By Paige Lambert

It was Emily’s second birthday. Lisa Herman raced home, eager to spend the day with her adopted daughter. 

The family she had waited 20 years for was finally hers, and Herman never thought her first child would come from an adoption so close to home.

While the rate of adoptions in the U.S. has gained momentum since the Care of Dependent Children Act back in 1909, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt, the types of adoptions have ebbed and flowed over time.

According to a 2013 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey, 38 percent of adoptions are independent or privately conducted. 

International adoptions have been more popular, however, the DHHS study showed that only 25 percent of adoptions are international.

The Hermans began their adoption process in search of a child from China. They filed the paperwork in 2008, going through an adoption agency. After six months of paperwork, the Hermans were told they should expect a two-year wait. Six years later, they were still waiting. 

Charlie Camprise, the Hermans’ social worker in San Marcos, said countries have recently extended waiting periods. China changed it to at least five years and requires social workers to have certain certifications.

“This has been provoked by the fact that there have been some adoptions that went array,” Camprise said.

Herman’s husband, Dick, said the wait has been the most frustrating part of the process. As the potential parents’ ages increase, their phase of life begins to reflect retirement instead of mid-parenthood.

“With a two-year-old, I’ll be 68 and drawing social security when she graduates college,” he said. 

While Dick Herman said the couple wanted to only focus on their international adoption, the desire to adopt stateside developed. A few years after they married in 1993, the Hermans began work at Boys Town-San Antonio. There they looked after at-risk adolescents who were involved in anything from drugs to gangs.

Two years passed. The Hermans took care of six boys. As the boys’ lives improved and their environments weren’t as volatile, the couple decided to start a family.

Then they made a startling discovery. Lisa Herman was diagnosed with endometriosis, which causes scar tissue to build up and cover a woman’s reproductive organs, causing pain and sometimes infertility.

Lisa and Dick wanted a child of their own, but some of the six boys in their care were crawling into their hearts.

“I would cry and say God, you say the word, and I’ll adopt them,” Lisa Herman said. “They weren’t babies. They came to us as stinky teenage boys. But we did do life with them and we really became a family.”

She said living with the boys increased her and her husband’s desire to adopt.

“We had already experienced the natural ability to love a child that didn’t start with you,” she said.

Around 2000, the Hermans wanted to get into full-time ministry with college students. They spent a year in Missouri training to become Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship campus directors. 

“Our plan was that once we got settled, we would keep praying about it and explore our hearts and see where we had peace, what should be our next step,” she said.

The couple moved to San Marcos, Texas, to start a Chi Alpha group at Texas State University. Lisa Herman was hired as the dean of Fine Arts and Communication office, and began growing the group.

“So we get our first home, and the desire to become parents is stronger than ever,” she said. “Then we started realizing there is probably more to this (conceiving) since it hasn’t happened on its own.”

After months of unsuccessful fertility treatments, the Hermans pursued adoption. They found a community of people who had also adopted, including Dick Herman’s brother who adopted a child from China. The leader of Campus Crusade at Texas State University also shared adopting advice.

Unfortunately, the continuous help and advice wouldn’t speed up the China adoption.

“We saw that the China adoption was going at a snail’s pace, so we were even then thinking, ‘should we search another means of adoption?’” Dick Herman said.

In 2011, Lisa Herman began thinking of talking with family and friends to search for adoption needs. She wondered how to ask such a personal question.

“I just started praying,” she said. “I just said God, you’re big and I’m going to let you get our name out there.”

During the Herman’s emotional struggle, an 18-year-old in Oklahoma was pregnant. She soon told her family she wanted to put the child up for adoption. Michele McLain, the woman’s aunt from Round Rock, Texas, immediately thought of a couple she had met back in Texas.

“The first time I met her was at our church, and I had asked her if she had any children. When she said ‘no, not yet,’ I could just see the tears in her eyes,” McLain said. “From that moment on I started praying for Lisa and Dick to have a baby.”

Months later, the Hermans were driving back from Houston when they received a call from the McLains. In a very cautious tone, they told the Hermans about Michele’s niece.

She was due in a month.

The Hermans replied that they would pray about it overnight, but neither one of them could sleep.

“We were laying there looking at the ceiling and Dick said, “I feel like you’ve just taken a pregnancy test and you’re due in a week,” Lisa Herman said. “It was like, ‘my oh gosh, are we actually going to be parents?’”

The next morning they called the McLains and said yes. Because they had recently updated their paperwork for the China adoption, they were paper ready. 

The next Thursday, the young woman in Oklahoma went into labor. McLain drove to Tulsa to be with her niece and to bring the baby, named Emily, to Texas. All the while, Lisa was gripping her phone, waiting for that text message. Waiting for a picture of her future daughter.

“She was confident and positive that this was the way God had planned for them – confirmation from the lord that they were doing the right thing,” Kindra Colgin, Lisa’s friend, said.

The Hermans went to the McLain house the next day, planning to see Emily and await the call saying the baby’s mother had relinquished her maternal rights.

“I tried to be faithful but I was scared that it would all fall apart,” Lisa Herman said. “I had already fallen in love with Emily and wanted her, but I didn’t get the final say in that.”

The call didn’t come as expected. 

Delays with the judge, attorneys and more paperwork kept the Hermans from taking Emily home. They stayed with the McLains for three weeks, waiting to gain full custody and using the time to learn how to be parents.

“She had in-house, hands-on teaching and coaching from a mom she was under the same roof with,” Colgin said.

The weeks went by and the Hermans were finally able to bring Emily home to San Marcos. Lisa Herman said from the first night she changed Emily’s diaper she knew the newborn was hers.

“Just to have the three of us is the most special thing in the world,” Lisa said.