Closed Womb < Open Hearts

Our story began long before we understood where God was leading us.

We came from two different places, two different families, and two different backgrounds—but looking back, we can see how God was weaving our lives together long before we ever knew what our future would hold.

I was born and raised in Idabel, Oklahoma, the eighth 

Our story began long before we understood where God was leading us.

We came from two different places, two different families, and two different backgrounds—but looking back, we can see how God was weaving our lives together long before we ever knew what our future would hold.

I was born and raised in Idabel, Oklahoma, the eighth of eleven children—eight boys and three girls. Growing up in a family that large meant there was never a shortage of noise, personalities, or life lessons.

My dad was a pastor, so much of my childhood revolved around church. I learned to play music at a young age, playing drums, guitar, and piano, and faith became deeply woven into my life.

I also learned the value of hard work early. At around seven years old, I began working in our family's lawn care business. As I got older, I eventually helped run it. Those early years taught me lessons about work, responsibility, leadership, faith, and family that would follow me throughout my life.

What I couldn't have known then was that God was also placing something in my heart that would become important many years later—a compassion for children who needed a family and a place to belong.

Erica was born and raised in Butler, Alabama, as one of four children. Like me, she grew up attending church and learning to love Jesus from an early age.

But there was something unique God placed in Erica's heart even as a little girl: a love for adoption.

While other little girls played with their baby dolls, Erica would "adopt" hers. Long before infertility, doctor's appointments, foster care, or adoption paperwork ever became part of our vocabulary, she somehow knew deep in her heart that adoption would one day be part of her story.

She couldn't have known then just how significant that childhood desire would become.

Our paths eventually crossed at church.

I was 13 years old, and Erica was 11 when we first met. At the time, neither of us could have imagined the story God was beginning to write.

As the years passed, friendship grew into something more. When I was 17 and Erica was 15, we began to realize there was something special between us. On March 17, 2006, we officially began dating.

Three years later, on March 6, 2009, we became husband and wife.

We were young, in love, full of faith, and dreaming about the life we would build together.

Like most young couples, we had an idea of what we thought that life would look like.

We had no idea how different—and how much more beautiful—God's plan would be.

We expected children to come naturally. Instead, we entered a journey with infertility that would last 13 years.

There were prayers, questions, tears, doctor's appointments, disappointments, and seasons when we simply didn't understand what God was doing.

But infertility wasn't the end of our story.

It became the doorway into a story we never could have written for ourselves.

God took a young girl from Alabama who had dreamed about adoption and a young boy from Oklahoma who grew up as one of eleven children, brought them together in a church, and eventually used a closed womb to open both of their hearts in ways they never expected.

Our journey led us into foster care and adoption. We would eventually welcome our first two children through adoption, and after thirteen years of infertility, God surprised us again by giving us two biological children.

Today, we are the parents of four children—three boys and one girl, two through adoption and two biologically.

Looking back, we can see something we couldn't always see while we were living it:

The waiting wasn't wasted.

The closed doors weren't the end.

And the family God gave us didn't look exactly like the family we once imagined—it became something far greater than we knew to ask for.

That journey ultimately became the heartbeat behind Closed Womb Open Hearts.

We know what it feels like to wait for a child. We know the questions infertility can create in a marriage and in your faith. We know the fear involved in opening your heart to foster care and adoption.

But we also know what can happen when, even in the middle of disappointment, you keep your heart open to what God may be doing.

Our story started with two kids from Oklahoma and Alabama who met at church.

Today, it has become a family, a testimony, and a mission:

to walk alongside couples facing infertility, encourage families to consider adoption, support those who say yes, and help vulnerable children find open hearts and loving homes.

This is our story.

A closed womb was never the end of it.
It was only the beginning of what God would do with two open hearts.

Advisory Board:

 Garr Russell, Founder and C.E.O., FIRESIDE RV RENTAL, Multi Book Author

 Robert Vickers, Author and Ministry Leader, Founder and President, Artful Askers, Kansas City, Missouri

 Pastor Keith Standford, Counselor, 30+ years of Pastoral Ministry. He has pastored 5 churches including, 3 years in Berlin, Germany. Keith was Okla

Advisory Board:

 Garr Russell, Founder and C.E.O., FIRESIDE RV RENTAL, Multi Book Author

 Robert Vickers, Author and Ministry Leader, Founder and President, Artful Askers, Kansas City, Missouri

 Pastor Keith Standford, Counselor, 30+ years of Pastoral Ministry. He has pastored 5 churches including, 3 years in Berlin, Germany. Keith was Oklahoma Christian Education Director for the Assemblies of God for 11 years.