Alissa Holcomb sat in church on Mother’s Day in 2011, when Pastor James Dodzweit asked for all the mothers in attendance to stand and be acknowledged.
That morning, Alissa had suffered her third miscarriage.
She stayed in her seat.
Her story, and journey, started right there.
That summer, Alissa and her husband John had all but given up on having children. Married in 2004, they started trying to make a family in 2006. Alissa had already been through two miscarriages, but the third one, on that Mother’s Day in 2011, was the cruelest of them all.
“Lord, what do you have in store?,’’ she prayed.
They agreed to stop trying for a baby. The pressure, and heartbreaking failures, had become too much.
So, they turned to adoption, which Alissa says they had always planned to do, in addition to having their own babies anyway. Alissa had her heart set on adopting a baby, but twice, when they thought they were close, a pair of matches fell through.
They came to a halting revelation: “Maybe we’re not going to be parents,” she recalls.
But, Alissa continued to attend adoption classes. She learned that older sets of biological siblings were the hardest kids to find homes for, and also the most plentiful in the adoption system. So, while she desired a baby, she came home one night from class and told John she might be open to adopting somewhat older siblings.
She didn’t share this with anyone. And yet, strangely, the adoption agency, which knew she was only looking for a baby, called soon after her conversation with John to ask if she would be interested in a five-year-old African-American boy and his four-year-old sister.
In October 2011, she met Isaac and Aliah, and on Dec. 3, the children moved into their home. She had her kids. She was a mother.
A week later, Alissa found out she was pregnant.
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With a Dollar Store pregnancy test in the bathroom of a Cracker Barrel, Alissa confirmed the suspicion she had an hour earlier by the sickness she says she felt after catching a whiff of a soiled diaper.
Her previous pregnancy tests had taken longer to reveal a thin double line. This one was instant and “darker than dark.”
She was dumbfounded. She went to the doctor for a quick blood test to confirm, and then met her husband at Walmart, where he was shopping. She surprised him with a baby Christmas stocking.
When he looked inside, he saw the pregnancy test.
“It was crazy, just crazy,’’ she said. “I mean, that’s not a plan. That’s not how this is supposed to happen. But, because of our faith, we felt this was totally God, they way he had orchestrated the whole thing.”
On March 7, 2012, the Holcombs’ adoption of Isaac and Aliah was made official. She spent her first-ever Mother’s Day pregnant with Jacob, eating breakfast in bed, compliments of Isaac and Aliah.
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Alissa works as the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel area director for Young Life, a national, non-denominational Christian ministry dedicated to introducing teenagers to Jesus and helping them grow in their faith.
She doesn’t share the same birthing story most moms do. There are no straight lines from moment to moment, just roadblocks and obstacles and twisting paths headed seemingly nowhere, until they all headed somewhere.
“The moment I laid eyes on Isaac and Aliah, and other adoptive parents can speak to this too, it was like a unique birthing experience,’’ Alissa says. “We were overcome by emotion. We knew. These are our kids.”
Jacob, who was born in July of 2012, made Alissa a mom again. And, after giving up on having a fourth child, the Holcombs found out — surprise — in 2015 that she was pregnant with Annlee, who is now 9 months old.
“It’s been a crazy journey,’’ Alissa said, “and I’m really grateful. As hard as it’s been, I’m really grateful for the (now four) children I have.”
Alissa works hard at making her family work. Despite her biological attachments to two of her children, she has worked hard at ensuring that she has that same feeling of attachment with Isaac and Aliah. They come from hard places. They have questions. The Holcombs attend family counseling to help seek those answers out.
“Being parents is the hardest thing we’ve ever done,’’ Alissa says. “But, we are committed to the overall health of the family. It’s a work in progress.”
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For Alissa, Mother’s Day brings on a wave of emotions. It it is a reminder of pain and suffering, but mostly of hope and salvation. She thinks there were reasons for everything, from the miscarriages to failed adoptions to her change of heart that brought Isaac and Ali
ah into her heart, to her first and second successful pregnancies.
Since that lowest point in 2011 when Mother’s Day was only a reminder of failure, it now brings her joy.
Just a year after that, when Pastor James asked all the mothers to stand, she jumped to her feet, smiling, with one thought:
“Oh my gosh,’’ she thought, “I’m here, and I’m a mom.”
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