Christmas is a time of miracles and hope. It's a time to celebrate birth.
And no one knows that better than Ritchie and Dena Ables, who believe their adopted son was meant by God for them.
It was just a year ago when the Greenwood couple overcame a heart-wrenching adoption failure at Thanksgiving only to bring home their son, Brady, just days before Christmas. The adoption was the culmination of years of prayer, tears and work.
Having married in 1990, the Ables soon realized that having a child of their own would be an uphill climb.
"We were married 11 years, and we had basically wanted children pretty much the whole time," Ritchie said.
Children were a big part of the Ables' lives. Ritchie, 34, is a former state youth director of the Church of God of Prophecy and current pastor of the North Park Church, and Dena, 32, always has worked with children in church.
"Anywhere I would go, they would just flock around me," Dena said.
"We would keep children. We would work with youth and kids all through our marriage, and we would have them in our home and different things," Ritchie said.
After visiting a fertility specialist in 1995 and realizing that having a child of their own would be almost impossible, the Ables began talking seriously about adoption, Ritchie said. Before that, he said it had just been wishful thinking.
"We had a private adoption fall through in about 1998-99, and that got us even more interested in trying to adopt," Ritchie said.
"We did our homework. We studied. We checked out all the different avenues and made calls," he said. "We called people all over and held on to any ounce of hope anyone could offer, and it seemed to be pretty much a closed door for us."
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But the couple never gave up.
About four years ago while living in Meridian, the Ables contacted an adoption agency in Jackson to get the process started.
The first step was having a home study done, which is required with every adoption, Ritchie said.
"In the meantime, they gave us a list of 10 adoption agencies to study and to do our own homework," he said.
"We also found some agencies on the Internet and contacted them ourselves," he said.
"So after we prayed about it and studied all our options, we finally narrowed it down to a couple of agencies," Ritchie said.
The Ables selected A Act of Love adoption agency in Utah.
"We chose this agency because of its success rate," Ritchie said. Families using the agency, on average, are able to adopt a child within six months. With other agencies, adoptive families may have to wait three to five years, he said.
"So when we saw that we could possibly get a child within six months, that felt good to us."
The Ables were given about a dozen cases to review.
Then, with each adoption, the agency pulls each couple's file and lets the adoptive mother choose where the child will be placed, he said.
"Prior to Thanksgiving, we never were chosen," Ritchie said.
At Thanksgiving last year, it had been 11 months since they had started the process, and they knew the longest the agency had ever waited to place a child was one year.
"At that point, we made our first trip to Utah," Ritchie said.
But instead of coming back with a new baby, the Ables came back to Greenwood devastated.
"A birth mother did choose us. Once we got out there, she backed out," he said.
"And of course, obviously, that was one of the saddest times of my life. And I know it was Dena's, too. We were just heartbroken. I cried just about all night," Ritchie said.
"I guess I bore a lot of the load for me and her, too, because I knew she had borne it for several years. I shouldered the immediate impact of what had just happened," he said.
But they didn't know while weathering the heartbreak that a rainbow would appear.
"We went through a storm there and a tough time," Ritchie said. "But even through all of that, I still felt like it was in God's hands and that he had something good for us."
"To try to understand from a woman's point of view, you would have to know that feeling of barrenness," Dena said.
"There had been a year in Meridian that I had looked at this baby's room with no baby," she said.
"Then we moved here and, naturally, each time we would get a call and they would say, 'Do you want us to present you to this birth family?' our hopes would shoot sky high," she said.
"Then for them to call and say they had chosen another couple, it was devastating to me," Dena said.
"I know it would be for a father, also. But for you to be a woman, I feel like, personally, God places that instinct in you to want to be a mother," she said.
The first time the Ables went to Utah, Dena said she had a portable bassinet by her bed for her new baby to sleep in. "Then, that night, once I realized that I was not going to have a baby there again, there was that emptiness and that barrenness looking at me."
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Little did they know that the answer to their prayers was just around the corner.
A couple of weeks later, about the second week of December, the call came telling the Ables there was another baby available.
When Ritchie and Dena returned to Greenwood the night before Thanksgiving, they had no idea Brady already had been born. His mother gave birth on Nov. 13.
"He was already born then, and they couldn't tell us," Ritchie said.
"They have to make sure the mother is going to give it up for adoption."
In Utah, mothers have about 24 to 48 hours to make their decision, whereas in other states people can take up to a week, Ritchie said.
After going back through the decision process, the Ables decided to accept the baby.
"We said yes, and then it was up to the birth mother to say yes. And thankfully, she did," Ritchie said.
"We never saw pictures of Brady or anything before the adoption," he said.
But this time, they waited until all the paperwork was signed before making another long trip across country. They said they didn't want to face the same devastation they had the first time around.
The Ables held Brady in their arms for the first time of Dec. 17, 2001. It was a day they will never forget.
"I don't want to get emotional," Dena said, holding back tears, "but he is such a joy to me.
"He's been able to fill a place in my heart that no one else could - not my husband, not my mother, not my father, not my friends," she said. "It is a place in my heart God had to put there."
Dena said not being able to have a child of her own and the adoption process has been like a roller coaster.
"The tears - only God saw those tears that I would shed when I would shut the door and would be depressed that certain day of the month or year," she said. "And he would know. He had a child out there for us. I truly am thankful."
"It was the greatest Christmas," Ritchie said. "As far as commercialization, it was a lesser Christmas. But as far as joy and love, it was, I guess, the greatest Christmas I've ever experienced - the most memorable, anyway."
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The Ables said there are so many things that have happened to reinforce their belief that Brady was born just for them. "He was created and formed in our hearts," he said. "That's just as special, if not more so, than a child who would have been formed in my wife's womb."
"He truly is our miracle," Dena said. "We know that God formed that child for these two people. He looked down and he saw Dena and he saw Ritchie and he saw Brady all as a family."
Dena said she and her husband are just in awe of their 1-year-old son.
After having surgery the week of Thanksgiving this year, Dena said she hadn't done any Christmas shopping as of early last week.
"I have nothing, but that doesn't matter to me," she said. "I want to give gifts, but as far as receiving, it doesn't matter if I get one material gift. This is all that matters."
The Ables also are thankful that God moved them to Greenwood to go through the adoption process.
"At the last church we were at, there were people who had the attitude that they didn't think adoption was proper. That it was not God's will," Ritchie said.
"My answer always to that is, 'Then we can't be Christians, because we're adopted into the family of God. The Bible actually uses the word 'adoption.' So that was my answer. God adopted, so why can't we adopt?" he said.
"God moved us here to Greenwood to this church, which has been overly receptive to the whole process - to Brady himself. He's just like the church baby," Ritchie said.
"Everybody is aunt and uncle. That's just how comfortable we feel.
"I believe there are places we could not have had as successful a culmination to the adoption, and this has been a successful ending to the story," Ritchie said.
"Not only have we been able to accept this child, but his church and his community have accepted him."
