The Gift of Adoption: How One Couple Found Life After Infertility
Photo Credit: Taylor Willoughby Photography
After a long, hard journey of twenty years of infertility, Kathleen and Steve Perry were left feeling lost, confused and discouraged, not understanding why they could not have a child. “We questioned God through all those years, like ‘Why God, why?’,” Perry said. Not wanting to give up their dream of starting a family, the couple tried in vitro fertilization many times, but to no avail. “I remember being at work one night after my last in vitro. I had just found out that my in vitro was not successful, went back to my counter and there was a very pregnant 16-year-old girl waiting there,” Perry recalls.
After their last in vitro fertilization attempt, the couple decided to take a weekend trip to Charleston to get away and talk about their options. Perry remembered a conversation she had had with one of her customers at work about Christian World Adoption, an organization that coordinated the adoption of children in various countries by families in the United States.
While on their way to drop off their dog at boarding for the weekend, they talked about the idea. Her husband, Steve, wasn't quite ready to consider adoption, but Perry continued to pray about it. “I prayed for a sign from God to confirm whether this was the path we were supposed to take,” Perry said. When they came back from their trip to Charleston to pick up their dog, a little Chinese girl walked in with her American family. It was then that Perry says they realized God was leading them on the journey of adoption.
They actively started looking into Christian World Adoption and discovered that the organization's main campus was located in Flat Rock, North Carolina, and their China adoption program was out of Charleston, South Carolina. Once they began the process, they soon found out that it could be another five years of waiting for a healthy child from China, unless they wanted to take the route of adopting a child with special needs. By taking this route, the Perrys were able to adopt four children in the time it would’ve taken to adopt just one.
Perry remembers the day they discovered their first child, AnnaGrace. “I had to be at work at 1pm, and the list came out at 11:00,” she recalls. They started looking at the bottom of the list, and there was AnnaGrace. “She had a cleft palate and a missing ear, and so we were very aware of the needs,” she says. They immediately sent an email expressing their interest only to find out that another family had already expressed their interest in adopting her. Feeling dejected, Perry went to work, thinking she had lost her chance. “I actually felt the loss of her, which was very hard, but I realized that God was in control of the whole thing,” she says. A couple of hours later, Perry’s sister called her and told her to check her email. It turned out that the family who had first demonstrated interest in her had fallen through. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says, recalling the experience.
The Perrys immediately began building what is called a “dossier,” a collection of necessary documentation to complete an international adoption. These documents include anything from birth certificates, marriage certificates, background checks, to reference letters, mental health reports and employment information. “The whole process from building our dossier to meeting our social workers took about nine months,” Perry says. They finally brought home AnnaGrace Perry at twenty-one months old in July 2007.
From there, the Perrys started building their family. In January 2010, they adopted two-year-old MollyClaire who is now an early college student in ninth grade. “MollyClaire is my child who has questions about things, whereas the others don’t really question their pasts as much,” Perry describes.
While the Perrys were in China for MollyClaire’s adoption, they came across a family who had adopted a child the day before her fourteenth birthday. Had she turned fourteen, she would no longer have been eligible for adoption. “She was just so appreciative,” Perry recalls. “We said that if we ever came back, we would come back for the forgotten, and we realized that God was placing it on our hearts to adopt an older child,” Perry says. In November 2010, they brought home Lydia Faith, who was about to turn fourteen years old. “From the day we saw her on this list, to the day we met her, it was a total of 40 days,” Perry remembers, stating that forty days is a significant number in biblical terms. “I asked her if she knew who Jesus was. She said, ‘No.’ I told her He was the reason we found her,” Perry explains. “She has the most spiritual connection; she loves her bible studies, she loves Jesus,” she says.
In November 2014, the Perrys adopted Ella Christine at just six years old. Ella had a history of severe malnutrition and microtia atresia, a deformity of the ear that can cause hearing loss. When the Perrys first met her, they were not prepared for how little she was. “She was in 18-month-old when she was 6 years old,” Perry recalls. “She is very smart, but she still can’t put a lot of those pieces together without sound coming through her ears. We are playing catch-up, so we don’t know what to expect,” Perry says, “but we continue to pour into her and pray over her.”
Raising children with histories of abandonment, whether biological or adopted, is challenging. Perry says that it is important to make sure her girls are getting what they need, in terms of therapy and being in tune with their feelings. Perry says her and her husband make time to take the girls on mini vacations, lunch dates and incorporate other enjoyable activities. “I would do it a million times over if it meant we would be where we are today,” Perry says.
Through their adoption journey, there were so many people that came into the Perrys’ path to guide them along. For someone who may have questions about whether or not they should adopt, Perry said her answer would be faith-based. “I feel like God just took all those years of pain and brought these four beautiful girls into our life,” she says. “We were able to become a family; we all needed each other. We wanted children, and they wanted parents.”
Ultimately, she wants others to know that there is life after infertility, and that it is all-consuming. “It is one of the hardest walks,” Perry says. “It tests your marriage, it tests your faith.” Despite the struggle and the pain, Perry says that all of that doesn’t hold a candle to where they are now. “I see now that this was how it was meant to be all along.”
Written by Rosa Linda Fallon