Planned Family
Mira Capps-Hansen is a HR director from Jacsksonville, Florida. She married her husband Josh in February 2014 and started planning their family. In November 2014 their first daughter, Saylor, was born.
Although Mira and Josh were busy with their first child, they started thinking about adopting one. Mira knew very well what it implied for a child: not being raised by his or her biological parents; to be welcomed into a new family.
Religious Beliefs
Mira and Josh are both very religious persons and they believed that adoption was the plan that God had for them. Even though they were certain about the idea of adoption, the process was more difficult than they wanted to believe.
In a blog post in the website Love What Matters, Mira wrote “We didn’t have fancy jobs or a healthy savings account. Truth be told, student loans were sneaking up on us, I [had]just quit my job and Josh was struggling to find a career he enjoyed after separating from active duty. We felt unprepared and discouraged”.
Difficulties
When Mira and Josh started facing with difficulties, they turned to God.
They prayed every night to God in order that He would put into their path a child in need of desperate love and affection.
Surrendered Their Hearts to God
Mira also wrote that “With no reservations or stipulations, we surrendered our hearts and our hands. Lord, you know our hearts… Use us as your hands and your feet, use our family to show your love in this broken world.”
Then, during a sermon at church one week, something amazing happened.
The Book of James
In church, the pastor read a quote from the Book of James that said “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also”.
Those words had a profound impact on Mira, who felt that the Lord was sitting next to her and convincing her to do the right thing, the only thing that she and Josh wanted to do.
Faith Into Action
She also wrote that she felt that God was whispering to her words of comfort, “Trust me, Mira. Just trust me”. Mira and Josh were willing to adopt, but they weren’t physically acting on it. They needed to put their faith into action.
When Josh and Mira returned home that afternoon, they began preparing for the arrival of their next child. Not only did they apply to become foster parents, but they started to kit out a nursery too. And they continued to pray.
Heart and Home
Up to that point, Mira and Josh were only showing the Lord that they were willing to offer their hearts and home to a child who needed their help. Now, they were showing Him.
Mira and Josh continued putting their trust in the Lord, that he would fulfill their wish to adopt a new baby into their beautiful family. One day, the phone rang.
Mira’s Cousin
Mira won’t ever forget that Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2017. Her heart raced as she saw the out-of-state number appear on the screen of her phone. The words came from a familiar voice at the other end of the line, “I heard you were wanting to adopt”.
The voice on the phone belonged to Mira’s cousin in Texas, but something was not right, because her cousin’s voice was trembling as she spoke. She said something that would have a big impact on Mira’s life.
Hard Choice
She said, “I don’t know if you know this, but I have a two-month-old little girl and her name is Lillie”. Mira was lost for words. Was this what she and Josh had been waiting so patiently for? Was this the plan that she believed the Lord had had for her and her family all along?
Mira’s cousin said over the phone: “Mira, I wanted to call you sooner, but I didn’t know how to say it. I feel like you’re supposed to be her mom”. When she explained everything to Josh, he answered without hesitation “Go get her. You go get her baby!”.
Port Arthur
Mira’s then packed up the car and set off on her 11 hour trip to Port Arthur in Texas. Luckily, her mom went along with her, together with her other daughter, Saylor.
For Mira’s mom this felt like history repeating itself, as she made that journey from Florida to Texas to pick a baby with blue eyes and dark hair. This time, she was going to collect her granddaughter.
Remembering the Past
If you have not guessed it by now, Mira herself had been adopted. Her biological mother, Rachel, had to make the heartbreaking decision to give her away when she was just a baby. In an unhealthy relationship at the age of 17, she was married and had her first child before her 20th birthday.
In a fog of alcoholism, betrayal, affairs and physical abuse, two years later Rachel and her husband separated. And that was when Rachel met Joey, Mira’s biological father.
Brief Relationship
After a very brief relationship, Joey split up with Rachel without knowing that nine months later he would become a father.
After that, Rachel got back with her husband, and even though he knew Mira wasn’t his, he agreed to take care of her as his own. Everything, then, seemed fine. Sadly, the peace did not last for long.
Relationships
Rachel’s husband ran off with a new woman and left her with two young girls and no means to take care of them. Rachel then turned to the only person who always welcomed her, her aunt.
Rachel’s aunt did her best to make a home for everyone and Rachel had a plan. She worked as a waitress during the day and she would study to become a nursing assistant at night school. She believed that with a better job, she could stand on her own two feet.
Multiple Jobs
Rachel was working multiple jobs, and between those jobs and her nursing training, she didn’t have time to ready her daughters for bed before leaving the house again. The mental, physical and financial strain became too much.
With no hope of giving her daughter Mira the life she thought she deserved, however, Rachel made a call to another aunt in Florida, called Verda. She wasn’t able to have kids, and yet the one thing she wanted most in the world was to be a mom.
Adoptive Mom
On her post in the website Love What Matters, Mira wrote that Rachel had to give her in adoption before she could utter the word “Momma”, because if she said it, she would not be able to let go of her.
Nine months later Mira’s intrafamily adoption was complete. Rachel would eventually remarry a friend who had been a support to her through her decision to have Mira adopted. Indeed, after a time, Rachel and her new partner gave Mira a little sister.
Normal Childhood
Mira wrote in her post that her childhood was “pretty normal” and that her mom stayed with her until she was old enough to go to school. Her new father was a merchant seaman until he retired and opened a construction company.
Nonetheless, every summer, her mom would take her to Texas so that she could have the opportunity to spend time and make memories with her sisters. For Mira, that was the only family she had ever known. Her adoption was not a secret to her.
Honest Story
To Mira, her family was very honest about her adoption.
She wrote in her post: “There were no lies or glorified stories. They were honest about my story from the very beginning and gave me age-appropriate answers to questions when I had them”.
And with a relationship forming with her biological mom, Rachel, over the years, Mira always got honest answers to any burning questions she had. She had one question for her mother, Rachel: Why was she adopted while her sister remained with their mom?
“You Deserved A Chance”
Rachel answered honestly and straight from her heart. She said that Mira was so new and untouched by any wrong in the world. Rachel felt that Mira deserved a chance.
Mira’s biological father, Joey, resembles her in some ways, but she is sure he still has no idea she exists. The HR director harbors no ill feelings toward Rachel, in fact, she admires her courage.
Unique Childhood
Thanks to her unique childhood, Mira and her husband made the decision to adopt. And as she had such a special relationship with her birth mom, Rachel, she was the first person Mira called. She wanted to give a child the same chance she had.
As it happened, Rachel had played an even bigger role when Mira decided to adopt little Lillie. It’s not clear why Mira’s cousin realized that she could no longer offer her daughter what she deserved. But she knew she could turn to Mira because she had been through a similar experience.
New Baby
As she drove to Texas to collect Lillie, she was, in fact, one month pregnant with her second biological child. Remy Jane Hansen joined the family in March 2018.
Mira said “I will never be able to grasp the magnitude of the sacrifice Lillie’s biological mother made. I’ll never know how hard that was and my heart breaks at the series of events that led her there. Our Lillie is not broken. She has been redeemed”.