wait is our story of a challenging waiting season filled with many fears along with the Scriptures that personally gave me hope and ultimately joy.