Adoption Journey started in the middle of the night.
In the dead of night, everything changed. The last leg of their adoption journey began.
At 10:30 PM, the family had completed their nightly routine. All three childrenâs teeth were brushed and asleep. The parents drifted off to sleep.
Totally unaware that in less than four hours, their world would explode into a whirlwind of joy, panic, and anticipation.
They couldn’t have imagined that a woman they’d never met had just made the most profound decision of her lifeâchoosing them to parent her child.
At 2 AM, their silenced phones were receiving noiseless messages.
âYouâve been chosen.â
“Pack your bags. Your baby is waiting.”
âIt all worked,â Sherie* said. âHonestly, so many things that God just said, âLet me take care of this for you.â Right down to a woman we love in an open adoption.â
If their three-year-old hadnât had an earache, the couple wouldnât have checked their phones, and they wouldnât have received messages about how they needed to catch a plane and pick up their baby.
Itâs hard to be grateful for an earache. But in this case . . .
Other coincidencesâcoincidences that Sherie callsâblessings on this adoption journey.Â
âWe couldnât have made the trip and the ten-day stay without my sister,â Sherie said. Â âShe has babysat our children before. She was the perfect person to travel with us so that we could be at the hospital and do paperwork.
Sister joins adoption journey
âMy sister had been on a trip and returned just a few hours before we had to fly out to California. She is a schoolteacher,
âMy sister had been on a trip and returned just a few hours before we had to fly out to California. She is a schoolteacher, and she had two weeks in her whole summer when she didnât have commitments. And those two weeks were July 4 through July 18. The exact days we needed her.
âNo one could have planned that. Godâs planning.â
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ICPC Part of the Adoption Journey
Sherie continued to explain how they were concerned about how long ICPC would take.
ICPC (Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children) is a set of laws shared across the United States that controls how children being adopted can cross state borders before the adoption is finalized.
Both statesâwhere the child was born and where the child is going to reside with adoptive parentsâneed approval by a judge before the child can cross state lines.
âMy sister had helped us all week, but she had to get home,â Sherie said, âFlying with four kids, one with medical issues, was going to be difficult, and we wanted her with us, but we hadnât heard from ICPC. Our home state hadnât approved yet.
 âWe would need to get our ICPC clearance by 11:00 on Thursday for the latest flight out. We were just praying, âLet ICPC come through.â No word. No word. So, on Thursday at 11, we hadnât heard anything, so my husband bought my sister a ticket. She would leave without us. The two of them were walking out the door to the airport when we got the call. YAY!!! We didnât really pack; we just started throwing things into suitcases and rushed to the airport.
Read another article describing how the family went from feeling they were done with adoption to having a baby withing 48 hours. 
Blair wondered if she was walking into a scam, but found an angel who pulled her out of a dark space.
âThe plane was almost completely full. We needed seven seats, and somehow, those seats were available. Another blessing.
âRemember Deltaâs IT crash. It happened as we were in the air. We knew a couple that took three extra days to get home. What would we have done with four kids stranded in the airport for three days? It would have been a nightmare.
âYou can call it coincidence. We felt blessed.âÂ
