How I became a Father

How I became a Father
by Skip Gienapp

Part I. Infertility.

Part II.

I'm the oldest of 8 kids in my family, the last 4 of which were adopted. I never actually lived with my younger adopted siblings, ( I was already at Covenant) yet it is still a large part of our family culture. Our church in Chattanooga, New City Fellowship, has a large adoption culture as well. I guess we felt that this helped "qualify" us for adoption somehow. It seemed like a low-risk proposition, compared to say, IVF. In any case somewhere along the way we "decided" that adoption was the way to go. We were tentative at first, consulting a lawyer, creating our first profile, quietly easing into the adoption market. We really had no idea what was going to happen, but we had heard that a private adoption was cheaper than going through an agency, because you were working directly with a lawyer. That sounded good to us, we didn't want to get tangled up with any "agency". But weeks stretched to months and then to over two years, with nothing happening. My wife doesn't mind waiting a little bit if she feels "progress" is being made. But waiting for a lawyer to call you, is a little like waiting for a fish to swim by and snag his tail on your empty hook. I think our profile was shown maybe once in two and half years- and my wife, when she realized this saw her hopes and dreams crushed again. We felt we had wasted almost 3 years waiting for a baby to fall into our laps. In the fall of 2004 we finally approached Bethany Christian Services.

To be continued...