God's incredible generosity shines through adoption

By Mary Bruno
NOLA Catholic Parenting

She is clumsy and prefers fruity desserts over chocolate ones, just like her daddy. She makes funny faces and loves to draw letters, like me. She is tiny and dark-skinned with jet black hair like her birth mother.     

She is nearly 3 1/2 feet of sweet, smiling, princess-loving perfection, and we wouldn’t have our daughter any other way.

We also, quite literally, wouldn’t have our daughter any other way. 

My husband was ready to adopt well before I was. His parents considered adopting, so it was very familiar for him. Fears that adoption would somehow seal our fate as infertile held me back until I learned how to trust in God’s plan more wholeheartedly. 

It still wasn’t easy. We don’t just grow up expecting to have children, but also imagining whose eyes and whose mouth he or she will have. It is hard to shake that uneasiness of wondering whether or not a child you don’t personally conceive can feel fully your own.

Well, the verdict was in even before Bella was born. The moment we learned that her “tummy mommy” chose us, we began to feel like her parents. That feeling only matured the closer we got to her birth day.

Now she is almost 4 years old, and it is hard to imagine how we could have desired anything other than her – even pregnancy. It turns out that our plans have been far surpassed by what God designed especially for us, and that has taken some of the sting out of infertility. He has not forgotten us but set aside a unique child (or children) for us, just as he does for every couple blessed with pregnancies.

God doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way we anticipate, but he always exceeds our expectations. We immediately embraced Bella as our own, but as soon as her personality began to develop, both friends and strangers began to marvel at how much she actually does resemble us – specifically in the way her smile and other facial expressions and the way she talks match both mine and my husband’s. It continues to both baffle me and hug my heart every time the words “she looks just like you” hit my ears. 

It is the combination of all of her features – hair color, stature, likes and dislikes, facial expressions and more that make her who she is, a tangible form of God’s love for us blessing us with her presence each day. 

Although we didn’t “make” her in the traditional sense, we have formed her in ways that no other two people could have. God cannot be outdone in generosity. When we give him our trust, he rewards us with immeasurable satisfaction.

Mary Bruno grew up in River Ridge and is a wife to Chris and a stay-at-home adoptive mother to Isabella. She is a permanent newcomer to the lovely city of Mandeville, but will always consider herself a southshore girl. She loves spending time with her family, playing sports, Saints football and chocolate. Our Lady of the Lake is her parish. Mary is a former physical therapist assistant. Infertility both rocked her world and renewed her faith, causing her to stumble into some unexpected, yet thrilling roles: Catholic speaker and rapper, Creighton Model Practitioner intern, podcaster, blogger, half of a marriage prep mentor couple and women’s health warrior. Find her at MaryGBruno.com.