- [Female Narrator] Angela Braniff

is the creator of thepopular YouTube channel,

This Gathered Nest,

a podcast host,

and a staunch adoption advocate.

Angela says she came to be the mother

of eight kids through six adoptions,

three pregnancies,

and one beautifully messy life.

♪ Birthday to you ♪

- [Female Narrator] In her newbook, "Love Without Borders,"

Angela shares how God can help us all

to embrace the unexpected.

- Angela, welcome to the show today.

- Hi, thank you so much for having me.

- Leading up to your story,

you always felt like you had to kind of,

I guess we all do this,

check the boxes off of whatwas going to make us happy

and whether we were on the road to that

whatever we've dreamed,

what were those boxes for you?

- Yeah, you know, I think Igrew up like a lot of girls,

young girls believingthat the boxes looked

like getting married,having two kids, a home

and sort of the white picket fence

American dream kind of life.

- So what made you throwaway that checklist?

- Honestly, it was the Lord.

It was this, this feelingthat I had growing up

that perhaps my life wasn't gonna

look like everybody else's,

but I didn't really knowwhy I couldn't settle in

to this dream that everyone else

seemed to want to achieve,

but God had just really put it on my heart

that he had something different for me.

And it would take some time,

but he finally would reveal to me

that my life probably just wasn't

gonna look like the standard typical path.

- In your book, you use the phrase

called mama DACA.

What does that mean,

and why is that important?

- Yeah, you know, that phrase is,

comes from the Bible,

and it's the story about Elijah,

but it's really to me a story

about how we hear God.

And God doesn't come to Elijahin this great fire or wind,

but he comes to him in this small silence,

in this just quiet.

And so for me, that's sort of a lesson

on how I've learned to lean in

and listen to God and what hehas to say to me in the quiet,

and sort of shutting outthe noise of the world.

- You and your husband hadtwo beautiful daughters,

and a lot of people would have said

well here we are, thefour of us, this is it.

And then God began to speakto your heart about adoption.

Your first experience adopting Noah,

what was that like?

- Yeah, it was a lifechanging experience for me.

Once God kind of opened my eyes

and sort of really burdenedmy heart for children,

and going to Africa and adopting my son,

and it just completely changed my life.

I talk about it in my book,

but my life is very much split

into these two halves,

before my time in Africa and after,

because God really used that time

to speak to me, to open my eyes

to things I had never known about before,

and to really changewho I was as a person.

- You have a,

you had difficult pregnancies

because you have a fairly rare condition.

Your first two daughters,

difficult pregnancies,

and then you evenstruggled within fertility.

What was that all like?

And what did God do inyou through the process?

- Oh, that was a,

those journeys are truly some

of the most refining times of my life,

where I felt like it was a lot

of faith challenging moments,

where I felt like I wasreally having to sort of

almost butt heads with God,

and say "I don't understandwhy you're not doing this.

"And you say that children are a blessing,

"am I a bad mom?"

You know, when I was strugglingwith secondary infertility

I would question if I was a bad mom

and that's why he wasn'tgiving me any more children.

There were so manyfaith stretching moments

for me in those journeys,

but really it helped me to see

that God uses all of these things,

these highs and the lows,

to write these stories for us

that are so unique and beautiful.

And I have so muchappreciation for my children

and what it took to get them into my home

because of those hard times.

- You have an incrediblestory about how God

really was faithfulwith all your children,

but especially Rosie, share that.

- Yeah, her story is one I love so much

because God had just putit on my heart years before

that I had a daughter, another daughter.

And he was very clear withme that her name was Rose.

And so when we went through two adoptions,

for our son Noah and Jonah,

obviously I started to think okay,

maybe I misunderstood God,

maybe I was hearing him incorrectly.

And then, years later,

he brings this little girl into our life,

and her name was Rose.

And she shared a birthday with me.

There were so many little signs

that all came together toconverge on this moment

that was so clear that he wassaying here's your daughter.

This is who I have for you.

- God's timing is sodifferent than our own

most of the time.

- Absolutely.

- But you have a mantra in your house.

Will you tell us what it is

and why it's so important to your story?

- Yeah, we years ago justkind of started saying

hard isn't always bad.

I think that sometimes in our minds

those two words are synonymous,

when really they're very, very different.

Something can be hard, butso beautiful and so good.

And I think that that's what

I always want to convey to people is that

of course I have eight children

and I homeschool and I work,

and life has never, it's not easy.

There's a lot of really hard things,

but there's so muchbeauty on the other side

of those hard things,

and they're worth it.

- It's usually where we grow,

and where God gets to dosomething special in us.

- Absolutely.

- Want to say the book is wonderful.

Angela's book is called"Love Without Borders."

It's available wherever books are sold.

It's full of inspiration.

Inspiration for you as a mom, a dad,

but also inspiration inyour walk with the Lord.

Angela, thank you somuch for being with us.

Your family's wonderful.

- Thank you.