Amanda Sherman will candidly tell you this about herself—she is a doer. If there’s anything in her power that she can do to get something done—be it a task at work, a project at home, or anything that needs to be checked off of the to do list—she will do it and do it well.
But when it came to adding children to her family, Amanda reached a point where there was nothing else she could do but wait. Wait on the adoption agency to call. Wait on God. And, like so many of you that read this blog know—the reason this blog was created in the first place—that wait can be excruciating. Especially, perhaps, for a doer (I am one, too). If there’s anything we could do to get the ball rolling more quickly, we’d do it. But, at a certain point, after we’ve done all we can, we have to stand, rooted, and give the situation to a capable and competent God. But that season is not easy.
“Everything has its season,” Amanda told me back in August. “I know it’s hard to wait, especially people like me that are doers. I’d think ‘I’ve done everything asked of me. I have done it all. What am I doing wrong?’ I’d blame myself.”
Amanda would think maybe she was just too old to be a mom—and maybe that’s why the adoption process hadn’t worked out yet.
“I’d think ‘If I’m too old, just let me know. Rip the Band-Aid. Stop this craziness,’” she said.
I’ve been here, too, though not with adoption, but with my own waits—God, if this desire I have is not for me, if this will never happen, please just take it away from me.
“I will let this go,” Amanda said, recounting what she told herself in the darkest moments of her wait. “I don’t have to keep doing this to myself. But the desire never went away. Every time I tried to make it go away for myself, something would happen to keep the hope alive. I’d tell myself ‘Okay Amanda, it’s going to be okay. You’re obviously not supposed to give up on this, or things wouldn’t keep happening to make you change your mind about tossing in the towel.’”
And thank God she didn’t—because today, she is the mom of twins, a boy and a girl, who needed her just as much as she needed them. Spoiler alert? As it always ends with these stories I write on this blog, it was worth every second of the wait, and Amanda would have waited even longer if it could end up just like this.
***
Let’s back up a bit.
The first words Amanda—a longtime friend of mine who I know in multiple capacities, both as a sorority sister and as a colleague—said to me as we sit down to walk through her story are “This process has been long and crazy.” And she’s not kidding. When she and her husband Chris married in 2005, they had no idea that they would be married for nearly 17 years before they experienced parenthood together.
“We wanted children from before marriage,” she said. “The plan all along was to have a kid and then adopt. We wanted both worlds from the very beginning. Little did we know that first step wasn’t going to become a reality, and that’s okay. That was not in our plan, and adoption would become our path.”
As anyone who has adopted or who has considered adoption knows, the process is cost prohibitive. “It’s not exactly cheap to adopt,” Amanda said. “It’s crazy how expensive it is—truly ridiculous.” Bolstered with the knowledge that so many children need a loving home, the Shermans initially went the foster care route, undergoing training in 2017. Then, in March 2018, they fostered a newborn directly from the NICU at UAB (where Amanda also works, as do I). This baby had no family that was able to take care of him and a host of medical issues. Chris and Amanda immediately considered him their son.
“We nurtured him and took amazing care of him,” she said. “He was part of our family.”
A year into their parenthood in March 2019, the Shermans began the adoptive process of the child they lovingly called “Baby Boy.” Then, one day, Amanda received a phone call at work that devastated her—the parents had changed their mind and found a family member they wanted to give him to.
“That literally came out of nowhere,” Amanda said. “It was a death. It was worse than a death for us, because he was alive.”
The Shermans went to court and fought for the child they’d loved for over a year and a half—the child they considered their son. Ultimately, “Baby Boy” went to the family member, and neither Chris nor Amanda have seen him since.
“It took us a while to find peace in that,” she said, emotional still today, over three years after the fact.
***
Chris and Amanda treated the loss of “Baby Boy” like any other unexpected death. They walked through all the steps of grief.
“We finally got to a better place after several months,” she said. It was through this experience that they decided to privately adopt rather than foster. In October 2019, they signed with an adoption agency, and were open to children of any race and children with a variety of medical concerns. They were in the waiting pool—which generally takes about a year—when the pandemic hit in March 2020, five months into their journey. Because of this, the Shermans didn’t get their first call to match until July 2021—almost two years into their wait.
Amanda happened to be on vacation that day in July when the adoption agency finally called. She was excited as she answered the call, where the agency told her they had a mom interested in matching. The mother was in Oklahoma and was due in September with a baby girl—two months away. The Shermans matched with her, and “we think everything is fine and dandy, then we start seeing all these red flags,” Amanda said. Ultimately, thanks to some stellar research skills on Amanda’s part, she found that this mom never planned for this baby to be adopted at all and had frauded multiple other adoption agencies in the past. (This mom is now on watch lists around the country.) It was yet another heartbreak for Chris and Amanda.
“How can you do this to somebody?” Amanda said of the birth mom who frauded her. “How can you make a career out of hurting people?”
Parenthood was, yet again, not to be for the Shermans—at least not yet. Once again, they went back into the adoption pool.
***
December 20, 2021. A Monday. They say, don’t they, to stay ready so you don’t have to get ready? That when it is your season, it happens quickly—that God moves on His own timing, and blessings appear suddenly, in the blink of an eye?
That Monday, Amanda was in the office. Christmas was on Saturday, and it was, in her words, pretty much crickets. She actually did have a meeting that Monday morning and came out of it to a missed call from the adoption agency. She played the voicemail: Hey, call us back, we have a birth mom that wants to talk.
“Part of me was like, ‘Oh crap, here we go again,’” Amanda said. “But part of me was incredibly hopeful.”
This birth mom was the mom of four-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. (With their preferences, Chris and Amanda said they’d be open to adopting any children from newborn to five years old.) The twins were in Louisiana and healthy. The birth mom was in a situation where she could no longer provide for the twins. Amanda called the birth mom, and they spoke for over an hour. Both women cried. They hit it off. From that phone call, the ball was in the birth mom’s court. Twenty minutes later, the adoption agency called. The birth mom had chosen Chris and Amanda.
“They said ‘She wants you, and she wants you now,’” Amanda said. “Like—now now. It was the craziest timing ever, but we made it work. That’s what we do.”
Five days before Christmas—after nearly 17 years of waiting to become parents—Chris and Amanda were going to be parents immediately.
Talk about a Christmas miracle.
***
The next morning, Tuesday, December 21, Chris and Amanda woke up and began driving to Louisiana from their home in Birmingham, Alabama. Though they’d waited for this for so long, the Shermans didn’t have nine months to prepare to become parents like many do—they had under 24 hours. Their wait ended in literally a split second. The night before consisted of printing documents off, packing, gathering legal documents, trying to find someone to keep their dogs for an undetermined amount of time. Then, that Tuesday morning, they set off for a small town in Louisiana, with the plan in place to get there around dinnertime and meet the birth mom and the twins. On the drive there, Chris and Amanda saw the twins for the first time via Zoom. The kids already recognized them—their mom had shown them the video they submitted to the adoption agency. The kids were playing, laughing. Chris and Amanda fell in love immediately.
During the drive, Amanda was also cancelling plans to take her mom to the Rose Bowl Parade in California. (Nana was okay—she might have missed the parade, but she got two grandkids instead.) When it rains, it pours, indeed.
That night, after arriving in Louisiana, Chris and Amanda were standing by the river looking at Christmas lights when the twins ran up to them and hugged them for the first time. It was the first time the couple met, face-to-face, their children.
“And that was it,” Amanda said.
After dinner, the kids went with Chris and Amanda. “We have nothing,” Amanda said. “As I’m driving, I did reserve us a hotel room for that night, so we had that.”
As everyone left dinner, the birth mom gave each of the twins long, long hugs. (The Shermans are still in touch with her, but the twins have been with Chris and Amanda ever since the night of December 21. One of the greatest gifts from the past year with the twins? On Mother’s Day, the twins’ birth mom texted Amanda happy Mother’s Day, and said she knew she did the right thing by entrusting the children into Chris and Amanda’s care. “That is an amazing woman right there,” Amanda said.)
“Chris and I look at each other, and look at them, and say ‘Alright, let’s go!’” Amanda said. Chris Googled the nearest Walmart, and there the foursome went, four days before Christmas. The twins had nothing but what they’re wearing to dinner that night. Merchandise at the Walmart in small town Louisiana was limited. But they made do. They knew they needed pajamas and two toothbrushes—then it was off to the hotel.
“There were so many people who were a part of our story that are Godsends,” Amanda said. “The hotel staff, once they figured out what was going on—they made all the magic happen and were so good to us.”
The documents were all signed by the afternoon of Thursday, December 23, and legal custody was immediately transferred to Chris and Amanda. (Louisiana doesn’t have what is called a revocation period, so once the documents are signed, it’s done.) To make all of that happen by December 23, so much had to take place that only God could have made it all happen—to start, the birth mom had to have two counseling sessions. She had to get an attorney. The Shermans had to get an attorney. Keep in mind that this is all happening the week before Christmas. No one was working.
“But everyone said, ‘We’ll come in,’” Amanda said. “It was a Christmas miracle, all they did to make this happen for the birth mom and for us, for the kids. Everything was done.”
The new family of four spent Christmas Eve in 80-degree Louisiana weather—trying to find clothes for children for 80-degree weather on Christmas Eve was a challenge, but they found some items on the clearance rack, Amanda said. God’s ever-present hand was visible throughout. That night, the Shermans—now four, not just two—went back to the riverfront and spent the evening with the twins’ birth mom and older sibling, all together, watching the kids play in the park. It was, of course, a Christmas Eve Chris and Amanda will never forget.
Had you told them the Christmas Eve prior—hell, even the week prior—that this is how they’d spend their holiday, they’d never have believed you.
But God always knew.
***
The Shermans spent Christmas morning in their hotel room. The hotel staff, aware now of what was going on, let the family borrow the tree that was in their lobby and put it in their room so the kids could have that special touch for the holiday. The lady at the front desk of the hotel was crying. Amanda was crying, too. The fact that all of this—a dream delayed for so long—was happening so suddenly at the most wonderful time of the year added extra magic to the answered prayer.
“It made it magical,” Amanda said. “Holidays are for family. For that dream of ours to come true—to make that dream for them and for the birth mom come true—she was crying, saying ‘This is the life I wanted them to have.’ She’s the bravest person of all.”
The kids got to go meet Santa, and the kids in line in front of them listed out item after item after item that they desired. Amanda’s daughter only wanted Minnie Mouse, and Amanda’s son only wanted Spiderman.
“Talk about pressure!” Amanda laughed. “But we found a Spiderman. We actually never found a Minnie Mouse toy, but we did find a little Minnie Mouse remote control car, and he got a Mickey Mouse one. We made it work.”
That seemed to be the theme of the entire week—they, thanks to God’s grace, made it work.
***
There were still more steps in the arduous adoption process to be completed before the Shermans could return home to Alabama. After the paperwork was signed on December 23, there was a pause for Christmas, and the legalese resumed on December 26. The Shermans moved out of the hotel room at the Holiday Inn Express and into an Airbnb so they could occupy more than just one hotel room. (After five days of being on top of one another, it was time.) Amanda’s parents—now Nana and Papa—wanted to meet their grandkids, so they drove to Louisiana from Georgia to do so. Where they were at in the process at this point allowed the Shermans to take the kids anywhere in the state of Louisiana, so they opted to leave the twins’ small hometown in the middle of the state and drive to New Orleans, about four hours away. The twins, four years old now, had never ridden in car seats before. Chris—a typical new dad—stood outside in the hotel parking lot with a flashlight, trying to figure out how to install two car seats.
“God bless the security guard at the hotel, who helped get the thing installed,” Amanda said.
The stress was unbelievable but was outweighed by the joy of it all: figuring out the foods the kids liked. What they didn’t like. Who they were as people. Their kids. When they made it to New Orleans, Chris and Amanda set out on the journey to find a notary.
“Chris and I literally started walking down the street,” Amanda said. “Most attorneys are notaries or have notaries. We just knocked on doors.”
Amanda, in her own words, a week into this wild journey, was looking a little crazy and sleep deprived. She started each interaction with “I know you’re going to think I’m a little nuts, but let me tell you…” Finally, they found an attorney willing to do it. He wanted to see a picture of the kids and refused to let Chris and Amanda pay him.
“I’m just glad I’m able to help,” he said. “I don’t want you wandering the streets of New Orleans.”
Once again, all of the chips had to fall just into place for the Shermans to be able to leave Louisiana and go home to Alabama before everything was closed yet again for the impending New Year. Not only was it the week between Christmas and New Years—a week where productivity is slow anyway—but many people working for the state were also out sick, battling COVID.
“I had little hope this was going to happen,” Amanda said.
But, once again, God intervened.
The last step before they would be released to finally go home? The twins needed proof of a pediatrician. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as Amanda recounts that, thanks to their 18 months raising “Baby Boy”—remember him?—Chris and Amanda already had a relationship with a pediatrician back home in Birmingham who answered the phone when they called and gladly accepted the twins into her practice.
Had Chris and Amanda not gone through that unspeakable pain of loving—and then losing—“Baby Boy,” they might not have been able to have the blessing of a need fulfilled when they needed it down the road. God goes before us, and no pain is ever wasted. We may not understand it at the time—after all, life can only be understood looking backwards, but it must be lived forwards—but because of their loss in 2019, it allowed a blessing to occur in 2021, a door to open at the exact right moment. God, nearly three years prior, was setting Chris and Amanda up for a blessing they couldn’t see come to fruition until the waning days of 2021. Because of God’s providence, the Shermans were able to go home that night, getting the all clear from Alabama at 4:35 p.m. the day before all offices shut down for the New Year. The family of four got in the car and began their drive home, incredulous at what had just happened in the last week of their lives and thrilled at what was to come.
***
Amanda and I spoke in August, and I am writing this in November, the same month the twins turn five. (I don’t normally take this long to turn stories around, but 2022 has been a year, let me tell you.) When we spoke, the twins were due to start pre-K the next week. Yet again, God showed His hand; both twins were accepted into pre-K and were so excited to start “big school.” Less than a week from when we spoke, the Shermans had their final, final hearing—the one that legally changed their names to Sherman. The last piece of the puzzle. (As of August 10, the twins are officially the Sherman twins.) When we caught up, Amanda was eight months into motherhood.
“It has changed me in so many different ways,” she said. “The biggest one for me is I look at what’s truly important now. I find myself thinking, ‘Does this really matter?’ If not, I try not to focus energy there. And as much as I love my work and am committed to excellence, I have to leave things at the office much more now. That hasn’t been easy for me after all the years of being able to arrive early and stay late. However, I have a new title of Mom, and I take those responsibilities very seriously. I love doing things for the twins and seeing the wonder through their eyes. It’s so fun and rewarding.”
The day before we spoke, it was Chris’ birthday. Amanda’s face radiates joy as she recounts the look on his face—his first birthday as a father—as he walked into the house to a surprise party thrown by the twins, who had picked everything out for Daddy at the Dollar Tree.
“They were so proud of themselves,” she said. “They said ‘We pa-prised you, Daddy!’ It was the most amazing mismatched hot mess of beauty we’ve ever seen. He walks in, and they’re singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and he didn’t know whether to smile or cry. It’s those moments that I get to watch every day now.”
***
At a few points during our 90-minute chat, the twins pop in and out of the room. First, the Shermans’ little girl, who wants Mommy to come play in her fort with her.
“I’ll come see you in just a minute,” Amanda said, lovingly. “I’ll be down in just a minute, baby.”
Then, her son, who draws a picture of a house before moving on to draw a volcano. He kindly asks me “Do you like volcanos?” In that moment, of course, I love volcanos.
It’s not lost on Amanda that, prior to her twins entering her life, she and Chris lost a boy, and then a girl. That God restored that. “He was like ‘It’s okay, I’ve got both of them for you,’” Amanda said. Everything they lost was restored. In Amanda’s words, “Baby Boy” and the unborn girl weren’t the babies they were meant to have. If she could talk to herself at her lowest moments, she’d say that there were two babies they were meant to have, and they would exceed every expectation, and then some.
“I’d say ‘This will work out,’” she said. “And keep telling ourselves that. It was obviously not in our plan, but this is how it was supposed to be, and we’ll be even stronger when it happens.”
Amanda remembers the days of her wait—the years, the years of the nagging in her head, wondering if it would all ever work out. But the waiting season was where her faith grew. She, like me, believes that God won’t put a dream in your heart unless He has a plan in place to fulfill it. Will it look like what we envisioned? Likely not. Will it be worth it? Absolutely. Look at Chris and Amanda. God restored everything that was lost and blew their minds while doing it.
“He will fulfill it beyond your expectations, if you only have faith and get out of your own way,” she said.
Looking back, November 2017—right around the exact time the twins were born—was when Chris and Amanda, 12 years into marriage by that point, were being approved to become foster parents. It kickstarted a journey that led them to the week of Christmas 2021, where, within a span of 24 hours, Chris and Amanda went from being just Chris and Amanda to being a family. It happened just as it was meant to.
“We were chosen, and the kids were chosen,” Amanda said. “We needed them, and they needed us.”
And suddenly, two became four—and the rest, as they say, is history.