“If you say, “Step out on the water”, and they say it can’t
be done, we will fix our eyes on You and we will come”.
When I first went to Mexico at 13 years of age my life was
changed. The poor and needy babies grasping for love and affection from me, a
stranger, planted something in my heart that has never died. I didn’t want to
leave. I didn’t want to leave them there. I went back for the next 7 years. In
the middle of that was the trip to Uganda that made me, again, see with new
eyes. The hundreds upon hundred of orphans made me weep and I vowed that I
would one day do something about it. I figured I would live in a tent in Africa
and have 29,042 children. My dream come true.
Then, after our engagement but before the wedding, I
remember the night that Nick told me, “I am not going to move to Africa. Ever.
I am staying in America.”, and we almost ended our relationship then and there.
I think back on the drive from California to Texas after our
honeymoon. Calling and calling and calling the woman I’d been hired
by….wondering what day she wanted me to start my nanny job, and wondering why
she wasn’t calling me back. We thought this nanny job was perfect. High paying.
Starting right after the wedding and honeymoon. We were set. Our first test as
a married couple was opening up the wedding card she’d sent us and finding a
check with the note that read, “we wanted someone sooner and hired another
nanny…..congratulations on the wedding!!!”.
Stunned. Rent to pay. New bills. No jobs. No money.
After a month of miraculous provision I was hired at Bair to
do a variety of jobs in the foster care and adoption world. The job, looking
back, made no sense. I was 21. Fresh out of college with no knowledge of the
system and absolutely no experience. The other employee who had my job was 45
with 10 years of previous experience when she got the job. There was a steep learning curve and it was a miserable
year. However, after the move to Arlington and the interview at Covenant Kids that I
landed just because of my experience at Bair, I understood why I had to live
through it. I did learn a lot, that’s for sure.
We’d been praying for a full 2 years about what to do about
kids. Have our own? Foster? Adopt? All of the above? Which one first? We talked
and talked and wrestled and made pros and cons lists and prayed and never felt
direction. We both really, really wanted a baby. But the gnawing tug on our
hearts would not subside, and I couldn’t help but look at all of the kids from
work and start to think, “The orphans aren’t just in Africa….”.
When I say, “On our hearts”, I really mean on mine. Nick
wanted to have a baby of our own. However, he has always said that working with
these kids is a gift of mine and, as my husband, he believes it is his job to
make ways for me to use my gifts. He wasn’t, however, open to taking in someone
else’s children and calling them our own. He didn’t think he could love them
like he would a child that came from us. I knew I couldn’t push him, because he
would have to be on board as much as, or more than, me, if we were going to
take in a traumatized baby from a hard place.
In October of 2012 we decided to do respite. Thought it
would be a good way to get our feet wet with caring for kids from hard places
without the wild commitment of being their parents. We got A for two weeks
in November and we were undone. I really couldn’t tell you who wept harder or
for longer when we had to give her back, but I will never, ever forget lying in
the dark in the middle of the living room floor crying, and praying when we
could, and then crying more, and then asking God why she had to go back to a
hard place and why she wasn’t ours and what in the world were we supposed to do
now.
Nick changed after A. In so many ways.
At our State of the Family talk on January 1, 2013, Nick
said he wanted to foster. With one condition: We could do respite one more time
to convince him that it was “these kids” in general whom he loved, not just A.
A week later one of my foster parents called me and asked for respite for 5
days for 3 kids in 1 week. I knew I’d never find them another place to stay, so
Nick and I took Friday and Monday off and we took them. I whispered to Paige the
night before they came, “Don’t tell Nick, but these girls need an adoptive
home. Maybe he’ll fall in love”.
The week was a little up and a little down. It was eye
opening. It was a whole lot. Through it all we kept looking at these girls
thinking, “It is so wrong that they don’t have a mommy and a daddy. This is
just not right.”
I cried alone when they left. I knew it was different for
Nick. He didn’t cry this time. But, an hour after we said goodbye, Nick turned
to me and said, “ I think I miss them”.
We prayed. We talked and talked and talked and….
I always pictured adopting a little one. Maybe a year old or
maybe two. When I really stretched, I thought maybe we’d adopt two, one baby
and a 2 or 3 year old sibling. In my non-reality state I wanted to take every
single child in Texas who needed a home and live on a farm somewhere. But who
can really do that? People do things a certain way. Start with a baby, maybe
two if they’re really crazy.
As we prayed, a love for these girls grew in our hearts in a
way that only God could have designed. We felt quite peaceful, which made
absolutely no sense. We, for the first time, really didn’t feel all that crazy
thinking of adopting them. It kind of made sense. We wanted kids. They needed a
family. We had a house. Why not? The simplicity of it still frightens me a
little. When we had the talk, the big yes or no talk, we realized we weren’t
ready for it. We weren’t ready for three. We weren’t ready for older kids. We
weren’t ready to give up our lives in an instant. Then we pictured our time
here on earth and how very brief it is and how, when we really consider all
things, there isn’t much more we’d rather do than this. Than give three
precious babies who the world has said are unworthy the identity that God has
chosen for them each that says they. Are. Worth it.
This would turn into a novel if I documented all of the
steps along the way that God worked out. Every prayer answered. Every detail
that I feared taken care of in an instant. Peace the whole way. The day I found
out that CPS and the attorney had already filed their recommendations to the
court that the girls would stay in foster care forever, never to have a family,
to age out of the system in 10 years completely alone, because they were
unadoptable and unwanted, is burned into my mind. That is so the world. That is
so what Satan wants for us all. God looks at us and says I want them. I claim
them. They are worth it to me and I will give whatever I have to. Thank you
Jesus.
This is the beginning of our adoption story. I can't help but look back at our lives and see the joys, the sorrows, the confusing times, and realize it all led to us meeting our children. God's plans are so great and He has good things for us. We pray with all hope
that one day each of these girls will be able to share their story of how God
made beauty from ashes in their own lives. We would love for you to join us in
praying for the healing and restoration of their hearts.
