I turned 30-years-old on Saturday (woohoo) and have been reflecting on the 3 decades of my life over the past week. I had the opportunity to share my testimony, my story, on Sunday Morning in Bible Study Fellowship. It was pretty amazing to write out my personal story of God's faithfulness to me over the last 30 years as I look forward to what He has in store for my future...
My name is Kyle, and this is my story:
I was born to a Christian couple who struggled with infertility for 5 long years before God blessed them with a child. I was their miracle, answer to prayer, and as my aunt Patti says, “the million-dollar baby.” (Infertility treatments were expensive in the ’80’s too.) A short 22 months after my life began, my brother Neale was my parents’ “surprise”, and when I was six-years-old, my baby brother Perry was our family’s “blessing.” My parents sought out a church with active children’s programs, and we were in church every Sunday and Wednesday and VBS during the summers. I have many memories of Mission Friends and GA’s on Wednesday nights and learning Mark 16:15, “ And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”
Given my family’s church attendance, it was no surprise that the 1st week of March in 1991 that my family was filling the pews during a week-long revival lead by Angel Martinez. On March 3, 1991, the first night of the revival, Pastor Angel told the congregation that if we didn’t accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior that when we died we would not go to heaven, but instead to hell. After describing in vivid detail just how bad going to hell would be for those lost souls, Pastor Angel asked those of us who wanted to go to heaven at the end of our lives to pray a simple prayer with him asking Jesus into our hearts. At the time, it seemed like a no-brainer to my 7-year-old mind, I needed Jesus and I needed him right that minute to save me from hell. That night, I committed my life to Christ. I was a very shy child and was afraid of walking the aisle to make my public profession of faith. That was a Monday night, it wasn’t until Wednesday that I got up the courage to walk forward. The line to hug me, shake my hand, welcome me into the family of God wrapped around the church that night. I was reassured that I had made the best decision and would have plenty of support in my young walk with Christ from these other believers. Two weeks later, I was baptized, right after my friend Laura Beth and my friend Andrew right after me. I will never forget coming up out of the water in the baptistry...I was truly cleansed from my sins and saved by grace!
In third grade, my friend Lauren’s father who is a Pediatrician came to our Mission Friends class and shared with us his experiences on the mission field in Brazil. He told us about setting up a make-shift clinic in the slums and villages, and how the children would race shoeless after their van yelling for candy and bubble gum. I knew after hearing his testimony that I was being called to be a missionary in Brazil, too. This weighed heavy on my heart and I decided to tell my mom about my call to Brazil. My mom explained that maybe God was calling me to be a missionary in my class at school, not necessarily Brazil. She reminded me that we all have a Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria...but Brazil might just be my “ends of the earth” and for a later time in my life. So from the 3rd grade through the 6th, I was a missionary in my classes at school. Once I was old enough to join the youth group, I was able to start going on mission trips to Georgia, Chicago, Nicaragua, and help with VBS. My junior year of high school, my dad offered to let me choose where I wanted to go for spring break: “out west” with the whole family or to Brazil with just my dad for a medical mission trip. A 2-day car ride from TN to the Grand Canyon with my two brothers sounded like absolute torture (and it still does). My time to be missionary in Brazil had finally come and March 2000 I boarded a plane with my dad to go on a life-changing journey.
Arriving in Sao Paulo was like a dream come true. The sights, smells, people were so exotic but so gracious and loving. Our team set up our medical clinic in a church in a middle-class neighborhood, which would qualify as the ghetto here in the States. The first morning, the line of people waiting to see us for free medical care stretched clear down the street and was literally never-ending and never ran out of potential patients our entire time serving there. I was assigned to triage where I took the patients’ histories with the help of an interpreter, took vital signs, and lead the patients up to the exam rooms. The children wanted to have me as their nurse because they were so intrigued by my blonde hair and white skin. They had never seen anyone who looked like me before. My foreign looks were a great distraction because they hardly noticed when I took their blood pressure or temperature, they just stared at my blonde hair in fascination. My father practices as a medical physicist in radiation oncology in the States, but in Brazil, he was an eye doctor and spent the week giving eye exams and fitting our patients with donated eye glasses. It was a joy to watch these people who could not remember having good vision receive sight. Their faces would light up and then they would cry tears of pure joy and thankfulness. Through our efforts in medically ministering to this neighborhood, our team and the Brazilian church were blessed to lead many to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. I cried when we left Brazil, but I knew that God had given me a new call during the trip, to a career in medicine. So I went back home and continued to hit the books with a new fervor in preparation for college and eventually graduate school.
My senior year of high school, I rode with my parents up to the University of Kentucky to check out the campus and appease my parents with a visit to their alma mater. Unexpectedly, I fell in love with UK and decided to apply there instead of the other schools I thought I wanted to attend. I was accepted to UK and roomed with a acquaintance of mine from high school, Kelly. I moved into the dorm a week early to go through sorority rush. My mom was in a sorority and had a great experience and had encouraged me to do the same. I didn’t know anyone or have any friends at school and knew this would be a quick way to find a place where I belonged. By the end of the week, I was a Chi Omega pledge and thrilled because this was my first choice and they apparently felt the same about me. I was also excited to have pledged a sorority with so many good Christian girls, or so I thought. Turns out I talked to the only few professing and believing Christians during the week of Rush at Chi Omega, and had in fact pledged the biggest party sorority on campus. I was on the mission field again. Kelly (my roommate) moved in on Pledge Day and the following night before classes started we attended a Baptist Student Union progressive dinner in an attempt to make new friends and find a church to attend on the weekends. That night on our 4th church stop during dessert, this guy with shaggy blonde hair and khaki capri cut-offs sat down and flirted with me. He wasn’t my type and I had a boyfriend back home, so I ignored him even though I felt that there was something about this guy I couldn’t put my finger on. The fall semester started and I studied hard, Kelly and I began best friends, I made many friends in my coed dorm, broke up with my boyfriend back home and started dating other guys on campus, and I was an active member of my sorority and the Student Athletics Council which meant I was at every home football and basketball game. Even though I was making many friends and very busy with studying and activities, I felt torn between my Christian friends and life and the desire to be better friends and fit in with my pagan sorority sisters. My sorority sisters defended me at every party as I turned down alcohol and I believe respected me for my faith and beliefs, but I just couldn’t get close enough to the majority of the girls in my pledge class to truly call them my friends. My Big Sister, Kristy, was a Christian and I co-led a Bible study with her at the Chi O house. This was where I formed my small circle of sorority sisters who I fit in with and could call my friends. Spring Break of my freshman year, Kelly began to organize a trip with our Christian friends to Florida, but I knew I was being called again to the mission field. Our college ministry was going to Rochester, NY, to work with a missionary from our church. I decided to go freezing cold New York even though I really would have rather gone to Florida to the beach. The week before we were supposed to leave I got double pink eye and a sinus infection and survived midterms, and I really just wanted to go home. I was still trying to figure out if I was going to live my faith or join my sorority sisters in their fun in order to fit in. I was confused. My friend and Christian sorority-sister Langley had also signed up for the mission trip and practically dragged me onto the church bus and packed my bags for me. She wasn’t about to let me miss this trip and was such an encouragement to me in my faith. At a rest stop on our way, someone mentioned that it was Isaac’s 21st birthday...and there he was, the guy from the progressive dinner doing a hand-stand in the grass to celebrate his birthday. His hair was no longer long, blond, or shaggy, and his clothes were upgraded too. In fact, he looked pretty cute and when my group’s assignment for the week was cancelled, I told our leader that I really had a heart for crisis pregnancy centers so that I could work on Isaac’s team. By the end of the trip, we were friends, and within 2 weeks after coming home, we were inseparable. God sent Isaac to me at just the right time in my life. I didn’t need to fit in with my sorority sisters anymore because I had a boyfriend to spend my extra time with and who enjoyed hanging out with my Christian friends immensely more than my sorority sisters. My sophomore and junior years of college I became the chaplain for my sorority. I continued to study hard and graduated from undergrad in 3 years with my eyes on going through the PA graduate school program and fulfilling God’s call on my life.
Isaac and I dated for a year and a half before Isaac finally asked me to be his wife and were married nine months later on July 10, 2004. I received the news that I had been accepted into UK’s PA program that September, and started my classes in January of 2005. PA school was tough, and maybe tougher still because I was also a newlywed. Isaac was an amazing support and encouragement to me through school and I don’t think I could have made it through without him. Our newlywed days weren’t all rainbows and butterflies though. The first 6 months were definitely the honeymoon stage, and the next 12 months that followed were rocky at times as we would bicker with each other over everything and anything. We still loved each other although sometimes we might not have truly liked each other, and were committed to making our marriage great. We attended church every Sunday and were active in our newlywed Sunday School class. After we had been married a year-and-a-half and were at the height of the bickering phase of our marriage, we were introduced to the Love & Respect book and went through the Bible Study with our Sunday School class. Learning how to apply biblical principles about marriage totally transformed our relationship. We finally got off of the crazy cycle and quit driving each other crazy as we learned about to communicate the right way with one another. I’m not saying that our marriage turned into perfection, and we still work at our marriage even now, but it was so drastically improved. Looking back, God was preparing us for our next adventure: moving to Florida. As I was finishing up PA school and starting to look for jobs, we noticed that there were alot more PA jobs in FL than KY and Isaac could potentially transfer with his job to the FL division. An opening became available for Isaac to transfer and on a whim he applied. The company flew him down for the interview a week later and hired him on the spot ahead of 10 other candidates who had already interviewed. Isaac moved to FL 2 weeks later. Our world was flipped upside down as we were leaving our closest friends and Isaac’s family who had just moved to Lexington, and moving to a new place where all we had was each other. The move was hard for both of us, but we learned quickly that we were a strong team and our marriage grew as a result of the challenge. Prior to our move to FL, we had prayed that God would change our church in Lexington for the better or lead us to another church, little did we know that He was leading us to Bell Shoals Baptist Church in another state. The first service we attended together I knew immediately that Bell Shoals was the answer to that prayer and was so excited at God’s mercy of confirmation that we heard Him correctly in moving away from home. The following week we attended Bible Fellowship for the first time and were welcomed as soon as we walked in the door and even taken to lunch after church were we started making new friends. We eased into our new life in Florida and in December I started working finally as a Physician Assistant. Even though we were loving living in Florida, our marriage was stronger than ever, and I was enjoying my career, 2008 was a tough year as we lost 2 Christian brothers we loved, Isaac started on a career roller-coaster, and just when we thought things couldn’t get worse, Obama was elected president and I began to think, “well, there went my long-term career plans.” In December of 2008, we decided that after everything not-so-great that happened in 2008, to plan on starting a family the following December of 2009 so that we would have something happy to look forward to, work towards, and we had definitely learned by this point that life is short.
Summer of 2009 we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary and realized that we weren’t going to be ready to start trying to conceive in December. As Christmas approached, the thought of "what if we were ready" kept playing in my mind. I also started dreaming about this little boy with dark skin and dark eyes who I had dreamed about years before, except this time his picture was on a Christmas card. He was sitting in front of a Christmas tree beaming with his arm around a little Asian girl and the card read "Treesh Family" on the bottom right-hand corner. Right after Christmas 2009, my adopted children were born in my heart. I just knew that adoption was God's plan for our family, but convincing Isaac was another story. I continued to pray, began sharing more of my heart's desire and quoting scripture from Isaiah 43:5, "Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the East, and you from the West." Through many scripture verses, circumstances and prayer, God confirmed over and over again to Isaac that this was His perfect plan for the start of our family and he could not deny it any longer. It was time for us to step out in faith. Isaac agreed with me to submit an info sheet to Gladney Adoption Agency on January 24th, 2010 after seeing a picture of an Ethiopian baby girl flashed on the big screen at church who was being adopted by one of our fellow church families (again, confirmation!). Two days later, I got the first call from Gladney to set up our 1st interview which occurred on February 3, 2010. Debra put us at total ease during that call and we knew that we had made the right choice in choosing Gladney to help us navigate this road to adoption. When we hung up the phone, Isaac looked at me all misty-eyed and I knew that he was totally on-board and excited to become a father to the fatherless. We officially started the mound of paperwork on February 5, 2010 to adopt from Ethiopia. We requested a baby boy 0-12 months with the possibility of twins. Months later, the Lord confirmed that we were to adopt 2 boys and we began to plan with expectation for our babies to come home from Ethiopia. Gladney told us it would be 15-18 months before we would be parents. Our adoption due date was July 11, 2011. It would be a massive understatement to say that our road to adoption has been extremely rocky. It is now March of 2013, and we have spent over 3 years, thousands of dollars, filled out countless forms, been fingerprinted at least 6 times, and changed agencies, and still are not parents. If I had known what I know now, I’m not so sure I would have signed up for this...
But isn’t that the purpose of faith?
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Hebrews 11.1.
Although nothing has gone according to plan during this season of life, the Lord has been so faithful to assure me of this desire to be a mom and hope for our future forever family. He has brought so many friends into my life to encourage me when I’m down or doubting. He has taught me how to encourage others. He took me to Africa to work with orphans, to show me that adoption is not the only answer to the orphan crisis. We, as Christians, can and need to do more. He convicts me over and over again that even though I can’t see the future or where I’m going, He can, He knows. He knows who our children are, where they are coming from, who is taking care of them now, when we will be united as a family. Until then, I will wait expectantly for Him and believe that He is still good even when my circumstances aren’t what I had expected, planned, or hoped for. And I can’t wait to share one day the end to this chapter of my life and how He worked it all out for the ultimate good for this woman who loves Him.
Thanks for listening to my story. I hope it encourages you in your faith.
