Andrew & Bailey Guthrie: Learning to trust God’s timing

In 2016, we shared the story of Andrew & Bailey Guthrie in the midst of a difficult adoption journey; one that took them through the valley of a painful failed adoption.

Andrew shares, “We were chosen to parent a child. It was a very last minute thing. The birth mother was making her adoption plan and last minute, called us and said, can you be here tomorrow? We hopped in the car and drove 11 hours to go pick up this child that we thought would be our son, but after a couple days there, the birth mom changed her mind and decided that she was going to parent the child. So we turned around and came home.”

“I just loved him instantly. It was so joyful and I just loved him, and it was just a feeling like I’d never had before,” Bailey said, through tears.

“Pain in this life is not necessarily something that you just go through to get to the good thing,” says Andrew. “I mean, sometimes pain is the thing. Sometimes pain is what God calls us to experience to learn something we couldn’t otherwise learn, to reach a level of our relationship with him we otherwise couldn’t reach, to reach a level of a relationship in our marriage that we otherwise couldn’t reach.”

Andrew and Bailey walked through a second failed adoption a few months later. In the face of more disappointment, they continued to depend on Jesus to meet them in their pain, in their longing, and in their hope.

On January 23, 2017, Andrew and Bailey received another call…

“We get this phone call,” Andrew shares excitedly. “Bailey answers it and through tears says, ‘She wants us.’ So two days later, we scrambled to hop in a plane and go up and meet her.” That day, Andrew & Bailey’s lives intersected with a brave birth mother, birth father, and their extended families, and an open adoption plan was set in motion.

Wyatt Don Guthrie was born on February 20, 2017, and Andrew & Bailey became parents of a beautiful 8 lb. 1 oz. baby boy.

Bailey paints the picture of this beautiful moment – “I got to be there when Wyatt was born, the moment he was born. He was placed in my arms first and it was just the best feeling in the entire world. I mean, it was him all along, this whole time, this whole journey, it was him. I’m so incredibly grateful that the Lord did not answer my prayers the way that I wanted them answered in those difficult moments, in those really long times of waiting.”

“Through the additional year of waiting,” Andrew recalls, “we were working out our trust muscles. He was just reminding us constantly, you think you’ve trusted enough, you think you’ve waited long enough, keep trusting that I have a plan for you. I am good. There’s a reason why all this is happening.”

“Our trust can’t be results-oriented trust of the Lord,” Bailey encourages. “It just has to be trust, like just sheer abandoned of the heart trust in his plan, whatever that was going to be.”

On April 10, 2017, a Texas judge declared Wyatt the legally adopted son of Andrew & Bailey Guthrie.

Bailey reflects, “Just being people at Northwest Bible and listening to this message and theme of being authentic and inviting others into desperate dependence on Jesus and telling our story to reveal his story. I am so tempted to write the story before the story is written, before the Lord reveals the story, and I think along the way we just shared, even if it was in the midst of a lot of pain and waiting and either no news or really bad news. Finally, when we got to share the great news about Wyatt and bringing him home, we had thousands of people on social media that loved us so well.”

“Northwest has created a culture,” Andrew states, “where being open and vulnerable about what the Lord is doing through pain allowed us to sort of join in that chorus. It’s a really healthy thing for a Christian community to say to the world, Hey, we’re not perfect. Hey, we’re hurting. Look at what our perfect God is doing through this imperfect situation.”

“Every time I look at him,” Bailey says through happy tears, “I am overwhelmed with how much I love him and how amazing the Lord is to bless us with such an incredible gift of a child to raise and love forever.”