The Final Verdict: Infertility & Adoption- Zac Hepworth
Hi I’m Zac Hepworth (26) and my lovely wife is Ebie Hepworth (25).
The journey of Adoption has been a whirlwind….man! Swept up into a whole new world full of red tape, bumps in the road, and unfamiliar terminology. But isn’t anything of value found at the end of a road that is far less than smooth? One of my favorite sayings is “a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor” partly because it sounds cool and mostly because of its truth. In this journey, my wife and I have taken our fair share of trials head on and the reward we are reaping now is beyond worth it. It's worth it 3 times over!
Our adoption was on-set early as a result of my wife having an ectopic pregnancy. If you're unfamiliar with this here is a simple explanation; the fetus begins to develop outside of the womb and never makes it to the womb. This is very dangerous for the mother carrying and outside of supernatural intervention the baby has no chance of surviving.
I find a common narrative or belief about adoption is, it’s the “second option” when starting a family. Maybe its time for a new narrative to surface on the earth! Since starting our process to adopt we see adoption as the heartbeat of heaven. An honor and a privilege and we feel no other option but to partner in this opportunity of a lifetime! The loss of a child (going into the first ultrasound and then a month later finding out the child won’t make it) was devastating, life was on the way, and then it wasn’t. End of story nothing we could do and we all know that hope differed makes the heart sick. My wife and I felt sick for months, I felt helpless and broken, what on earth could I do to bring any sort of relief? Simply, I could do nothing and that was a hard realization. Blinded by my own pain I couldn’t see this at the time but a beautiful process was taking place and my hand wasn’t strong enough to guide all the emotions, thoughts, experiences running through and coming towards my wife and I. I had no choice but to be completely surrender in a situation, that at the time, I hated with all of my heart. I knew God was good but I hated what we had just been through.
I want to clear the air real quick, we aren’t adopting because we’ll never have children. We’ve been battling for fertility but our final verdict will not be ruled infertility. As a matter of fact, for me personally, if I were you no matter your situation I would take a posture of hope, don’t ever accept the conclusion that you're infertile. I’ve heard too many infertility stories turned fertile! Each one having a worthwhile ending filled with beautiful children. This isn’t a down play on the struggle and battle of infertility, the disappointing experiences and effort it takes to maintain a hopeful attitude isn’t a walk in the park. At the same time, I desire to be a voice of encouragement as someone who still hasn’t had the privilege of conceiving a biological child. Many people looking into our situation assume were adopting because we’ll never have children. A battle with infertility doesn’t always equal the most common narrative we’re all used to hearing, “they’ll never have kids”.
Back to our loss, my heart sunk the day my wife went into surgery. It was as if a gray cloud rested on top of my head and hovered over. Blurred vision blurred thinking everything seemed to loose its color, life wasn’t vibrant and full off hope like it had been just 24 hours ago. Such a stark contrast threw my mind and spirit into a shock that would take me several months to come out of. This was an event that completely changed the trajectory of where we thought we were headed. But this was just the preamble to the most amazing journey we would ever embark on.
Months after the surgery, loosing our child, and multiple attempts to get pregnant again. We felt the timing wasn’t right for us to have children, which we would soon discover meant not time to have biological children. Sometime after Ebie brought up her desire to adopt, by the way she had lived with this hope from a very young age. My initial response was not full-blown in support of adopting. I grew up with my biological mother and without my biological father, my Dad adopted me when I was around 2years old. Growing up I didn’t think much about whether I was adopted or not, I just assumed I wasn’t adopted. For years I lived with the reality that both my parents were my biological parents. So you can imagine at 13 years old when they decided to tell me that I was adopted I was confused and had a list of questions. Back to Ebie suggesting we looked into adopting, I realized I had never thought through the confusion of my own adoption experience. Yet another unexpected process was set into motion! I had been living with the world-view that adoption was good and for a special group of people but I didn’t believe I was one of those people. All on the premise of the confusion and difficulties I had personally experienced from being adopted.
Once I realized my reluctancy wasn’t very rational and was a personal misconception birthed out of hurt and confusion it made inviting the possibility of adoption much easier. I started to see its value in my life! For me personally I hold the Word of God to be the governing lens of all my decisions so my first action item was finding out what God The Father said about adoption. As I opened the pages of the Bible and took to prayer I found an INDECISIVE YES (you may be reading this and find it hard to believe in God but no worries He believes in you). Jesus died so we would no longer be spiritual orphans, He rose after death and we then became sons of a strong life giving lineage with a Father who lavishly loves His children. I thought to myself, "I want to be able to do that too!” Now, what's bigger in life, your personal hurt and misconceptions or the Love of God? For me It was time to surrender any wrong thinking and simply accept the beauty and honor of adoption, despite all the questions I still had. God would be faithful to answer those along the way! This was the moment my heart heard the starting gun and leapt from the starting blocks into a full sprint towards the process of adoption. I started to really understand that adoption was "the heartbeat of heaven, an honor and a privilege and we feel no other option but to partner in this opportunity of a lifetime.” as I mentioned earlier.
Since we fully committed to the adopting process of two children God has provided an absurd amount of money in the most creative and miraculous ways, we have formed lifer friendships (including this crazy guy named Jeff Roeters), and have seen multiple young couples encouraged in one simple truth "if Zac & Ebie can adopt so can we!” I would have never imagined I would have the opportunity to be apart of such big team effort. The amount of people we have to thank for supporting us in so many different ways is innumerable.
I started off thinking adoption was for a very unique group of people (because I didn’t understand it at all) to now believing everyone should at least adopt once! I’m a full out advocate who offers the education of my experiences to anyone who will listen. So what can I say about adopting; its a beautiful gift to the parents and the children involved, finances should never be a reason not to adopt (my wife and I are full time missionaries) plenty of 3rd party agencies exists for the sole purpose of helping fund adoptions, and adoption is a God idea. If you’re reading this and your thinking about adopting….go start the process now! It isn’t a quick process so you might as well get the ball rolling and prepare yourself along the way.
