A story of ‘the love of birth parents, the adoptive family and the St. Elizabeth staff’

In this photo displayed during St. Elizabeth Catholic Charities’ annual Giving Hope-Changing Lives gala on April 16, Stefanie Lowery, right, then-adoption director for the New Albany-based agency’s Adoption Bridges of Kentuckiana, poses with Mary Beth and Carl Clark and their two adopted sons—Gabriel held by Mary Beth and Wiatt held by Carl—in the neonatal intensive care unit of Norton’s Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Ky., in 2024. (Photo by Natalie Hoefer)

By Natalie Hoefer

LOUISVILLE, Ky.—The annual Giving Hope-Changing Lives fundraising gala for St. Elizabeth Catholic Charities (SECC) in New Albany usually includes three witness talks, most often delivered in person.

But this year was different.

In his introductory comments at the event, held this year on April 16 at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Ky., agency director Mark Casper thanked SECC’s staff, volunteers and board members past and present.

They “do the thousands of little things that allow

St. Elizabeth to be the place it is,” he said. “It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s heartbreaking. But they do it with passion and incredible dignity for our clients.”

This year’s witness talk about the agency’s Adoption Bridges of Kentuckiana was a powerful example of Casper’s comments. So powerful it needed extra time to share via video the various angles of a particular adoption journey.

“This story needed to be recorded to allow it to be told in a way that it captures the love of the birth parents, the adoptive family and the St. Elizabeth staff,” said Casper.

The story is intricate. It tells of a mother’s dream, the agency staff’s faith-filled commitment, Mary Beth and Carl Clark’s generous love—and the 1-pound, 3-ounce baby boy who united them all.

‘A child and a sacred plan’

In the video, Mary Beth spoke on behalf of the couple. She began by sharing about their first adoption through Adoption Bridges of Kentuckiana.

By 2020, she and Carl had experienced seven years of marriage, infertility and loss. But that year, they “finally had the opportunity to share our love and our lives with a child,” she said, a baby boy they named Wiatt.

The experience did more than fill their hearts. Staying in touch with Wiatt’s biological family through an open adoption, the couple learned that “just because someone cannot parent a child doesn’t mean that they can’t add value to a child’s life,” said Clark.

So positive was their experience, the couple decided to adopt again through the agency.

“Little did we know the journey that was waiting for us,” she said.

A new face appeared on the screen, and Stefanie Lowery, adoption director for Adoption Bridges at the time Gabriel’s story began, took the narrative from there.

On Nov. 2, 2023, she received a call from a mother making the difficult and loving decision to place her unborn child for adoption.

It was a call Lowery would “never forget.”

The mother said she chose the agency “because we are a faith-based organization, because she was Catholic, and because she believed with a mother’s deepest hope that her son would be placed in a home filled with love, faith and unwavering support,” Lowery recalled.

She met with the mother the next day. Despite knowledge of the baby’s fragile health, “joy filled the room,” said Lowery. “For nearly two hours, we sat together, not as strangers, but as women connected by a child and a sacred plan.”

All involved were shocked when God set that sacred plan into action that very evening when the child was delivered by an emergency C-section at Norton’s Children’s Hospital in Louisville, Ky.

Born at 28 weeks and weighing just 1 pound, 3 ounces, her son was placed on life support and immediately taken to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“Stefanie and I rushed to be by his side,” said another player in the story—Erin Goodlet, then-SECC’s director of social services. “At the time, we were all he had.”

The two women took shifts at his incubator “and spent time in prayer,” Goodlet recalled. “I prepared in my mind that him being healed in heaven may be more likely than through the medical interventions. Placing him with a family seemed like a far dream. At this point, we were his family and determined that he would not be alone during the good or the bad.”

Lowery named him Gabriel, which means “God is my strength.”

The tiny, fighting infant proved his name true as he continued to have ups and downs, many procedures, and nights doctors feared he would not survive.

Still, after Christmas, agency staff decided it was time to find a loving family for Gabriel.

“Not knowing the extent of his health needs but knowing he was nowhere near leaving the hospital, …we stood on the ground of hope and full trust in God,” said Goodlet.

Their faith was well-placed, for God was already working on the family piece of his sacred plan.

‘We found a piece of our hearts’

The Clarks were at an Adoption Awareness Month walk in November 2023 when they learned about a baby Adoption Bridges “was expecting to be born at the end of January who may have some medical issues,” Clark shared on the video.

It was a moment she vividly remembers.

“The second I heard about this case, I truly felt God whisper in my ear that this baby was going to be a part of our family in some way,” she said. “We didn’t know it at the time, but our second son was born that same day.”

Gabriel’s critical condition prevented the Clarks from visiting him in the hospital, but Lowery recalled the couple staying in constant contact, asking for updates and “holding him in their hearts long before they could hold him in their arms.”

Finally, on Jan. 29, 2024, Mary Beth and Carl met their second son.

“When we entered his hospital room, the ventilator was humming, alarms were dinging, IV pumps were beeping,” she said as the video continued. “But we found a piece of our hearts that we didn’t know was missing. From that moment on, we wanted to love Gabriel and provide what comfort we could to his life for as long as he had.”

And they did. From that day forward, said Lowery, Mary Beth and/or Carl “were at the hospital every single day, sitting beside him, talking to him, loving him, willing him to keep fighting, already living as his parents in every way that matters.”

They baby, whom the Clarks named Liam Gabriel, was still in the NICU on the day he was legally adopted.

“There were several occasions when his journey appeared to be coming to an end, but our purpose remained the same—to love and comfort Gabriel as a part of our family,” said Clark.

The couple finally took him home on Feb. 4, 2025.

Gabriel’s journey has still “been wrought with health challenges” and returns to the hospital, said Clark, including a 37-minute cardiac arrest in May 2025.

“But he’s lived and gotten to know a home, to know the love of a family, and to know the joys of life outside of the hospital.”

Joys that include laughing with Wiatt, trips to the zoo and state parks, boat rides and even learning to drink from a cup.

“Our little fighter has changed our lives and our hearts forever,” said Clark.

“Adoption has shattered what we knew about life and rebuilt it in a more valuable way, like the Japanese art of kintsugi—mending broken pottery pieces with gold in the cracks, making the rebuilt pottery much more valuable than the original.”

(For more information on Adoption Bridges of Kentuckiana, go to stecharities.org/adoption-bridges.) †

 

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