Building a Family the Non-Traditional Way– A Guest Post from Katie Ganshert

I don’t remember the exact details of how Jennifer and I met, I just know that writing brought us together. We started emailing back and forth and soon discovered we had many things in common.

One being that we both struggled with secondary infertility.

Like Jenny, I was able to get pregnant with our son, who is now four, without any problems. My husband and I took for granted that we’d be able to have another. But after a year and a half of trying, we started to realize that maybe it wasn’t going to happen.

With every negative pregnancy test and every day Brogan got older and every time well-intentioned people asked, “When are you going to give that son or yours a little brother or sister?”, the vision I had for our family began to fade. I won’t lie. The fading was painful.

At the time, I didn’t understand why we couldn’t conceive. There was no medical explanation for it. On paper, we should have been able to get pregnant. So why wasn’t it happening?

Here’s what I’m learning about God:

He doesn’t just close a door to close a door. He closes a door in order to open another.

For us, that other was adoption.

It wasn’t a coincidence that as we struggled with infertility, God kept bringing people into our lives who were adopting. It wasn’t a coincidence that eight years before, for no apparent reason, I wanted to move to Africa so I could love on kids in orphanages all day. It wasn’t a coincidence that God gave me a husband with a tender, tender heart for the helpless and the hurting.

He’d been preparing me to say Yes long before I ever knew adoption was on the table.

So we did. We said yes.

I’ve been paper pregnant for 17 months now, with at least six months left to go.

It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been incredibly hard.

But I’ve experienced first-hand how very much God meets us in the hard. He’s present through it and He has a purpose for it.

He has used the agonizing waits and the endless paperwork and the strain of finances and the ups and downs that inevitably come with adoption to bring forth a fierce, uncompromising love for a child who’s not even mine yet.

He has used this crazy journey to infuse an emotional intimacy in my marriage that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

He has used the heartache and the unknown to draw me closer and closer to Him.

And I can honestly say, no matter how hard it’s been, that there is no other path I’d rather be on than this one.

If you’d like to join us on this path, you can! We are in the process of raising the rest of the funds we need to bring this precious child home from DR Congo. All that’s involved is a puzzle, a sharpie, and 500 willing hearts. 385 have stepped up so far. Might you considering being one of the 115 remaining? For $10, you can sponsor a piece of our little one’s adoption puzzle (see photo above!!). We will write your name on the back and when the puzzle is complete, we will frame it in double-sided glass and hang it in our child’s room—a beautiful testimony to just how loved and wanted this little one was.

We have 115 pieces left to go! All donations are tax-deductible.

Please shoot me an email (ganshertadoption@gmail.com) if you’d like to donate!

Let’s Talk: What unexpected doors has God opened in your life?

Katie Ganshert was born and raised in the Midwest, where she writes stories about finding faith and falling in love. When she’s not busy plotting her next novel, she enjoys watching movies with her husband, playing make-believe with her wild-child of a son, and chatting with her girlfriends over bagels. She and her husband are in the process of adopting from the Congo. You can find her online at her blog and on Facebook.