The worst thing imaginable became the ‘biggest blessing of my life’

Yolanta Samus can’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t dream of being a mother. She planned to have four children by the time she was 30.

“I was that woman who wandered through maternity stores, eagerly anticipating the day when I would shop in them,” Samus told a room full of Corpus Christi College and St. Mark’s College students as part of a Lenten lunch series on the theme of hope.

Samus, a teacher at Holy Cross Regional Secondary School and mother of two adopted children, was the final speaker at the  Lenten lunch series, where she was joined by her husband Rob and two daughters as she talked about her family’s journey with adoption.

After years of not becoming pregnant Samus began to suspect that something was wrong. “After a series of tests we were told that although it wasn’t impossible, the likelihood of us having a biological child was very slim. At the time that was a devastating blow and I really didn’t understand why it was happening to us. I didn’t understand why God would instill this all-consuming desire for motherhood within me if he was going to make it this difficult to achieve.”

Shortly after, Yolanta and Rob decided to start the adoption process. “We decided to put all our energy and resources into pursuing adoption. We found an agency that we liked, Sunrise in North Vancouver, and started looking at the programs that they offered. “

After enrolling in the program, all they could do was wait. “Four years of waiting, four years of hoping, four years of uncertainty, four years of closely monitoring changes to the program,” Samus told the students.

 “The waiting period was out of my hands, so the only thing I could do was cling to the hope that God would provide. Hope as a virtue is not an attitude, it is trust in God. Finally on Oct. 9, 2012, we received a message from our caseworker Mary that they had two beautiful little girls waiting for us in Ethiopia.”

It would still be a long time before they could meet and then on a separate trip pick up their new daughters. “Finally, six years after starting our adoption journey we were parents. I was and still am completely fulfilled.”

Samus’s talk was appropriately titled That Thing Where Your Worst Fear Leads to Your Biggest Blessing, and she said “God’s plan not to bless us with biological children, which at one point was the worst thing I could have ever imagined happening to me, turned out to be the biggest blessing of my life.” 

Samus shared her advice with the room: “Let us feel emboldened to ask God what he truly wants of us and humble ourselves so we can be open to the answers because his plan for us is so much more incredible than anything we can imagine for ourselves.”

For more information about adopting in B.C. visit https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/birth-adoption/adoptions/how-to-adopt-a-child