Families come in all kinds of different shapes and forms. What matters is the love. When your heart is full, it’s easier to open and share it around.
When Katie Page opened her heart and her home to make a family, she had no idea what was in store.
But after taking a leap, she’s pretty sure her family “has been brought together by nothing short of a miracle… by divine intervention if you ask me!” Those are strong words, but her story is also quite compelling.
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Katie says she’s always wanted to be a mother, for as long as she can recall.
“My journey to motherhood started as a child longing to have a baby of my own and putting round objects under my shirt to pretend I was pregnant,” she says .
And when she found herself divorced in her early thirties, she knew she’d have to make some changes to make “a life that was fulfilling and one that I was proud of.”
So, after investing in a four-bedroom fixer-upper, she decided she wanted to do something about its empty bedrooms.
In the middle of renovations, she went to a fateful info session about fostering. “I did not know anyone who fostered children or was raised in a foster home. I really knew nothing about it, but my heart felt called to learn more.”
Fostering is no easy thing, and she was well aware of it, but Katie determined to take the plunge all the same.
A year later, she had fostered four children and she was considering longer-term fostering, and possibly even adoption.
Within a couple of weeks, she had her opportunity when a caseworker called about a baby that had been abandoned at a hospital.
Even knowing the baby boy had been exposed to drugs, Katie didn’t waste any time showing her interest.
She even managed to get her own mother on board to live with her for a while to help out.
“He was named ‘Baby Boy’ since his mother had left just hours after birth and not provided him with a name,” she said.
“Without much time to ponder names, I looked at the list of baby names I had been collecting over the years and decided to give him my top choice ‘Grayson’ because by God’s grace I now had a son.”
Katie and her mom spent the next 11 months searching for Grayson’s birth mother.
“No one answered the ads posted in the newspaper or came back to the hospital in search of the boy that had been left that day,” she recalled.
“Part of me was relieved that no one came forward, so that he would be mine forever with no opposition.”
“But there was always a pit in my stomach about one day having to tell my son that no one showed up at his termination hearing. No one came looking.”
And when no mother could be found, Katie became his mom, officially.
But Katie felt that her home still wasn’t as full as it should be.
“Grayson struggles both developmentally and physically from his drug exposure, so while I knew our family was not complete yet, I decided I should wait until he was at least a year and a half before taking in another longer term placement (which I hoped would be a girl).”
But, two weeks after the adoption was official, Katie received another call from her caseworker.
“She began to tell me about an emergency placement they had for a four-day old baby girl with drug exposure that was at the same hospital as Grayson has been born at and was needing placement that afternoon.”
She knew it would be an overwhelming commitment at that point in time, but she felt compelled to take the little girl in all the same.
“I know over the next 10 minutes and subsequent phone calls I made that afternoon, the phrase ‘I know I am crazy, but God is telling me to say YES’ kept coming out of my mouth,” she says.
And when she did say say yes, it turned out to be another fateful moment.
It wasn’t just that the girl had been born at the same hospital as Grayson and abandoned shortly thereafter, just like Grayson.
She’d also had drug exposure just like Grayson, and the same medical condition. “As I reviewed the bracelets on the baby girl, I saw the first name of her mother matched the name Grayson’s mother had given to the hospital,” Katie says.
But not only did the birth mothers’ names match, but their birth dates were listed as only a day apart.
Grayson and the new baby looked nothing alike, however.
“Grayson is half African American with beautiful darker skin and dark curly hair. Baby Girl was pale white skin tone with straight red-blonde hair,” she says.
Given that the two were born less than a year apart, Katie felt unsure as to whether they might actually be related.
So she set out to find as much information as she could about the birth mother, talking to her caseworker and the baby girl’s intake worker.
Unlike with Grayson, the baby girl’s birth mother had expressed an interest in visits and possibly regaining custody.
She had also had multiple kids, many of whom had been adopted as well. When the time came for their first visit, Katie had plenty of questions for her.
As soon as she saw her, Katie knew that she was looking at Grayson’s mother, she recalls.
And as her questions led to exactly the answers she hoped for, Katie become more and more certain that Grayson and the baby girl were indeed related.
“Part of me wanted to just blab it all out in that moment and reveal this huge secret that I thought she was my son’s mother.”
Katie’s caseworker confirmed it the next day, saying that they’d found a relative of the baby girl who also had the last name provided with Grayson.
“That day I said ‘Yes’ to taking the Baby Girl I felt the strangest feeling ever… I don’t think I had truly until that moment felt a undeniable calling from God (or whatever higher spirit you personally might believe in).”
“My brain was telling me to say ‘no’ because it made no sense and was not in my plans, but something inside kept saying you have to say ‘YES.'”
“It is a sheer miracle, once in a lifetime chance… call it what you will, but it is amazing that my children found each other.”
Whether you think it was divinely inspired or not, it’s definitely amazing that this family came together.
