Saying Yes to the First Step

Clinging to Christ as Our Hope

Hi, we’re Jordan and Kat Smith, and we’ve been coming to CityBridge for a little over three years. Today, we’re sharing our side of our adoption story. We’re doing our best to tell only our side, and we pray that one day our daughter will be on this stage telling her side, sharing how God was with her the entire time.

Our hope is that as you hear this, you’ll hear that you don’t have to be perfect parents, or incredibly patient, or independently wealthy, or great planners, or even really that smart to be used by God to grow your family through adoption or fostering. You just have to say yes to the first step, and He does the rest.

Saying Yes to the First Step

We were married in 2011 and always knew we wanted to grow our family through adoption. We assumed our first child would be adopted, but God surprised us early in our marriage. We found out we were pregnant, because planning really isn’t our thing. That’s not how most adoption stories start.

After our first child was born in March of 2013, the call to adopt never went away. Once we started looking into it, we felt overwhelmed. Kathleen was a teacher, and Jordan had just gotten on with Dallas as a firefighter, and adoption felt completely out of reach financially.

One night, after we shared with our community group that we felt called to adopt but were hesitant because we had no idea how to come up with thirty to fifty thousand dollars, our leader looked at us graciously, but also like we were crazy, and said, “Don’t you know it’s all God’s money? How dare you not do something He’s calling you to because of money that already belongs to Him?”

We went home that night and filled out our first adoption application. That was December of 2013.

A Long Journey of Trust

Our first daughter was about seven months old, and a very long journey began. We chose Ethiopia because we actually qualified. We were twenty-five years old and married for two years. We were told it would be about a three-year wait.

We completed mountains of paperwork, home studies, interviews, doctor appointments, background checks, and we fundraised. It took almost a year to officially be on the list.

Throughout it all, we were clinging deeply to the truth that Jesus is our hope. That He is Christ, and He is Lord. On mornings like this, it’s good to be together and reminded that our hope is only Christ.

Our Hope Is Only Christ

There were moments when the process felt overwhelming, uncertain, and out of our control. But what we’ve learned is that God doesn’t ask us to have the whole plan. He asks us to trust Him with the next step.

Our story isn’t about doing everything right. It’s about trusting a faithful God who meets us in the waiting, provides what we don’t have, and walks with us every step of the way.

As we look back, we can see that God was with us the entire time. And we’re still clinging to that same truth today.

Our hope is only Christ.

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