When Love Changes a Family

by Holly Scott

Our story began with an email from P143 that read: “Last chance to give an orphan a family for the summer.” For years, our little family of three had thought about it, but every year we found reasons why it wasn’t possible. This time was different. As I read that email, I felt the Lord whisper, “What’s your reason this year?” And suddenly, none of our excuses seemed strong enough to silence His call.

This wasn’t about adoption in the beginning — it was about advocating for a child who needed a family. It was also about opening our home, our lives, and our hearts to show one child the love of Christ.
When the day came to meet him, we told ourselves, “It’s only five weeks. Life will go back to normal afterward.” But normal vanished the moment he ran down the escalator and wrapped his little arms around us. In that instant, love flooded our hearts.

The next five weeks broke us and remade us all at once — full of joy, laughter, stretching, and deep heartache. The day came where we would have to watch him leave and not really know whether or not we would see him again.

“We doubt, we question, we argue, we laugh, we work, we play, we are really not any different than anyone else, except we got the honor and privilege to have a boy come into our home and teach us that sometimes love comes in the most unexpected ways.”

Our lives felt shaken up. Before he came into our lives we had an only child who was the exact age of our host child. We had no idea what was best for our host child or our family. But we knew the One who did! As soon as our host child left we began talking and praying as a family. We had a mustard seed of faith, 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread, and what we learned is that was enough because God doesn’t only multiply for those back in biblical days, He multiplies for common people like you and I and He multiplied not only our resources but our faith as well.

In our own strength we had nothing to offer; we are just a small family that lives on a small hobby farm outside of Atlanta, Georgia, who has a heart for Jesus and people. We doubt, we question, we argue, we laugh, we work, we play, we are really not any different than anyone else, except we got the honor and privilege to have a boy come into our home and teach us that sometimes love comes in the most unexpected ways. We have had numerous people come up to us wanting to know about our adoption process and asking about how the transition has been, and what difficulties might they face if they choose to adopt? We can only answer the first part of that question and we would say that of course there have been challenges but there has also been laughter and joy — it would not be family if you didn’t have the ups and downs. We can’t answer the second part for any family. All we can say is that we didn’t expect to be on this journey but in 2023 God chose a child who would come into our home and forever change our lives and hopefully we can change his too! Walking into the unknown can be scary but sometimes that unknown brings us to our greatest blessings.

To learn more about Hosting-to-Adopt, click here.