Tometich Family Story: Answering God’s Call to Adoption

So, my name is Jake Tometich. This is my wife, Brooke Tometich.

And we have a son and a daughter. A ten-year-old son named Lyndon and a six-year-old daughter named Louie.

We both really were feeling called to adoption. He has a sister that’s adopted from South Korea, and I shared with him that ever since I was a little girl, I knew that I would adopt. That was just a calling on my heart from such a young age. Yeah. So, we were at a work conference actually in Florida for an organization we worked with at the time and we really just kind of looked at each other at one moment during the conference and we said we feel like we feel like God’s telling us that now is the time to pursue this.

So, we went home, and we started the process right away and we had no idea that God was going to match us the day after we went active. We were home study active… we got a call the next day from our social worker, and she said I don’t want you to get your hopes up, but we actually got a call from a 16-year-old. She called our hotline. I need to make sure that y’all are okay with the situation. It’s a non-consensual situation with her pregnancy and we were of course great with that, and we got the call an hour later. And she said “Well, you’re due with a baby in May,” and we were both like okay, this is real. This is happening. So, we were getting ready for church on Mother’s Day, and we got a call that our sweet birth mom was in labor. We got to go to the hospital be with her. They gave us a room and we always joke and say God gave us the two for one deal because that 16-year-old birth mom basically became like another child to us so, you know, from that standpoint our adoption story is easy peasy. We were matched quickly 45 minutes down the road, great relationship with birth mom, but things went sour at our six-month finalization.

So, six months into our adoption after she was born, we went to court to go finalize everything. And sure enough, the birth father was there. Which we had never spoken to him before we had never met him. I don’t know if he’d ever seen him even…

And because it was a non-consensual situation. We didn’t think we had to worry about that. But again, blood is pretty important to judges. So, they entertained him, and we had to fight for almost three months with our birth mom at our side to make sure that Louie was ours.

And it was really a turning point for us. I remember going up to Louie’s nursery. She was eight months old… and just getting on my knees and begging God to just let us keep her and just thinking 10 years down the road would she be with us would she be ours? And I remember a verse that just completely calmed me and changed my life as I was reading through Exodus, and I really just wanted to read about the Red Sea and how God part of that Red Sea because we needed our Red Sea parted.

You know, she said, you know, it’s a time when you’re spending so much time just begging God right don’t you know, we feel like you’ve asked us to pursue this we feel like you’ve blessed us with this perfect child and then it was hard to reconcile the fact that she might get taken away from us and again, it just it seemed like every time we would go for another date on another day we were supposed to be finalized, there would be another delay, another delay, they kept giving more and more chances. And so, it just it ended up being one of the you know, critical turning points in our lives from a faith perspective and you know, I know for me at least really brought me back to that place of relying on God wholeheartedly.

So, after that God is so great. Everything worked out amazingly. We got to finalize our adoption when Louie was 10 months old. We got it on the back end. I was a little bit easier in the front end.

Yeah, it’s funny how a lot of people tell us if they don’t know that Louie is adopted that she looks like one of our biological children and she looks exactly like us and it’s just so funny seeing the personality difference, you know, my son and I tend to be very laid back and Brooke and Louie are a little more animated and extroverted but it’s you know, she’s definitely she’s the life of the party and we always talk about how boring it would be without her around.

And I was having a sweet moment with Lyndon the other night. We’re just laying in bed and he was like “Mom!” … We were talking all about his day and he said “Can we just watch videos of Louie from when she was a baby?” We just sat there for an hour and watched all the videos we have saved of Louie. I mean that is his baby too. You know, that’s… she’s his favorite personal world. So, for those that are thinking about the adoption process or fostering, I would say go into it with an open an open mind as to how that can… how that journey can play out, you know and also really surrender it all to God because it’s going to work out the way it’s supposed to.

I remember sitting with our CEOs wife and I said, I’m just not sure if this is the right time or if God really wants us to go this route right now, and she looked at me and she said do you think God will be displeased with something that he calls us to? Adoption is one of the closest things to the Lord’s heart. She said I promise you; you step out in this He’s going to be with you every step of the way and it was such an aha moment for me. Like why do we do these things… good things that we know that we should be doing, and we start thinking. Oh, I feel like God is telling me do this. Of course, he’s telling you to do it and he’s going to honor it and he’s going to be with you every step of the way. So, you need to do it regardless of how hard it’s going to be if there’s any roadblocks it’s worth it because these kiddos, they need a family and it’s the best thing we’ve ever done with our lives.