It’s not an easy decision to bring a child into a family, particularly when that child is not your own. Arizona parents Jessica and Jeremiah Frank, who already had a son of their own, struggled with the decision to adopt for years.
“My husband and I had disagreed on adoption for a couple of years,” Jessica said. “I was the one pushing for it, my husband was comfortable in our life and didn’t want to change it.”
At the time, Jessica’s own parents were foster parents to a girl named Shailee. One weekend, Jessica’s parents invited the Frank family on a hike – and upon meeting Shailee, Jeremiah immediately changed his mind about adoption.
“We are a family that likes to hike,” continued Jessica, “and one weekend my parents had invited my husband and me to go hiking with them, my brothers and Shailee.”
“I had met Shailee before this hike, but my husband had not. This was the first time.”
The group went out to a restaurant and chatted, and that’s when Shailee revealed that the one thing she wanted most in life was to be adopted by a family.
The formerly resistant Jeremiah melted. Just one meeting was all it took for him to realize he was actually interested in adoption.
“That was it. That night, my husband told me that it was time to start our classes to be licensed to foster.”
That hike occurred in March 2016. By December 2016, Shailee had moved in with the Franks. However, Shailee didn’t know they planned to adopt her. “She didn’t know we wanted to adopt her, she just knew that my parents were closing out their foster license and she was moving in with us,” Jessica explained.
The following November, when the Franks arrived to pick up Shailee and their son Skyler from school, they gave Shailee the good news: they were going to the court house to adopt her.
Shailee, overwhelmed with joy, began to cry. “Really?!” she proclaimed in shock. “You’re lying.”
But Jessica assured her they weren’t. “Today’s your day,” she said. Watch the touching moment Shailee found out she was being adopted below.
What a beautiful moment. The Franks are testament to the fact that there are millions of caring people out there with a desire to add to their families via adoption. All life is precious, and all children like Shailee deserve a caring, loving home.
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