Kristin Hill Taylor: Peace in the Process

I've had the honor of being on the launch team for Peace in the Process: How Adoption Built my Faith & my Family by Kristin Hill Taylor of Wednesday Porch Stories testimony linkup renown. This blog and my reviews are from a pre-publication pdf I received to read and enjoy before the official launch date of Tuesday, September 19 that's the 2nd birthday of Kristin and Greg's daughter Rachel.

In Kristin's own words:

"I didn't dream of being a mom. I just assumed I would eventually have kids. A people-pleasing, first-born child, I was a good student who went to college and never changed my major. I worked as a newspaper reporter, just as my print journalism degree would have me do. I married my college boyfriend and we started our life together. I went through life as I assumed lives were supposed to be lived.

"Nearly two years went by and for various reasons we were still childless. Yes, I cried out to God when friends announced pregnancies: 'I told you I was ready!' I just wanted to have a baby. That was the next step in life. But it wasn't the next step in my life. I did eventually become a mom, never expecting adoption to be our story. But it's a story I tell over and over again because it's the one that changed me. Adoption built my faith and gave me a family."

Peace in the Process reveals intricacies, expectations, disappointments, and excitements of the trio of private adoptions Greg and Kristin opted for. Although Kristin's story might encourage people to consider adoption as a way to begin a journey into parenthood or to expand an existing family, even more than about parenting, this beautifully written account of moving from anticipation through infertility to becoming a 3-person family and finally adding a son and another daughter is about Kristin's own grace-filled growth from fledgling faith into mature, responsive shalom—peace and well-being in the broadest, most inclusive sense. The book testifies to God's faithfulness; it's also very much a testimony of Kristin's gradual passage from going "through life as [she] assumed lives were supposed to be lived" to grounded, abiding trust in the Creator of life who wills and loves us into better than we ever would have chosen for ourselves.

Whatever your familial status or hopes, wherever the Spirit has led you, especially if you're bright, educated, and ambitious, you'll resonate with this not very long narrative and probably gain greater trust in God's ongoing process after you've read Kristin's story. This would be an excellent book for a skeptic or non-religious person, since the details and particulars of each of the Taylor kids' adoptions story clearly could not have happened by accidental serendipity. I first read Kristin's entire story and then returned to the sixteen In Their Words vignettes from other adoptive moms Peace in the Process includes. Every one is different; each worthy of a book of its own.

My Amazon review: Growing a Family; Growing Faith