Dear Mama, 

Thank you.  Thank you first, for picking up this book and being willing to get to know a little about us.  And second, thank you for loving your unborn child enough to choose life for them, and for being brave in choosing adoption for your baby.  We admire your love and courage in making this choice, and while this may be a confusing and difficult time for you, know that you’re in our prayers daily.

While praying to know exactly what to write to you, I was reminded of a song I’d heard many times.  It’s called “The Words I Would Say”, by The Sidewalk Prophets.  These words are words we will be praying for you, and that we will sing to your sweet baby as we rock them to sleep at night.

It goes like this:

“Three in the morning, and I’m still awake, So I picked up a pen and a page, And I started writing, Just what I’d say, If we were face to face, I’d tell you just what you mean to me, I’d tell you these simple truths. Be strong in the Lord and, Never give up hope, You’re going to do great things, I already know, God’s got His hand on you so, Don’t live life in fear, Forgive and forget, But don’t forget why you’re here, Take your time and pray, These are the words I would say.”

You may feel like uncertainty, pain, heartache, regret and despair have been meeting you at every turn throughout this whole process.  But know that God has His hand in this situation and is working ALL things out for His good.

Be strong. Be brave. Don’t live life in fear. And know that we’re praying for you and the decisions you’re making every day.

We can’t wait to, hopefully, meet and get to know you soon.  If you should choose an adoption plan with us, know that your baby will be loved, encouraged, and supported through every part of their life.  They’ll know just how much you love them, and how the decision you’re making was 100% made out of love.

Those were words I penned in April of 2020 to what would hopefully be the “tummy mom” of our future child.  I haven’t read them since I wrote them, until now, when I looked them up to write this blog post as a continuation of a post I wrote back in November 2024 (you can read that post here).

You see, no one ever read this letter in our adoption book; God had different plans for our journey through the adoption process.  The mom of our son didn’t choose adoption for her child, she didn’t choose to pick and meet a family that would provide a life she wasn’t able to for them.  But what our son’s tummy mom did choose was life for her unborn baby, and then God took over and put the rest of the puzzle together.

Reading that letter now, I realize the Mama I wrote it to was me.  Just as I said in my last post, “Before our son was formed in his tummy mother’s womb, God had him picked just for us.  But my husband and I had to move from a place of “we can’t figure this out” and “what am I going to do next”, “what is our next plan”, to a place of “Okay, God, if it’s your will for us to have a child, then you’re going to have to do it.  After the surrender of our greatest desire, we began to fully see God work out his plan.  It required many yeses from us along the way.”  

When we said yes to our adoption agency just a few days before Christmas in 2021, we didn’t know what we were saying yes to.  What we did know was that it was a safe haven situation (in Florida a mother can leave her newborn at a hospital, fire station, rescue station or police station and there are no questions asked) and that his mom had no prenatal care.  While nothing was reported as being wrong during the pregnancy, we couldn’t be sure until after the birth to confirm that.  It didn’t matter to us, we knew this was the yes we were meant to say, and we did.

I didn’t know then just how much I was the one who needed to take to heart the words of the song I prayed for our son’s mom.  “Be strong in the Lord and, Never give up hope, You’re going to do great things, I already know, God’s got His hand on you so, Don’t live life in fear, Forgive and forget, But don’t forget why you’re here, Take your time and pray, These are the words I would say.”  Over the next 16 months of raising this precious little boy, there were some medical complications that started coming to light.  Conditions that would once again require us to fully trust that God had his hand in every situation, and constantly remembering that as Jeremiah 29:11-13 says, “He has a plan for us, and that is one of hope”.  And then to go back to the next verses that remind us, “then you will call on Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen.  You will seek and you will find Me”.

In those early days, we became advocates and sometimes sought out the next fight we had to win to get to where we needed to get for the benefit of our son. It would have been so easy to start taking matters into our own hands again (as I tried to do through our fertility journey) searching for answers and proper therapies and treatments.  When we weren’t getting those answers, it would have been so easy to give up hope and become fearful and put prayer on the back burner.  But as God had so beautifully reminded us on the road we had just been down, we knew that He had everything already worked out, and that it would be worked out for our son’s good, if WE just prayed and trusted Him fully in every situation of the new road we found ourselves on.

It took much of 2023 and 2024 to finally get a clear picture of the medical issues we were dealing with, but God certainly had his hand on us and we absolutely had no choice but to find our strength in God through the process.  It’s popular in the sports world to say “keep your eye on the ball”, but when you’re walking through hard stuff remind yourself “don’t forget why you’re here.”

Maybe there’s a Mama (or Daddy) out there reading this, and you need the reminder that we wrote to our son’s birth mom: Be strong in the Lord, never give up hope, God’s got his hand on your, don’t live in fear, forgive and forget, don’t forget why you’re here, take your time and pray.”

There’s a new letter that I would write to his mom knowing what I know now, and I’ll leave this with you –

Dear Mama, 

Thank you for the beautiful life you created.  Thank you for preserving that life, keeping it safe to the best of your ability, and for choosing to carry him for 9 months.  Thank you for not giving up.  While we will very likely never meet, please know that we still pray for you.  Please know that we do not hold any resentment towards you for the medical conditions we are helping your child walk through (and will continue to do so for as long as we need to).  Please know that when the time comes, the child you birthed will only hear from our lips that the woman who carried him in her tummy loved him enough to choose to give him life, so that we could give him the life she didn’t think she would be capable of.  He will know that it was probably not an easy decision for you to walk out of the hospital without him.  And he will have our full support should he one day decide he wants to try to find and meet you.  His big brown eyes, infectious laugh, comedic sense of humor, his love of “nuggles”, and yes, even his quick temper, probably resemble you in many ways.  One day, when the time is right, we will let him know that those qualities and characteristics don’t all come from us.  Thank you for giving us the honor and privilege of being his parents, even if it wasn’t your direct choice.  We know that God had this plan formed all along and for that, we are grateful.

Written by: Staci Reid