Growing up, we both desired to have a family and raise kids within our loving home. When I, Taylor, was 18 years old, doctors diagnosed me with Klinefelter syndrome, with the side effect of low testosterone and limited chances of natural conception. This news was hard to hear and yet harder to share with my future wife. Ashley and I got married in 2015, knowing the challenges we might face; we were trusting the Lord to provide naturally. We knew it would be hard, but could never fully know the rollercoaster of challenges, emotions, sadness, and wounds we would face. I know the Lord is the maker of all things, especially life. Every child is a miracle, and I believed He could do it for us against all the odds stacked against us. We have prayed for that miracle child every month, and after 11 years, that prayer hasn't been fulfilled. We still pray for that miracle; however, the Lord has been showing me that our desire and timeline aren’t always what He has planned. This is hard to walk out.
Our desire to have a family hasn't left, and if anything, the desire has grown more. After a mission trip for Ashley in 2014, she fell in love with a little girl in the Dominican Republic; however do to laws, adopting he wasn't an option. Ever since that trip, she has wanted to adopt. I was a little slower to adjust to the approach of adoption, as I desired the Lord to provide it naturally. The Lord has softened my heart, and I am submitting to His ways vs my own. We are both on the same page with adoption, and it is our current path we are pursuing to grow our family.
We first shared with our closest friends and family back in 2023 to seek direct parental placement and work without an adoption agency to keep the price lower. We completed our home study and completed all the roles that we could on our own. Unfortunately, this road was slow-moving. Although in that time we were connected with two birth moms, both children were already under care with a social worker in the state of Virginia, and we could not adopt them. We attempted that route for over a year with no placement, and we got discouraged.
At the end of 2024, I confessed to Ashley that I had struggled with unwanted sexual sin of pornography. This was a sin that got planted from my struggles and lies from Satan based on my health condition. This was by no means a justification for my actions. My sin caused a huge break of trust, faith, and relationship with Ashley. My repentance to the Lord and Ashley was most important as I looked to heal my marriage. This news of my hidden sin caused great heartbreak to Ashley and caused our marriage to be tested to the extreme. By the grace of God, Ashley has forgiven me, and all of 2025 we focused on rebuilding our marriage. Adoption was paused as we worked to heal, restore, rebuild trust, honesty, faithfulness, and hope once again. By God's grace, we are stronger, closer, and more open than before.
As we closed out 2025, we regained direction, desire, hope, and motivation to explore adoption once again. This time we decided to work with an adoption consultant and organization to expand our possibilities to adopt. We are currently halfway through the year and have presented to a handful of potential birth moms, but either haven’t been selected or the mom has chosen to keep their baby (which is the best-case scenario). Our desire remains, and we are diligently taking the next steps that the Lord will provide soon.
Asking for funds has not been our first desire; we want to fully trust the Lord to provide yet understand that we can’t do this alone and would like to invite you to be a part of our story. The cost of an adoption can range from $50,000 to $80,000+, but we don’t feel comfortable going higher than that. This amount includes agency fees, legal expenses, birth mother support, last-minute airline purchases, travel expenses, at-risk price (price that is not refunded based on a mom’s decision to keep the baby), along with the many other steps required to bring a child home safely. The cases we have seen in the last four months regarding the possible placement of a child have ranged from a few months to a few weeks. We have had as little time, ranging from a baby that has already been born to a five-month lead-time. If we get selected, we must have the full amount of funds available. To date, we have spent $7,700 on agency fees, home study costs, training courses, and background checks.
We are taking a step of faith and being vulnerable by going public and inviting you into our personal life by being fully transparent with our struggles and our desire to have a family by raising funds to help cover these adoption expenses and bring our child home. Every gift, no matter the size, moves us one step closer to welcoming a child into our home. Your generosity helps create a future where a child knows they are chosen, cherished, and surrounded by the love of the Lord.
More than just financial support, we ask you to join us in prayer — for the child the Lord has for us, for the birth mother who will make an incredibly brave and hard decision, for the path ahead and all the logistics that will take place.
We don’t know when our next chapter will start; we pray it will be soon. When that new chapter begins, there will be more unknowns, but we know the Lord will guide us through each step as we welcome our child into our hearts. You are a part of this journey with your kindness, generosity, prayers, and support.
