How Daughter’s Adoption Transformed Lauren Akins’ Faith
By Movieguide® Contributor
Lauren Akins, wife of country singer Thomas Rhett, says the couple’s adoption process was “the most pivotal moment” in her faith journey.
“From the day I was born, Jesus was talked about and I was prayed over. And when life did get hard, it was second nature to turn to Jesus,” Akins said of her Christian roots.
She described her life, saying she went to nursing school and married Rhett, her high school sweetheart.
“I thought I was going to be a nurse and that was how our life was going to go, and that’s just not the plan God had,” Akins said, explaining that, as Rhett’s country music career started to take off, the plans she had for her life changed drastically.
Akins continued, “I had a friend of mine who I met in college, and he was like, ‘I feel like the Lord keeps putting on my heart [that] you’ve got to meet my aunt. She’s founded this nonprofit…they’re taking a trip in a couple weeks. It’s a medical mission trip, and they just had a nurse drop out.’”
“With that door that I feel like the Lord had swung open right in front of me, I walked through that door and went on this medical mission trip to Haiti,” she said. “It was like, ‘This is what makes my heart beat. This is all I want to do.’”
Akins began working with the nonprofit. On one trip, her life changed forever.
“We went to Uganda for the first time, and that’s where I met Willa Gray,” she said. “I met her when she was five months old. She was a true orphan, and I was FaceTiming my husband later that night and I said, ‘I feel called to help her find her forever home, wherever that looks like’…he looked at me and he was like, ‘We’ll do it…I believe she’s ours.’”
The couple struggled with the adoption process, facing many roadblocks that Akins struggled with.
“It was like, ‘Lord, I believe you, but how are you going to move this? I believe you, but this feels like we’re never getting out of here,’” she said. However, things soon started to change for the couple, and the adoption went through.
“It was probably the most pivotal moment in my faith journey, as well as my husband’s,” Akins said. “We just watched, time and time again, how the Lord just intervened in such divine ways.”
She continued, “There are moments on the top of the mountain, but lots of moments in the valley, too. [God] isn’t going to bring you anywhere just to leave you. And whatever it is He has started in your life, He will see it through and He will bring it to fruition.”
Rhett has also spoken about what it was like to adopt Willa Gray, saying, “My wife was just talking to me, like ‘We have to find a home for this child.’ And I’ll never forget it. Dude, it was 2 o’clock in the morning where I was, half asleep, and it just kind of blurted out of my mouth. ‘We’re going to bring her home.’”
He continued, “I don’t even know if I was ready to have kids yet. I was really loving the road thing, my career was just starting to take off, I was like, ‘Man if we have kids right now, what is that gonna do?’ And I’ll never forget those words coming out of my mouth.”
The couple often talk about the joy they find in parenting their daughters, Willa Gray, 8, Ada James, 6, Lennon Love, 4, and Lillie Carolina, 2.
“These are the good ole days,” Rhett captioned a video of clips from the family’s recent trip to Disney World. “Sometimes it’s easy to wish they were a little bit older so they would feel a little bit easier but I don’t wanna do that anymore. These are the moments we will remember for a lifetime. In the words of @laur_akins ‘these are the magic moments’ so here’s to embracing the tired, the crying, the arguing, the taking 60 pictures just to make sure everyone is smiling in at least one, the caffeine, the Epcot beer, the laughter, the smiles, the joy, the magic. Here’s to parenthood.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
Country singer Thomas Rhett loves being a dad “so much.”
“Came home to this!!” he captioned a recent photo of himself and his daughters celebrating Father’s Day. “I love being a dad so much. Happy Father’s Day to all the amazing dads getting it done out there.”
Rhett and his wife Lauren share four daughters — Willa Gray, 8, Ada James, 6, Lennon Love, 4, and Lillie Carolina, 2.
While appearing on THE ELLEN DEGENERES SHOW, the singer called his girls “the light of my world,” adding, “I’m taking a camera everywhere I go — a big camera — trying to just capture all these moments and really just embracing the dad life.”