It was the beginning of a journey so much larger than I could ever have imagined back then! If you would have told me then what the next 11 years would look like, I would have dropped right then of a hart attack! It's why God doesn't let us see the future, I am quite certain!
As I have pondered that beginning over the past months, I realized I have never really told that story in my blog. So here goes!
Around May of 2001, God put adoption on my heart in a way that literally consumed me in a way nothing had before or has since! I literally could not eat or sleep for the need to learn more about adoption. Callie was probably neglected (at least in my terms of the attention a 15-18 month old should receive) for that time. John and I would talk. I would share with him that I was certain God was asking us to do something, but I didn't know what! We had talked about adoption almost from the first date, I think. We both wanted to adopt at some point, but had planned to have our children we wanted biologically first and then adopt, you know, because at the ripe age of 27, I wasn't getting any younger and needed to birth babies while I was still young. Ha! God proved what he thought of that! But John was still trying to adjust to having Callie. He truly didn't know if he ever wanted any more children - adopted or birthed. God proved what he thought of that, too! :)
John would come home from work and I would be sobbing over photos. He would look at me trying to understand, but really just thinking I had lost my mind and wondering if the professionals needed to be called in, I am sure! I remember one conversation when he came home one day for lunch after I had been reading profile after profile of children needing homes. I said something like how can you look at these faces and not know that we need to adopt? I don't remember what he said, but my response was, "you mean everyone who looks at these pictures doesn't feel the way I do?" He assured me that he they did not! I guess that was my first glance into adoption as a calling on my life...I just didn't know it yet!
We would pray about what we should do. And we would decide we would have another baby then adopt after that. Great! That's settled! Then we would go to bed - and I would toss and turn and feel an uneasiness. Let me interject here that at this point in my spiritual journey I was just beginning to understand that Christianity meant more than just accepting Jesus as Lord and knowing you would go to heaven when you died. God was taking me on a journey of learning who He is - a journey into the joy of intimate relationship with Him! A journey I am still taking! But my ability to "hear" God was almost non-existent at the time. It was more peace versus unrest that guided me through this process.
Through all the tossing and turning and hours and hours on the internet, I discovered much about adoption that now amazes people. First of all, the cps system assured me no children under the age of 5 would be available because they hardly ever had cases before they went into school or they were in sibling groups with school aged kids. So that was out since we had a one year old and were not going to disrupt birth order! And once again God would prove what he thought of that too! Also, would this be a good time to mention that in my family planning, I would NEVER have a need of a double stroller because all my children would be at least three years apart. Anything closer would be radically unfair to the children. You can stop laughing now!
Another fact about adoption at the time is that you had to prove infertility with many adoption agencies to even apply for their adoption programs. Yes, that was only 11 years ago! We weren't infertile! At least we didn't think we were....we hadn't tried! We just felt a tug that God had a child we needed to find to bring into our family. Through my calling and researching, God would take me on, in hindsight, an amazing journey of facts and information that perfectly prepared us for Noah! I literally marvel even 11 years later at how he mapped out those events in those three months.
We had finally settled on adopting from Haiti so that we would start the process January 2002 in order to bring home a baby around the first of the year 2003 (yes, Callie would be three in January...remember - no double strollers, children at least three years apart!). I had joined a yahoo group (do those even exist anymore?!) for families adopting from Haiti. I was soaking in all that I could from these families who had walked the journey. I was so excited. Looking back, I don't really remember the struggle to get to where we were ok with adopting a black child. I knew from early on I wanted children from every continent (sorry, I know that is offensive to many adoptive parents...I promise, I mean it with a most sincere heart!), so it really wasn't an issue for me. We did know it would be a stretch for our families as well as for the very small, very West Texas farming community we lived in. John was the principal and we were the volunteer youth leaders for a very traditional southern Baptist church. So I really talked to no one, literally not another human being except John about the whole thing....initially! It was lonely and overwhelming! That is why I have such a passion for walking with people through the adoption process! I have not forgotten those early days of gathering information. I was so tired of people telling me to read their pamphlet or look at their website. I wanted a voice! I wanted another human, flesh and blood being to flesh out what I was thinking and answer the questions that raced through my mind almost faster than I could get them out.
Through the Haitian adoption yahoo group, I met a lady who probably never knew the impact she had on our journey. She sent me an e-mail one day and said she had read a comment I made about how we were not interested in the typical Caucasian baby girl that so many were seeking since we could have biological children. (I don't know if this is still true, but then, typically, baby boys waited longer in orphanages than girls because people requested girls almost 2 to 1 over boys). She asked if we had considered adopting domestically since African American boys in Texas were the hardest to place babies. Well, we hadn't really thought of it for a lot of reason. First, we were scared of the horror stories of biological families coming back and gaining custody of children who had been adopted. Second, we thought international adoptions were safer...go ahead, you say it this time..God proved what He thought of that! But most importantly, we didn't have any money. But her comment intrigued me. I have no idea where she got her information, so don't quote this as gospel, but she told me that at that time, the majority of African American babies in America were being adopted in Canada because white families in America would not adopt them. I was mortified! Not that Canadians are bad, but the fact that Americans would not be willing to adopt these babies when so many people were wanting to adopt simply because of their skin color made me furious. So I started researching domestic agencies. I printed the list of adoption agencies in Texas to begin my phone calls, and I lost count of the pages that printed! I was overwhelmed! But I began a the top and started calling. I quickly found that most agencies had reduced fees for African American or bi-racial children. I can't even begin to tell you how even now that makes me angry. An African American baby's life is just as valuable as any Caucasian! And if you can process an African American adoption for that fee, you can process that Caucasian adoption for the same fee..stepping down off my soap box! But even the reduced fees were more than we could possibly afford. And one other major difference in adoptions then, no one loaned you money or raised money for adoptions! At least not anyone in any of our circles!
In all my calling there was one conversation in particular that was an annoyance at the time, but God would use in a mighty way later! One lady I spoke with at one of the agencies started telling me her personal story. I don't mean to be rude, but it didn't apply to me! She had given me the information I needed about her agency, and I already knew for reasons I can't remember that it was not a good fit for us. I just wanted to get off the phone so I could call the other million agencies on my list to be told to look at the website that I had already looked at and found to be totally useless for the information I was seeking! But she kept talking. She told me about the daughter they had adopted from the foster system who had been drug exposed and had withdraws for the first few weeks. Let me stop here and say, we had our "list"! And her story was totally irrelevant for three reasons on that list! One, we weren't going through the foster system because we had been told you couldn't find babies to just adopt and I could never foster or adopt older children (yes, God would prove what He thought of that also....seeing a pattern here?!). Two, she said drug exposure. We were not doing drug or alcohol exposure. Period. Three, her baby had an unknown father! Nope! Too risky! But she told me her story anyway, and I did have enough tack to not hang up on her, so I heard her out. She made a statement that would later be a game changer. She said, "do not let drugs scare you! If you remove a child from the environment where they were exposed to drugs and intervene, then drug exposure doesn't have to mean life long consequences." Her daughter was two at the time of our phone conversation.
So back and forth we would continue to go with our "planning". Still researching domestic adoption, but really not finding any realistic options with fees still being $20K plus even with it reduced for African American programs and many agencies requiring infertility...yet I didn't really have peace about Haiti either..and John still wasn't sure he wanted another baby period!
At some point in my insanity I did share my struggle with a dear friend, Debbie. She was a widow left to raise 4 children when her husband who had been the pastor of the church there had died of brain cancer. Her oldest daughter had become and to this day still is like a sister I never had! They lived in what was once a Church of Christ church, and we live in the parsonage across the "parking lot"...remember I said a very small farming community! She was the only person I knew at that time that I knew wouldn't think I was certifiably in sane for starting a sentence with, "I think God is telling me...." I'm not saying there were not other people in that community that believed in the power of the Holy Spirit to "speak" into your life, I am just saying I hadn't heard them talk about it! We had already caused some ripples because we played the music with the youth on Wednesday nights really loudly and we played contemporary music...I sure didn't want word to get out that I was hearing voices!
to be continued.......
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