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Blessings come in twos
HOBART: Childless couple no longer with empty arms
BY TAMARA L. O'SHAUGHNESSY
This story ran on nwitimes.com on Sunday, February 12, 2006
Reprinted here with permission from the Times of Northwest Indiana
HOBART | Four years of trying to have a baby, fertility specialists and one miscarriage left Tom and Amanda Mullins frustrated, sad and sometimes angry.
Facing even more invasive fertility treatments, they decided in early 2004 to instead adopt, putting their name on the list at the Baptist Children's Home in Valparaiso and three other adoption agencies and hoping for the best.
More than a year passed.
Still no baby.
Then in late September, the Baptist Children's Home called. A mother wanted to meet them.
On Oct. 6, they found themselves witnessing the birth of the son they'd name Clayton. It was love at first sight for the Mullins, of Hobart.
With legal battles still brewing between the birth parents, Clayton landed in a foster home, where Amanda, 29, and Tom Mullins, 31, visited him often, falling more in love with the skinny boy and making plans for a Christmas homecoming with their son.
But instead of a baby, the couple was left again with empty arms. The birth mother took Clayton back just before Christmas.
"It was horrible. It was like losing a child. We had started seeing him as our own," said Amanda Mullins, a piano teacher.
They put their name back on the lists with the other adoption agencies.
And waited.
"We were trying to put Clayton behind us, thinking it was all over, so that was hard," said Tom Mullins, the youth and worship minister at Central Baptist Church in Hobart.
Then late last month, on a Thursday, their caseworker from the Baptist Children's Home called. The father dropped his legal interests and the birth mother wanted them to adopt Clayton, now 4 months old.
Knowing the pain losing Clayton caused, Tom Mullins kept the call "a little secret" from his wife, losing sleep for days. That next Tuesday, with the papers officially signed, he was out the church door in seconds to share the news with his wife of nearly eight years.
"We were stunned, very excited," Amanda Mullins said.
In the flurry of calls to family and friends, they also called the other adoption agencies to again remove their name from the lists.
The next morning, one of the agencies called back with congratulations. "But you need to sit down because I have some news for you," Amanda Mullins remembered them telling her.
The Mullins had been selected by another couple to adopt their baby. "We have a girl for you," the agency told them.
They had only an afternoon to decide. They called their parents. They talked to their pastor.
"I was immediately excited," Amanda Mullins said.
"I was scared," Tom Mullins said.
"We decided that God had brought her to us ... so he would provide for us," Amanda Mullins said.
They returned to Hobart late Monday night with 8-month-old Kathryn, a squirmy Guatemalan-born baby with thick locks of black hair. Her birth name, Xiomara, remains her middle name.
As Amanda Mullins looked down at a sleeping Clayton snuggled against her breast, she reflected back Saturday on what she called the "biggest test of her faith." But she said she trusted God had a plan.
"We waited for a year for one, then to get a call for two almost the same day," said Tom Mullins, still marveling at their amazing story as he hoisted Kathryn up.
"Whatever trials or problems God brings in your life, he can take you through them," he said.
"The blessings are better, too."
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