Everyone has dreams and aspirations for their lives. They have a direction they want their lives to go in. It seems as though everything is planned, from our daily outfits to professions and whom we choose to love.
However, being unable to compromise can spell out trouble. And it did for this man from Arkansas.
When he was younger, he used to walk all over the property his family used to own, thinking of the life he dreamed of.
He kept his head down and worked hard to achieve the life of his dreams. But he had lost sight of something important, forcing him to make a choice he wouldn’t be happy with.
Walt Mantis was an Arkansas man who lived with his parents on their 100-acre property.
It was because of this that he developed a love of the outdoors ever since he was young. He would take the outdoors over TV any day. At the tender age of 12, he already had a plan for his future.
Walt explained that he had in his mind a vision of a child. He saw himself swinging a little girl with dark skin and dark eyes in his arms as they stood on their property.
He somehow knew her name was Chloe and that this beautiful little girl was his daughter. He knew it without a doubt in his mind.
He knew that Chloe could not have come from nowhere and that she had to have had a mother. He had to find her, but that would prove more difficult than he thought.
He knew of a girl named Annie who lived across the road. She had had a crush on Walter for a few years, claiming him to be “amazing.”
Walt believed that his vision had come from God. Years had passed, and he and Annie were older now and ready for college. They had started talking, and she told him she believed she was meant to be a mother one day.
She specified that she was meant to be a mother to a girl and already knew the name.
He was stunned when Annie told him a name he already knew of. She said her daughter would be named Chloe.
Annie, however, didn’t have the same olive skin and brown eyes as the girl in his vision. He committed himself to Annie anyway and the couple got married with the dream of becoming parents to Chloe.
The couple spent years all over the world involved in missionary and humanitarian work. It was a while before they eventually settled down.
Their visions were important to them and they longed for them to be true. But it wasn’t easy. The couple spent four years trying for a baby but the tests kept coming back negative. Walt didn’t handle it well.
Walt recalled how hard he had clung to that promise of a daughter. He had believed with all his might that it had been a vision sent from God.
He felt unsure about when it would happen, but he found himself struggling the longer he had to wait. But it wasn’t just him who was struggling.
Annie admitted to her feelings of struggle and that she questioned God at times because she was hurting. She said it had felt mean when she knew she was supposed to have a daughter, but it just wasn’t happening.
They longed deeply for their futures to align with how they’d always planned. They were both so desperate that they ended up constantly fighting.
Their lack of success sat between them like a barbed-wire fence. There was no way to deal with it without painful feelings.
Things worsened to the point where not only were their marriage and relationship suffering but so too was Walt’s faith. Had it all been a lie?
With each friend or acquaintance that announced a pregnancy, the couple were happy for them but felt slighted due to their own failure.
“We’re just fools,” Walt thought. “We’re just fools who want kids and it’s never going to happen.” The happy couple became truly miserable and despondent.
Despite the pain, troubles, and disappointment, the couple’s desire for a family never waned. In fact, it only grew stronger.
In time, Annie suggested that they could adopt a baby instead. Walt, however, refused and adamantly insisted that they would never adopt. Ever.
“I had this thought,” Walt explained, “I don’t want, I called it a ‘Band-Aide Baby.’ We are struggling. We are hurting. I didn’t want just a fix.
I didn’t want just some kid. I wanted the kid that we were supposed to have.” In time, however, Walt would change his tune.
In time, Walt came to accept the idea and decided that whether or not the child was his biologically, he would have the baby he had always dreamed of.
So the couple set to work and dealt with the mountains of paperwork and red tape. Then, it was time for them to wait, hoping to be chosen.
In order to protect the privacy of those depicted, some names, locations, and identifying characteristics have been changed and are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
