For more than four years, Annie and Walt Manis tried unsuccessfully to have a baby. But when they opened to the idea of adoption, a miraculous story 20 years in the making started to unfold.
When Walt was 10 or 12 years old, he says God gave him a vivid picture of a little girl—olive skin and dark eyes—laughing like crazy as he swung her around in his parent’s front yard.
He sensed God saying to him, “This is going to be your daughter, and her name is going to be Chloe.”
Watch the full video here:
Fast-forward a few years to a conversation Walt and Annie were having about their dreams for the future. Annie mentioned that she wanted more than anything to be a mother—and she actually had a name picked out for her future daughter: Chloe.
Over the years, the couple had decided it was just a fluke that they’d both separately been given this name—Chloe—and they took it off the table. Until the day they took a trip to meet with their birth mother and she told them, “Ever since I got pregnant, even before I knew it was a girl, I’ve been calling this baby Chloe.”
They both broke down crying as they realized that God had been writing this story of theirs for years—even in the midst of doubts and frustrations—and it’s a story that has touched many. As Annie says in the video:
“This wasn’t just about me and Walt and this baby and our birth mother, it was about all these people that God wanted to touch and encourage and bless through this story.”