FOSter & ADopTION MINISTRY: The Cartmel's Story
Written by Zack and Claire Cartmel, published October 2021
It feels most fitting to start talking about our adoption journey by first introducing ourselves. We are Zack and Claire Cartmel- two special education professionals who fell in love at age 21 while working at a Youth Development Center for at-risk children in urban Fort Worth. Since graduating from college, we have collectively held many jobs, including Youth Care Specialist at a local Children’s Home, ABA therapist, teacher, and now currently Autism Specialist and Assistant Principal. All of this to say- we love children and have always known that we wanted to welcome children into our home. Specific experiences listed above stirred both of our hearts toward adoption, and we were blessed to establish this desire with each other while dating. We got married in 2016 and quickly became consumed with our new life together. We started attending The Paradox Church, we both started graduate school, changed careers a few times, and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure we were on.
As we navigated married life, we struggled to know when the time would be right to pursue our adoption journey. It’s hard to know when to hit the ground running toward a journey well known for its ups and downs. We attended an Orphan Care informational meeting one weekend in early 2018 and left feeling the kick in the butt we need to get going. After a little research, we found that we were just a few months shy of the 2-year married requirement that most agencies had in place. We decided to be obedient to the call to adopt on our 2nd wedding anniversary but became very confused to find ourselves unexpectedly pregnant and then unexpectedly walking through a miscarriage. It was hard to process and grieve a loss we weren’t expecting to have. Unfortunately, it was further complicated by the need for surgery and a long physical recovery.
A year later, we felt pulled to revisit our adoption journey. We took a break from talking about it to pray for a month and when we came back together we both felt sure it was time. We waded through paperwork, praying as we answered questions that felt impossible to definitively answer.
We became active*, in February of 2020 and quickly matched with one due 6 months later in August of 2020. We stayed in close contact with her and our social worker- talking on the phone with her, praying for her, and had a visit planned to meet her just before everything shut down in the wake of COVID-19.
On Thursday, April 23, 2020, our social worker called us late at night and told us that our expectant mother had gone into preterm labor and the baby did not survive. We were crushed for her. We knew the loss she was experiencing. We didn’t know how to process this news, we were back at square one and didn’t know whether we should take a break or jump right back in….our caseworker told us to get some rest and she would check-in in a few days.
On Friday, April 24, 2020, I called our caseworker and said we were ready to jump back in, and if possible we wanted to continue to work with her. She told me she wanted to share our book with another expectant mother who had just reached out to her agency. After giving her permission to show our book she confessed that she has already shown her our book and wanted to set up a phone call for us all to talk on Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday, April 26, 2020, we sat on the couch participating in Paradox’s virtual service… we don’t exactly remember the topic but do remember Jim was talking about suffering and our heads shot up when he said something like, “We have a couple in our church who walked through a miscarriage, pursued adoption and now the mom they were matched with is experiencing a miscarriage”, we had a few friends reach out and ask if he was talking about us and before we knew it we had several people delivering meals to our door.
We spent that day killing time, waiting for our afternoon phone call. A phone call where we would do our best to “meet” someone and present ourselves in such a way that someone would deem us worthy of being chosen to raise the child they were carrying- no pressure. When the call never came, we didn’t know what to think. We were happily enjoying some fajitas that had been delivered to our door when we got a text from our caseworker saying our phone call hadn’t happened yet because the mom was headed to the hospital for leg pain. It didn’t take long to determine that her leg pain was actually labor and that our evening was going to look much different than we thought. We were told to prepare to travel but not to leave until we got the go-ahead from our social worker.
We had virtually nothing ready, we weren’t expecting a baby until August and here we were in April needing to own all the newborn things. To complicate things a bit further, it was a Sunday night in the midst of the COVID-19 shelter in place orders. This meant that most stores weren’t open and many had adjusted, (shorted), hours. We bought a car seat and a pack and play and assumed we could find a Target in Kansas if we needed one.
On Monday, April 27, 2020, we woke up to a text that said to start traveling as soon as possible. We told our city group to pray, had family come and watch our dogs, and left Fort Worth at 8:00 am for Kansas City, Kansas. Our daughter, Merritt, was born at 8:22 am 22 minutes into our 8-hour drive-and just 4 days after our failed match.
We arrived at the hospital late afternoon and spent the evening in a hospital room getting to know Merritt’s first mom.
We have an open adoption with her birth mother*, which means we have direct contact with her. Open adoptions look different for everyone, ours includes frequent texts and pictures with updates on how she’s doing. We gave Merritt the middle name Maya because her birth mother’s middle name is Maya. We did this both to honor her birth mother, but also as a way to teach Merritt as she grows that her adoption story was an intentional choice and commitment made by her birth mother and her us. We choose to talk about her birth mother often and celebrate the way the Lord knit our family together.
It has been our joy to share this experience with our family and friends. It has been a blessing to be connected to other families who have walked through adoptions, or who are considering adoption. Adoption is a very individualized experience, and while we have learned a lot about the process as a whole, we have come to recognize we are really only experts on our specific adoption experience.
And while 2020 wasn’t the poster year for much, I can’t help but smile when I think about how God used a year of more uncertainty than we can ever remember to boldly remind us that he is faithful. It has never been clearer that we are not in control, and it has never been so sweet to experience that his plan is better than ours.
An explanation of terms that are important in the adoption community
Active: completely done with paperwork, background checks, and able to match with an expectant mother*
Expectant Mother: a woman who is pregnant, possibly thinking about adoption, but who has not placed her child in an adoptive home, looking to place her child through adoption
Birth Mother: a mother who has placed her child in an adoptive home