A Day in February

This past February, I walked out of a movie theater after seeing the film “Lion,” and I remember thinking to myself and saying to Fred, “Wow, that’s a whole different ball game, adopting a child who remembers his birth family. That would be hard. I can't imagine.” And I silently felt thankful that our boys did not remember what they lost… that they had all been too young when separated from their birth families to remember that specific trauma of being left, of being abandoned, of losing all they know. One day they were part of a family, the next they weren’t. The movie was extremely well done and even my husband, who NEVER cries while watching movies, had to wipe away some salty tears. The scene where Saroo’s parents met him for the first time at the airport was a memorable one for me. Their joy of finally having their precious son, holding him and touching him, felt very familiar yet I found myself cringing at the irony of it. The twisted fact that in all adoption there is loss. It was heartbreaking and emotionally painful to watch how the boy got to that point in his young life... all the trauma he endured on his own after losing his mother and siblings. And then he was taken from his home country where people looked like him, they spoke a language he could understand, and the food smelled and tasted familiar and comforting. And one day he lost all of that, too. Enter the adoptive parents who have hopes and dreams for him and only want to give him love and a family, which is what every child craves and, not only wants, but needs. That moment of meeting your new child is an awkward, surreal, unbelievably beautiful and possibly gut-wrenching experience.

I remember thinking, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t handle that situation. I would surely mess up in parenting through that kind of trauma and loss in a child’s life. And anyway, we’re done adopting, I thought to myself. We’re still navigating the tricky waters of older child adoption and parenting child who has grown up in an orphanage. Even though we’re floating along fine on most days, there are definitely waves that knock me down and I struggle with how to best respond in those times. All three of our boys from China are truly and deeply part of our family and honestly, we don’t have a lot of questions or talk about their life before us. We are open to those conversations whenever they come up, mostly with Andrew, but it’s few and far between. We see the repercussions of what growing up without a family will do to a child, and we talk about this with him and dig deep, deep down to show as much grace as we can muster during those times. It’s faith-stretching for sure. I’ve said it before, God does not call the equipped, He equips the called.

In February of 2014, exactly three years and a day before Fred and I walked into that movie theater, a young boy was found in a “safe haven” just outside of a very large orphanage in Guangzhou, China. The boy was estimated to be about four years old and was assigned a birthday of four years prior to the day. He was checked out by a doctor and believed to have thalassemia based on the lab work and his appearance. He was taken inside the orphanage where he met many new adults and many new children and he has lived there ever since. I do not know the circumstances in which he lived prior to that day. But I can assume that whomever was caring for him and loving him, could no longer provide the medical treatment he needed to live. So when the government opened up the safe haven buildings in large cities in January of 2014, his parents or grandparents, or other family members, brought him to that safe haven so that he would have a chance. It was not a selfish choice; it was a completely selfless decision. Yet, at the age of four, how would he understand that? How could he know that his family wanted him to live, that they had done their best to get him the blood he needed during his first 3-4 years, but that the burden was too much to bear? How could he know this?  Of course... he couldn’t.

So while our other boys may get to the point one day of realizing why their birth families gave them up (Andrew already gets it as he was told by nurses in China how expensive his medicine is and what a burden it would be to a family), they will never be able to remember the abandonment. Their brains have been effected by trauma and by not having a family unit during the first years of their lives, but they cannot consciously recall the moment it was all lost. 

But it is likely that Luke can. And even though I am aware of the fact that he was abandoned at an older age, I still try to protect my thoughts from wallowing in that sorrow, in that immensely painful experience. Yet I know one day I will need to journey down that path with him, through the shadows of fear and pain and loss. His pain will be my pain. And I pray that God gives me the wisdom and the courage to take it all in and let my son feel comfortable enough with me to share that part of his life so that I can help him care for those scars that may never truly heal. I pray that he knows Jesus. I pray that my son feels the unconditional and never-failing love of God in his heart and that even though he’s experienced more trauma in his young life than most people ever do, I hope he is able to find a way to let God’s love and His grace shine throughout his life. I want him to know his worthy. He is so worthy of love and he doesn’t have to prove anything to us, he’s already got our love. He doesn’t have to worry that we will leave, we will ALWAYS be here. He doesn’t have to be perfect, God has loved him from the beginning. My goodness, what a blessing to be able to teach him that.

There are times I struggle as a mom. Every mom does (and dad for that matter.) There are times when I think, “Wait, we are adopting again? We are going to have 5 BOYS?!? I don’t think I can handle that. What if I’m screwing them up, what if we don’t do this right, what if they actually drive me insane, what if this is more than we can handle?” But I know the feelings of doubt are not truly me but the evil that hates adoption…. that hates when God’s glory and grace is displayed in real life. When the evil in the world wants to drain me, that is when I get real thankful… thankful for the burden God has placed on our hearts to adopt, thankful for the six, soon to be seven, children he has given to us as gifts, thankful for the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and my bubble, and to overcome fear of the unknown and TRUST that God knows what He’s doing. God didn’t say it would all work out perfectly. He didn’t say that we’d do it all right. He didn’t say that it wouldn’t be hard. He knows all that has happened and that will happen, I’m just doing my best to follow and learn to live how Jesus taught. It’s not easy, but it’s simple... it all revolves around trust, not in ourselves and our abilities but in a God that wants us to do hard things... and always have hope. 

From the outside, our family may seem like unicorns and rainbows OR it may seem completely crazy, depends who you ask;)  I can tell you, it’s neither. We are just regular ordinary parents with hopes, dreams and expectations for our own lives as well as the lives of our children. Every single one of us is flawed. Sometimes the flaws of certain family members clash with the flaws of another family member. We struggle, we mess up, we act in ways we shouldn’t. But we forgive and we hold close the truths that God has made clear. I don’t want to live my life within the context of falsehoods and narrow vision. I want to see life through God’s eyes as much as possible.

Two days before we saw the movie “Lion”, on the day of Luke’s birthday (February 17th), I had posted on Facebook about a sweet boy named “Evan” who had thalassemia and was newly listed with an adoption agency. Something about this boy grabbed me, but really there are A LOT of cute kids who are being advocated for. But something about him seemed just slightly familiar, something in the way he looked at the camera, something deep in his eyes caught me off-guard. I figured he would find a family fairly quickly. He seemed smart and cute and had a medical need that more and more people are open to. I told Joshua about him (they are just about exactly a year apart in age) and we prayed that his family would find him and he could get the medicine and blood he needed. Joshua is acutely aware of why he sticks himself with a needle each night to infuse his medicine. He knows how important it is for him since he still has iron overload in his organs from the blood transfusions. We don’t miss a dose (even when we forgot to turn on the pump at night that one time a couple of years ago and he had to wear it to school but he didn’t want to wear it and mommy got maybe a little too emotional when I explained why it was so important to chelate the iron out…. Yeah, let some tears well up, and he knows I’m serious.) So for him to understand that there are children in China with thalassemia and they don’t have medicine and they don't get enough blood, that’s not gonna fly with him. It doesn’t sit well with my sweet boy. It wasn’t long before Joshua told me after prayers one night that he wanted us to “go get that boy in China.” “Ha, ha, ha…. Oh, Joshua…. Yes, well, it’s not that simple...and you know we already have 6 kids in our family... and we just got home from China with Andrew… and, etc...   I’m sure he will get a family soon.” Months went by, some families were interested, many people fell in love with this boy online. I thought at one point he was about to get a family, but it was not to be. More advocating, more praying and the prayers made it around the house. Andrew started praying for him at the dinner table; we had his picture on our refrigerator and every time I walked from the dining room to the kitchen, there was this boy was giving me a shy smile and following me with this eyes! More advocating but yet starting to really think, maybe we are his family?? And in early June when Fred and I both felt God’s call to this boy, we found ourselves having serious conversations about it and everything felt good and right and even though we weren’t SURE how it would all work out, we knew we needed to say ‘Yes’ to this boy. It’s as if God gives us this gift, and it’s not a passive thing that you put on your shelf and admire, it’s like the gift of a journey that turns out to be the adventure of a lifetime... and you are going to work hard for this gift and there will be days it will drain you, but then it will fill up your cup until it’s overflowing. This gift is messy and unpredictable and beautiful and more fulfilling than you could ever imagine.

I don’t want to plan out the rest of my life. I don’t know what is best for me. If I had thought about it 4 years ago, I would DEFINITELY not have planned on having 5 boys. Nope, because I’m just not the best chaos coordinator. Really, it gets to me sometimes. The energy level is high, people… I’m not really a high energy person (maybe I’m low-energy;). I can get easily frustrated and overreact to silly things. Believe me, I wouldn’t have chosen me! But God brought me on this journey and I’ve learned that He wanted me to stretch so that He could shine. He wants me to lean, so that He can hold me up. And He wants me to give the glory to Him, so I will.

And because He is the author of my life, I have these precious children, all of them gifts. All of them with talents and gifts to give to the world. Often I look at my Andrew and the radiant, charismatic person that he is, who loves big and falls hard. And I think, What if he was still in the orphanage? He would be in pain from his hemophilia, he wouldn’t have an education, he would barely leave the building, he would be essentially on his own… He would have never gotten the chance to show the world all he’s going to do and all the people he’s going to touch in his life. What a tragedy that would have been. Our yes to him has rocked our world in many ways. But I’d much rather live in the current of life than be left along the shore. We are to ask God what he asks of us. It might turn our world upside down, but this life is not meant to be our own anyway.

For the past several months I keep having to recount… it seems like someone is missing… yes, six kids is a lot relatively speaking in our society but we don’t feel as big as we look. And not long after we got approval to adopt Luke back in the summer, I started to get the feeling every now and again that someone who was supposed to be here was not here. It’s not a conscious acknowledgement of the fact we are in the adoption process and we are waiting to bring him home, it’s a primal momma-instinct feeling. Like we’re missing a piece. Truth be told, I really have no clue how Luke will fit into our family. Could be fairly easy, could be a real struggle. I expect the unexpected. I cannot imagine or put myself in his shoes. I just can’t. So I will try to stifle any expectations that I may have in my mind about him. We will do our best to meet him wherever he is and simply be there, be present. It will take a long time for him to know, to truly and deeply know, that we are forever. But I pray he can feel that. I pray for patience and guidance and lots of grace on our part.

We are coming soon, buddy. You're about to get some awesome brothers and sisters who are so excited to welcome you into their world. 

There are times it certainly seems surreal that we are actually getting back on a plane to go back to China to bring home another boy for the 4^th time in 4 years. Logic is not steering the boat here, obviously. Thank goodness.