For those who were not happy about my "to be continued" to In the Beginning, I am sorry! I didn't intend to make you wait this long, but time just isn't my friend in this season, so this morning was my first time to really have time to sit down and finish the story! And what a perfect day to finish it as it happened 11 years ago today!
Eleven years ago today I would hear words that would change my life forever! It is one of the few snap shot memories I have in my life, but I can picture the room and see everything in it like it was yesterday. We had just finished leading the youth and had our car loaded up ready to head back home to Odessa to spend the week with my parents before we jumped on a plane for a week long vacation on the beach between Galveston and Houston. This was a vacation we had planned back in November. This is a crucial detail of God's timing and sovereignty that even 11 years later makes me smile! Debbie, my friend I described in part 1, always kept Callie while we did youth events. It was her service to us. It was a huge blessing and became a huge lesson in my life of how to allow others to serve you as you serve in your role or capacity. I had protested at first when she offered because it was too big of an inconvenience. She finally sat me down one day and explained that I was keeping her from a blessing by not allowing her to do what God asked of her to help us in our ministry. She didn't say it, but God did...pride was keeping me from accepting her help. That lesson has been invaluable to me in the years since. Especially now when life is so chaotic that at times I would not make it without the assistance of my amazing friends who step in to watch a child while I go to a meeting or while John and I escape for a weekend! Back to the story.....
We were done with youth and were picking up Callie from Debbie's in order to jump in the car and leave for our three week vacation. When I walked in, Debbie was sitting in her rocking chair rocking Callie. She smiled at me and asked, "how is the adoption going?" My response was less than energetic! I explained my frustration with such a strong feeling that we needed to do something but at the same time having no direction. She smiled and spoke words that would change my life forever! She said, "I know of a little black boy who is due July 21 and needs a family!" I just laughed. It was the only response I had. Then John walked into the room. I asked Debbie to tell John what she just told me to which she declined! Debbie was a teacher, and John was her principal. Debbie knew John wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of adopting right now. She wasn't going to be the one to deliver the news! It still makes me laugh thinking about her response! But we did fill John in on the secret and he just kind of shook his head.
We got in the car and headed out for the little over two hour drive to my parents. On the way there, we talked about the possibility. We really didn't have much information. We decided we wanted to find out more and agreed that it would be good to talk to Debbie's sister who was the person who told Debbie about the baby. Debbie's sister worked at a mission. Noah's mom was going to the mission for services. When we look back over the story, we both marvel at the fact that calling Debbie's sister is the only conscious decision we made. Everything else just "happened" as we walked in obedience taking one step after another until we were walking out of a hospital with a beautiful baby boy!
We discovered from Debbie's sister that the baby had been exposed to drugs throughout the entire pregnancy. She also shared that the birth father was unknown for sure. There were several possibilities, but the mother was pretty sure the father was African American. However as we learned more about the story, we knew there as no way she knew who the father was. That was even more evident when Noah was born! We also learned that the birth mother was bi-racial. Her mother was Caucasian and her father was African American. If the father was also African American, we knew we would be introducing our families to their first member with dark skin! We didn't figure they would be thrilled about this idea.
I don't remember having lots of doubts. We prayed about every step! We didn't tell my parents because I knew it would be a battle with lots of questions and frustrations on both sides. I wanted to avoid that if it turned out the situation didn't work out. We were told there was possibly one other family considering adopting the baby. It was not a for sure thing.....as we all know no adoption is, but this was our first experience and we were very naive about a lot of it! We would find an excuse to leave the house and make phone calls to the mission director to gain a little more information. During these conversations we learned that she was hesitant let a white family adopt her baby. Her mother had raised her, but according to what we had been told, she didn't feel like her mother had accepted her African American side. She was afraid a white family would do the same for her baby. I have to say that made me really angry. Here was a woman who was doing drugs while she was pregnant, and she didn't know if I was good enough to be a mother to her baby because I was white?! Don't worry, before this story ends, God would get a hold of me for my arrogance! We spent that week trying to discover what we needed to do in order to pursue the adoption of this baby. We talked to an attorney who explained the process of a private adoption to us.
As God would have it, we were set to fly into an airport that following Friday that was only an hours drive from the birth mother's town. The mission director agreed to drive her to us, and we made arrangements to meet for dinner. With what we had heard throughout the week, I was very nervous to meet her. In fact, I told John, "I am not going to say much or we will never adopt this baby!" I was really angry about some of the things I had heard. I didn't want that anger at the birth mom to come across as we talked. We walked into Olive Garden. We found the mission director who said the birth mom was in the bathroom. When she walked out, my heart sank. She was beautiful, but the effects of her difficult life were all over her face. She was a small woman with a precious baby belly! A belly carrying what was possibly my son. But when I introduced myself to her and shook her hand, it was shaking. This young woman was scared to death. Immediately all my judgement of her washed away! Before me stood a woman who was in a place in life I could not even imagine standing. Yes, some of it was because of her own choices, but those choices were made primarily because of the life she had lived as the child of a drug addict living on the streets. God would speak to me then and many more times throughout the evening about my view of this situation. He kept reminding me that I looked at all this very differently through my middle class raised, educated eyes. If I had lived her life, I would see things in a much different way....they way she was seeing them. And then the lesson that has repeated itself through all my ministry, but by the grace of God would it be me in her shoes too! I did nothing to deserve being born into a middle class, Christian family who loved me and provided me with all the opportunities I could possibly want! We all sat down and began with awkward small talk. But over the course of the next two hours, we would learn much about her life. This was her 6th pregnancy and she was only 26. She had placed two others for adoption, but the other babies were not so lucky. She had 3 abortions. We would later learn that she had planned to abort this baby as well, but her mother had just accepted Christ and talked her out of it. My gratitude for that can't be put into words! After a couple of hours, John just came out and said, "We would really like to adopt your baby if you are ok with that." She agreed that after meeting us, she felt we were the right family for her baby boy. She also shared that she had dropped and was beginning to have contractions. This put us in a pretty weird place! If she delivered the baby that week, we would get off the plane when my parents picked me up with one more child than we had left with! And they knew nothing about any of this at this point.
I made a decision to call them and let them know all that was happening......
More to come! I promise before long!
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