For years, Dana and Jewell Onifer hoped and prayed for children, but in God’s providence they never succeeded in having a child of their own. “My wife had always kind of felt that she wasn’t going to have children, and that we were going to adopt,” Dana, a doctor of family medicine in North Carolina, told The Washington Stand. “I was expecting to do both, but adoption is what we ended up with.”
Praying for a Child
“I reason with God” in prayer, Onifer described, “which is not to say that I’m trying to convince him of … what I want. But I reason through the process. And I try and establish what are the biblical principles.” He hastened to add that these prayer habits are not “clinical and unemotional, because there’s lots of emotion involved in it. But I want to make sure that my thoughts and my emotions are coalesced into a theologically sound and biblically appropriate request of God. I don’t want to come to him with either silly or selfish or sinful prayers.”
“I never came away with God telling me, ‘No, you can’t have children. I just kept coming away with, ‘Not yet, not this, I have something different for you,’” recalled Onifer. “I was happy with either” option (having children through pregnancy or adoption). “Honestly, I felt a greater desire for this for my wife because she’s the last of her family. … After her, her family tree ends.”
As previously narrated in The Washington Stand, the Onifers had pursued various infertility treatments literally around the world, including two attempts at in vitro fertilization (IVF). Repeated failures discouraged them from further attempts. So, the Onifers resolved, after returning from a tour of duty on a U.S. military base in Okinawa, to pursue adoption.
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Guided to the Right Church
The Onifers’ local church has played a large role in supporting them through the adoption process, but it wasn’t the one they first attended when they moved to North Carolina in May 2010.
“We started attending one particular church” but decided not to join “because of, honestly, their secondary theological issues … that are important to me,” Onifer recalled. “It’s kind of foolish for me to put myself into a congregation and submit myself to a pastor that I know I’m going to constantly be disagreeing with.”
This is not the same thing as “church shopping.” Secondary theological issues are an intermediate category between core issues, such as questions of gospel orthodoxy, and “tertiary” issues, such as a church’s style of music, which may be important but are not dealbreakers for fellowship. Secondary issues include questions of infant versus believers’ baptism, a church’s government structure, membership practices, and other matters where disagreement could disrupt the unity of a local congregation. Differing convictions on secondary issues may differentiate denominations or individual churches, but they do not fundamentally divide gospel unity. Thus, Onifer would still endorse the church they decided not to join. “They’re good, wonderful people. And if you said, ‘Hey, I’m going to go to this church,’ I [would say], ‘Yeah, they’re great.’”
Deciding not to join that first church was likely disheartening for the Onifers, but God had a deeper purpose in redirecting them to another church.
“We ended up at a different church, and we started there very, very quickly,” described Onifer. “We became part of a small group there” in the summer of 2010, and “the guy that led the small group … I still meet with him most Thursday mornings for Bible study.” That is just one example of the ways the Onifers “immediately sunk our teeth into that church and became active there.”
But we’re getting ahead of our story. “The first Sunday there, there were several things that happened that said to me, ‘Dana, this is where I want you’ … God telling me this is where we’re supposed to be,” Onifer described. “And then come to find out that the pastor has two adopted children.”
“Jason, our pastor was just eager to pray for us,” he continued. “We had talked to him about the adoption process, and he was praying for us specifically. He would text me or give me a phone call sometimes and say, ‘Hey, how are things going with the adoption?’ So we had a lot of support from our church.”
Divine Connections
Dana asked the pastor if the church partnered with an adoption agency or had any resources. “No, we don’t,” Jason responded, “but one of the ladies that attends the church is a social worker. She does background studies for an adoption agency.” That very same Sunday, “like three other people had conversations with this woman, Dawn, about me and my wife and us wanting to adopt,” Onifer recited excitedly.
When they first communicated about their desire to adopt, Dawn asked him, “Do you want confirmation that this is what God wants you to do?” Onifer wasn’t sure what would come next, but he mentally steadied himself for potentially something “kooky.” What followed was anything but.
“She said, ‘Do you remember this lady?’” Onifer recalled. “And I’m like, ‘That sounds familiar.’ And she said, ‘She runs an adoption agency in Okinawa.’ Well, there’s only one adoption agency because adoption is not a Japanese thing.
So I’m like, ‘Yeah, I remember her. I met her once.’” After this woman met the Onifers one time, he relayed, he had called Dawn — from Okinawa to North Carolina — and told her, “There’s this couple named Dana and Jewel. They’re moving to North Carolina. You need to find them and help them get a baby.”
That call was two years before the Onifers arrived. Two years before the Onifers moved to North Carolina, God was already preparing to help them adopt a child. “God continued to open doors to adoption for us,” Onifer reflected. “There were things that happened that just were really ‘hand-of-God’ sort of stuff.”
Dawn connected the Onifers with a Christian adoption agency based in North Carolina, run by a woman named Doris. “I figured out her style very quickly,” remembered Onifer. “She wants you to trust her and to trust the process and trust God and not get all ‘wigged out’ about stuff.”
Flawed World, Flawed People
Not long into the adoption process, Onifer had a disturbing exchange, one that revealed the prevalence of sin even among people selflessly pursuing adoption through a Christian adoption agency. During the initial interview, Onifer was asked, “Do you have any racial preference?”
“I said, ‘Yes, human,’” Onifer related. “And she laughed, and she said, ‘No, really?’ And I said, ‘No, really?’ And she said, ‘So, you wouldn’t mind, you know, having, um, an African American baby?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t care.’ And she said, ‘Would you be okay with an African American boy?’ And I said, ‘Actually, I would prefer a boy.’ She said, ‘Okay, then we can find you a baby.’”
At this point, Onifer continued, there was a “pause for a moment, and I said, ‘Are you telling me there are people who won’t adopt African American boys?’ And she paused and said, ‘You know, we try not to judge.’”
Adoption agencies are certainly in a difficult position. As a general rule, there are more kids in need of adoption than there are families willing to adopt them, and growing up without a family is worse for children than growing up in a family with wrong views. For them to turn away willing adopters over such views is like the city of Philadelphia excluding Catholics from its foster care program because of their beliefs about marriage. As the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers.
But such racist tendencies fall far short of God’s perspective of human dignity. The sovereign Creator “made from one man every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:26), and he is redeeming — adopting, even — a people for himself “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). There are no so-called “racial” distinctions in God’s family (Galatians 3:28), and black Africans were arguably folded into the people of God as early as Acts 8:36 and Acts 13:1.
Even from the perspective of adoptive parents, preferencing children of a certain skin color more than others is illogical. “What’s the difference between what’s genetically mine and what’s adopted mine?” Onifer argued. “I’m an adopted child in the kingdom of heaven. I’m not there by my birth, not there by my natural membership in God’s family. Because, one, I’m not a Jew, and, two, I’m not Jesus’s brother.”
So, it doesn’t matter what his skin color is, Onifer insisted. “My son is my son.”
Quick Connections
“God moved pretty quickly in the adoption,” Onifer continued. “When we first made contact with the adoption agency, they said, ‘It’s about a two-year wait.’ And I was like, ‘Come on, man, this is a domestic adoption, right?’ She’s like, ‘Yes.’” But the process only lasted from June 2010 to February 2011, less than nine months.
In January 2011, Doris called Dana in the middle of the day. “I didn’t get an email. I just got a phone call,” he said, and that could only mean one thing: “there’s a mom” willing for them to adopt her unborn child. Sure enough, after a moment of pleasantries, Doris said, “There’s a young lady that would like to meet you, and she’s thinking about, letting you adopt her baby.”
“The big thing was being willing to accept an open adoption,” Onifer explained. “If you’re willing to accept an open adoption, there’s a lot more birth moms that are willing to choose you because they feel less like they’re abandoning their child if they get to have continued contact and are kept in the know of how the child is doing.”
However, not everyone is willing to accept an open adoption. “Initially, Jewell was very opposed to that because she was worried she would feel like this birth mom is judging her if things weren’t going the way the birth mom wanted.” Onifer’s reaction was, “The birth mom has no right to judge you,” but merely acknowledging that fact “didn’t stop my wife from feeling that way.”
What changed Jewell’s heart for good was prayer. “The Sunday before we were supposed to go and meet the birth mom,” narrated Onifer, his wife wanted to go up to the front and receive prayer. “My wife is not a ‘Hey, let’s go up and get prayer’ kind of person,” he interjected. “She’s not one, first off, to seek out strangers or other people to pray over her like that. And she’s definitely not one to do that in a public setting.”
So, when Jewell made such an unusual request, Dana jumped into action. “I’m like … pushing people out of the way. ‘This is important. Let’s get up front,’” he recalled. “She was praying for and was asking for prayer to be willing for the open adoption. … She wanted to be willing to accept whatever it was that God had for us.”
Precious New Life
The Onifers met the birth mother, Julia. And they prepared to welcome the baby boy, Joseph, into their family when he arrived only a month later.
“Julia gave birth to our son on February 12th,” Onifer related. As soon as they got the call, they rushed to the hospital. “If they had given me this phone call about an hour earlier … I would have been there to cut the cord,” he said lovingly. “So, he’s been my son since — well, since the beginning of time because that’s what God had appointed — but practically, in the world, he’s been my son since he’s been about an hour old.”
“That moved really very quickly, and the whole process with the adoption went super smooth,” Onifer remarked. “There were just so many things that said: ‘Dana, Jewell, this is what I have for you.’”
The adoption agency recommended that adoptive parents stay home with their newborn children for at least two weeks before the baby starts interacting with other people. Time together is important for any family, but it is especially necessary for adoptive parents who lack the biological bond that forms even before a child is born. “Even in the womb, the child is building a bond with its mother. And if the father is there, they hear those voices,” Onifer explained.
The two weeks’ confinement ended on a Saturday, so the very first place the Onifers took Joseph was to church. The pastor saw them walking in with a car seat and let out an exclamation of surprise. “In the flurry of events, we hadn’t told him that Joseph was born,” Onifer said. So, the pastor “actually pulled us up on the stage during [the evening service] and asked us for a brief testimony of how this all happened.” Then the pastor prayed over their new son “in front of the congregation,” Onifer described. “Yeah, the church has been an important part of the adoption process.”
Ongoing Prayer
Pastor Jason’s immediate prayer of Joseph reflected Dana’s own response. “When we first showed up at the hospital, I took him in my hands, and I just started to pray over him,” Onifer told me. “And I probably did that for about 20 minutes or so, maybe more. My wife is finally like, ‘Can I hold him?’ I’m like, ‘I’m not done yet.’”
Onifer won’t finish praying for his son Joseph, not for a long time yet. “From the moment that my son was born, for several years, I would pray over him every night,” he declared. “The prayers consistently over him were Psalm 1 and Psalm 63.”
Psalm 1 describes a righteous man whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:2-3). Psalm 63 describes a soul thirsting for and clinging to God, which “will be satisfied as with fat and rich food” (Psalm 63:5).
“If I have one desire for my son,” he explained, “I want my son to be satisfied, as with fat and rich food and to be like a tree planted beside streams of water. That is, I want him to be prosperous in a worldly way, but more than that to be prosperous in a godly way.”
“I’m a doctor; I have no expectation of him wanting to be a doctor. I will support almost anything that he does — and I told him this — as long as it’s good, it’s legal, it’s moral, it benefits other people, and God can be glorified in it,” said Onifer. So, Onifer’s desire for his son is not a career path but a heart posture, one that delights in the Lord and clings to him.
This reflects Onifer’s own heart posture, faithfully seeking the Lord after years of a difficult trial with infertility and IVF. Although they didn’t know it, God had prepared a blessing for the Onifers in their adopted Joseph. He was preparing to turn their sorrow into joy.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand, contributing both news and commentary from a biblical worldview. Originally published by The Washington Stand.
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