How adoption impacted the Murphy family
By Katie Murphy | For On Mission
GREEN BAY — Eleven years ago this October, our family was forever changed. After years of waiting, filling out stacks of papers, completing interviews, and watching the calendar as if it could make time pass faster, we were finally waiting for her — our daughter — to enter the room.
For the first time, I would be face-to-face with the little girl I had held in my heart for months. I had studied her picture, guessed her personality and imagined what daily life with her might be like. I wondered if I would love her as much as the children I had given birth to. All of these thoughts and feelings whirled through me as I sat waiting in an orphanage room in Yinchuan, China.
Those anxious feelings must have preoccupied me, because I didn’t hear the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. I looked up, and there she was in the arms of our guide. I gasped. I was moments away from having her in my arms.
As our guide handed her to me, my fears melted, and I thanked God for this precious little girl, my daughter Felicity. Much like holding my other children moments after birth, as I held Felicity, I knew she was my daughter.
A few days later, during a visit to Felicity’s orphanage, I said hello to an 11-month-old boy quietly playing on the floor. He smiled at me, It was a smile that God used to etch that little boy onto my heart. Six months later, we began the adoption process to bring him home. Ten months after that, we traveled back to Yinchuan and stood in the same room where we had waited for Felicity, and there we held our 2-year-old son, Thomas, for the first time.
While many years have passed since those two “Gotcha Days,” when I reflect on them, the emotions of those moments come flooding back: the excitement, the worry, the love. Through the years, much life has happened. Like any family, we have had our joys and struggles. We have grown closer together.
Felicity and Thomas are confident in their identity as daughter, son, sister, and brother. And I thank God every day and am honored that he called our family to adoption.
This November — National Adoption Month — please keep all adoptive families, families considering adoption, children waiting to be adopted domestically and internationally, and birth mothers in your prayers. This is a special time to support all involved in adoption.