WALT: I grew up on my parents' 100-acre property and I refused to stay
inside, I loved being in nature. I would just go out there by myself I would
just pray to Him and sometimes He would say something to me and speak to
me. I was about 10 or 12 years old, in the middle of the day God gives me
a very vivid picture of a little kid and I'm holding her, swinging her around
in my parents' yard and she's just laughing like crazy. In the picture that I
had in my mind she had dark skin and dark eyes and God said "This is going
to be your daughter and her name is going to be Chloe" ANNIE: Walt and
I grew up together, I think he moved to town the year I was born so we've
known each other my whole life. When I was 10 we moved right across the
pasture from him so we grew up together. My whole life I was like, "I think
Walt Manis is amazing" and I always thought "when I grow up I want to
find someone just like him", I went to university about 30 minutes from
where he was living and when I went he just kind of came in and helped get
me settled and helped introduce me to a church and so we just started
spending more and more time together and we were sitting in this car just
talking and we had this conversation about what our dreams and our hopes
were for the future. I said that I felt like God had just made me to be a mom.
That's what I wanted more than anything; I wanted to be a mother and I
said that I had actually a name picked out already that I wanted to name my
daughter and he said "I do too"- WALT: And I was like, "What's the
name?" She said, "Chloe." ANNIE: And he's like "you've got to be
kidding me!" ANNIE: In the picture Chloe had olive skin so he always
thought he would marry a woman with olive skin. WALT: She can't have a
brown-eyed child; I didn't know what to do with it. ANNIE: I think we
both knew pretty early on that we were going to get married.Walt felt like
home to me,from the very beginning I felt like, this is where I belong with
this guy. When we first got married we decided we wanted to wait a little
while to have children then at a certain point we realized now this is the right
time we want to start pursuing having children, months turned into years
and pretty soon we were 4 years into trying and still nothing. WALT: I had
always clung to this promise that God had given me about the daughter so I
didn't know when it was going to happen but it was starting to get hard to
wait. ANNIE: I don't know, I think I struggled with questioning God's
goodness in that time because I just felt like it was so mean, you know, such
a mean thing to do. Yeah, sorry. WALT: And every time we would hear
about someone getting pregnant we would just be devastated because we
were thinking this isn't going to happen for us, we're just fools, we're fools
who want kids and it's never going to happen. ANNIE: And then I would
say, somewhere, I feel that God shifted something in me so significant.
There was a point where I started to realize, actually no, I can live a really
full and happy life and experience so much with God and know Him so
deeply and be satisfied in the deepest way a human can be satisfied even
without having a child. It sounds like a simple concept but for me that was a
big change, a big shift in my perspective. WALT: Annie is, like, "well,
maybe we are supposed to adopt" and I was adamantly against it. WALT: I
had this thought of, like, I don't want - I called it - a band-aid baby. We are
struggling, we are hurting and, I don't, I didn't want just a fix, I didn't want
just some kid, I wanted the kid that we were supposed to have, and God, He
progressed me from being adamantly against adoption to be "you know, I
just want the kid that God wants, maybe it's not supposed to come through
biological means, maybe it's supposed to be through adoption". TAPE:
(WALT) So, what do you think? (ANNIE) I think that I'm very excited to
adopt but waiting will be hard ANNIE: I remember one night we were at
Walt's sister's house and I was checking my email and there was an email
that came in and it said "it's a girl". I clicked on it and I realized it was from
the adoption agency and they said "we just wanted to let you know that a
birth mother has chosen you guys and you're going to be parents." I just sat
there looking at the email like, oh my gosh, I can't believe this. TAPE:
(ANNIE) She'll be born in late February or early March. (WALT) Coming
close. (ANNIE) We're working on a name right now. We're working on it.
WALT: The name, Chloe, is completely off the table. We've abandoned it.
ANNIE: We'd decided oh, that was just a fluke thing, a coincidence that
we both liked that name. That was nothing. So we had even talked about a
different name and the social worker working with us said "the birth mother
would like to meet you before she has the baby". We're like, yes, we want to
meet her, sounds great, We went to the house where she was living and we
knocked on the door. WALT: She opens the door and it looks like a
grown-up version of this little girl in my head that was from the past and I
was like, oh my goodness, what in the world? The social worker says let's
talk about a name. Have you thought of a name? ANNIE: She said, yeah,
well ever since I got pregnant even before I knew it was a girl I've been
calling this baby Chloe. WALT: We were just floored. ANNIE: And both
Walt and I, I don't even remember what we did exactly. I just know that I
was ugly crying. WALT: were completely out of the window and it felt like
I just had full body shivers, the Holy Spirit was just right there. TAPE:
(WALT) You've been planned for, for a long time. Before you were even
conceived, we knew your name and I think we know what you're going to
look like, I don't know, but we'll see. ANNIE: This surreal presence of God
was just all around us and I felt Him saying to me, "See how much I love
you? I've been writing this story for years, since Walt was a kid I've been
writing this story" and I realized how foolish I was, I guess. How my
perspective was just so skewed in my own pain, that what I saw as Him not
loving me was in fact Him being the most loving He could've been.
ANNIE: Yeah, I was just crazy nervous that morning I remember going to
the hospital, and then all of a sudden it was happening, all of a sudden the Dr
came in and was like, "Ok, she's ready - you're going to have a baby now".
I don't know, there was just all this movement and bustling around and then
Chloe was there. TAPE: (WALT) Hey girl, how are you doing, Annie?
(ANNIE) I'm good, I'm really good! WALT: So many years of
anticipating her as a child, she's here, you know? She's been a part of our
lives for so long and she's finally here. ANNIE: I remember holding her
and looking at her face and saying "I'm your mom, I'm your mom".
WALT: There was no mistake, I am the father of this child, just like God had
always planned it to be and I'm just amazed at what God has done. WALT:
It's a constant struggle to just sit in His sovereignty. When everything is
falling apart in your mind, just to wait. ANNIE: And there were so many
people that got to celebrate with us. I can't even count the number of people
who came and said that they had prayed for us or that they had waited for
this baby with us or that our story had somehow spoken to them.like this
wasn't just about me and Walt and this baby , it was about all these people
that God wanted to touch and encourage and bless through this story.
WALT: He just doesn't leave anything to chance and it's not random. It's
just amazing, it's a miracle.