By Shannon Keenan
Most of the time we hear about adoption from the adoptive family side, but I am here to tell you that the other side, the birth family side, can be just as beautiful and just as redemptive. After all, God is in the business of redemption.
In 2018 I found out I was pregnant. I was not at a place where I could raise a child, but I couldn’t imagine this tiny person growing inside me not calling me Mama. So, I cried, and I prayed, and in the end, God told me that He had a plan; all I had to do was trust Him.
Trusting God wasn’t easy, but it was all I could do. I told God that I would need Him to make this easy for me or I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. You know in John 14 where Jesus says, “If you ask for anything in My Name, I will do it”? Well, He did. In the biggest, most amazing way possible.
I went to Bethany in August of 2018. Through many tears, I sat and talked about what I wanted in the people that would raise this child. Then I was given a stack of profiles to choose from. How is a person to make such a monumental decision from a pile of paper?! I asked several people that I trust to review the profiles and give me their opinions. One profile kept coming to the top of the pile. Art and Laura. What could I possibly have in common with an engineer and a history major? But I am supposed to be trusting God, right? So, a meeting was set.
During my pregnancy I would sing the same song to my growing bump every day. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness…”
The moment I found out that I was carrying a girl, I knew that her name had to be Hope. With every kick, every hiccup, and every flutter, I was reminded that my hope was not of this world, but that it rested in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I met Art and Laura for the first time on October 15, 2018. The moment that Art and Laura walked into the room, I knew that we were standing, or sitting as it were, on holy ground. They were everything I could have ever prayed they would be, and then some. I knew immediately that they were the parents God had chosen for my girl. There was just one more hurdle…
I had to tell Art and Laura that she already had a name, so I shared the story of how her name came to be Hope. Their response, “We want Hope! And Shannon, too!” And so, a magnificent family was born.
God is capable of so much more than we can ask or imagine, all we have to do is trust Him.