Casey Douglas and her husband were well aware of the life they were expected to lead, seeing as she was the daughter of a pastor and they both had Christian backgrounds. However, she always knew that she was "not the kind of person that would bear children," and after she met her partner, she knew that "God's plan for me was different".
As Casey wrote for Love What Matters, she and her husband began to volunteer at their local church as youth pastors. There, they worked with children who were going through tough times. "We worked with students in a low-income area, most of which had sub-par parental figures, they were hurting and lost," she wrote. "After three years of marriage, we decided that Sundays and Wednesdays weren’t enough. We had to be all in."
Soon enough, they were having conversations about the idea of adopting a child, but were met with plenty of unwanted advice from those who felt they should have a traditional family. That's when they made a radical change:
"So, like any reasonable couple in the face of that advice, we called and scheduled our classes with CPS and got a vasectomy. We chose to end our fertility to reduce the stigma that our children would be plan B or a result of not receiving our blessing from God."
Once they told people that they were only going to take children who were older than 13, they were met with more resistance. Still, they persisted for months while the licensing process took place, until finally they could meet with a case worker to talk about potentially taking on a teenager.
"When our new case worker showed up, she got out of the car and said, 'So you are the people that want teenagers… are you crazy?'," Casey wrote. "I said, 'Something like that'."
They discussed children available for adoption, but when the topic of foster care came up, they took a leap of faith. "She said, 'Well, I got a phone call in your driveway for a 16-year-old male who needs a home by tonight.' I told her, 'Bring him home'," Casey recalled. "Three hours later, I met my son."
"He came through our front door with his little fishing pole. It wasn’t in a hospital, not with hugs and kisses, but with a soft smile and a handshake. He was far too small to be nearly 17 and he came with two bags of clothes that were ripped, stained, or too small. I wept as I emptied his bags into my washing machine."
Her newfound son was abandoned by his birth mother, with no name or any other information on his birth certificate. He was raised by his grandmother until she fell ill when he was 11, at which point he spent five years facing abuse through those who were supposed to take care of them. Eventually, he called CPS and told them he was homeless.
"His plan was to emancipate, work at Walmart, and make enough money to smoke pot and eat Ramen noodles. He had been rejected by everyone he had ever met and didn’t believe we would be any different.
"We started to notice a change when he came home and threw himself on his bed in a puddle of tears. I sat by him and pat his back. He looked at me and said, 'I have waited my entire life to be treated the way y’all treat me. I have never had real parents before.'"
Three months on, they took custody of him, and after his 18th birthday they asked to adopt him so that he could share their last name.
"On January 10th, 2019, after nearly two years of waiting, he officially became ours," she wrote. "He took our name, and for the first time, has a mom and a dad of his very own."
Their son is currently at the end of his junior year of high school. According to Casey, he's a passionate baseball player, and is hoping to get picked up to play in college, with aspirations of becoming a baseball player, coach, or inland fisheries scientist.
