10 years ago....

Ten years ago today, heaven gained a precious angel!  Our Addy went home to be with Jesus.  I remember the phone call like it was yesterday.  We had just gotten home from watching the Watoto Children's Choir perform in Midland.  Callie and Noah were so excited because it was the first time they really had a reference for who their new sisters were going to be! We were full of joy and hope as we talked about their new sisters, our daughters who would be coming home in a few months.

When we got home, there was a message from our adoption agency.  That in and of itself was a red flag.  They rarely returned phone calls or e-mails, so a call out of the clear blue telling us to call her was a sure thing something was wrong.  You know how your mind immediately starts playing through the scenarios of what it could be....she couldn't find our documents we mailed her?...there was a mistake in some of the paperwork?...there were going to be more fees?...I was still very naive about adoption, especially international adoption. I knew by the tone of her voice it was probably more serious than paperwork, but nothing prepared me for the news that was about to be delivered.  John made the phone call.  John always paces when he talks on the phone...but this time I followed him trying to make sense of the one side of the conversation I was hearing.  I wasn't getting much from "aha" and "yes" and "ok".  Then he goes out the backdoor and puts his foot on it so that I couldn't come out.  Then I knew something serious was happening.  I am sure it wasn't more than 5 or maybe 10 minutes...but it seemed like an eternity.  I watched him through the glass door.  Finally he took the phone from his ear and turned toward me.  When our eyes met, I knew whatever it was, it was serious.

He walked in the door and said, "Addy died."  I am not sure how long I stood there.  I heard the words, but I couldn't make sense of them in my mind.  I asked him to say it again.  The details were still sketchy, but from what we could piece together, she had contracted cholera from contaminated drinking water.  She had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  I was numb.  I needed answers.  I went to my computer and looked up Cholera.  The words I read just brought anger! I had no idea what Cholera was...all she needed was an iv and an antibiotic.  That's it.  The lack of availability of those two simple medical provisions that I always took for granite was all that stood between life and death of my little girl.

I know it may seem impossible to be that emotionally invested or tied to a child you have only seen in a picture.  And maybe it should be.  But for anyone who has adopted, you know that the picture comes to life when God says, "She's yours, go get her!"  I have not lost a child to death who has lived in my home, but I can tell you my mamma heart broke that day.  First in grief and then in anger.  I was mad at God.  Why would you introduce us to them only months earlier, call me to be her mamma and then take her from me?  Why are children dying of the denial of things that are common place in my country?  How are children dying from contaminated water in this day and age? My heart broke for Eden who had just lost her twin...her only sibling from a mother who had died (or so we were told)!

It was her death and the sorting through it over the coming weeks that God would use to call John and I to found Addy's Hope Adoption Agency!  We had no idea what we were doing, and truly, that is a huge understatement!  We honestly just said, "Yes!"  God has done the rest.  We are truly an example of God using a "yes" because that was really all we had to offer in this area.  I didn't know the slightest thing about running any business, much less a ministry.  I sure didn't know the legal ins and outs of processing an adoption.  But we said, "Yes!"

We could have never known what that yes would mean, and how God would use the life and death of one precious little girl to impact lives in a ripple that still has not stopped.  There are 39 children, including our own son, who are no longer orphans in Liberian and Guatemala, but are in loving, Christian homes learning about the Savior who offers them eternal life!  There are two children who are no longer orphans in the foster system, and three more about to be placed in their forever home with two other families waiting for the 5 children combined that they hope to adopt...and 5 more families who are in different parts of the training process in order to bring even more of God's children home!

I still feel most days like I am ill equipped and unable to do all that this ministry demands.  And the fact is, outside of the anointing and direction of the Holy Spirit, I am! But today as I reflect on a life that seemed to be snuffed out way to quickly, there are some things that I know.  While the remembrance still brings tears, I have learned that God is faithful even when He seems to be absent.  I have learned that trusting that I hear Him and trusting that He is leading me will take me to places I could have never gone on my own.  I have learned that there are times when following God will bring heart ache beyond what I could ever imagine, but even in the heart ache, He is there.  He is faithful.  He is worthy.

So today as I remember a little girl I never held in my arms, but will forever hold in my heart and who lives on in the lives of every child touched through Addy's Hope Adoption Agency, I choose to not just morn her death, but celebrate her life! Addy Girl, you inspired me to follow God on a journey that has been far beyond all I could have hoped or imagined!  You stand as a reminder that we, the Body of Christ, have an obligation to those who are less fortunate.  You remind me that only by the grace of God was I born in a country where clean drinking water and medical care is available to all.  You remind me that the battle for children is worth it!  Baby girl, I can't wait to hold you in heaven...until then keep dancing with Jesus!

The Call that Changed our lives...one year ago

One year ago John answered a call from his dad that would set in motion a course of events that would forever change our lives.  Rewind to a little less than 48 hours before the call....

We had been walking in relationship with Paizley since a few weeks before DJ was born.  We were trying to preserve relationship.  We still didn't agree with most of what was happening in her life, but we were trying desperately to keep relationship over anything.  We had even welcomed the boyfriend who had snuck our daughter out of her window numerous times to take her from our home, the boyfriend who had been arrested for going at John physically.  We knew he was a lost soul.  We knew he was doing what he had known to do.  We made a decision to embrace them as a family for the sake of being in our daughter and our grandchildren's lives.  After receiving a phone call that had confirmed my worst fears about the actual truth of the life my daughter and thus my grandchildren were living, I had gone to meet with her.  We had come to some agreements.  One of which was that if the man ever laid a hand on her again, she would call me and would make a plan for a life without him in order to protect herself and her children from any further abuse.

It wasn't even 48 hours later, 3:00 am, and my phone rings.  It is the boyfriend.  They are in a fight.  He is telling me to come get her and the children.  She wouldn't leave.  I do my best to insure she and the kids were safe until I could make phone calls in the morning.  If it's one thing I have learned over the past 3 and a half years it's that you can only help those who are willing and ready to help themselves.  After a year of communicating my concerns of the safety of my granddaughter and then my grandson also to CPS, we finally had a meeting with all parties in one room where the lies were revealed.  Truly the events of those few days could never have happened if not orchestrated by God.  We watched as literally the curtain was pulled back and truth was revealed in a way that even CPS could not pretend to ignore it anymore.

It has been our goal since we found out Paizley was pregnant with Peighton to equip and empower her to parent her child.  We firmly believe Peighton was given to Paizley as a gift from God to grow and nurture in His ways.  However, we also knew in order for that to happen there were some decision and sacrifices that had to be made on her part.  There was also much emotional healing that had to occur.  We prayed daily and sometimes hourly for those things to happen.

As we sat in the meeting and CPS told Paizley she could keep her babies or she could keep the man, we knew she had no where to go without the man.  John left the room to make phone calls.  We called two local missions.  One doesn't take teens, but was willing to talk to us because of the relationship we had with the founders and the volunteers.  It was decided by all that really it was not equipped to handle what Paizley needed.  The other mission was well equipped and would be an amazing opportunity for learning how to be a mom, how to earn and keep a job and for healing that would be necessary to be the mom she needed to be.  This is a mission that usually has a waiting list!  But as God would orchestrate, they had a bed open!  However, with the holiday, they would not be able to approve an application for a few days.  Which ended up being a mute point because after the rules became known, she decided that wasn't the place for her. So John's parents graciously agreed to allow Paizley and the two babies to move in with them until we could find a permanent place.  And in all honesty, they were contemplating allowing her to remain there long term if needed.

But then the call came.  Even with everything we had been through in the last two and a half years, I never expected this call.  Still, to this day, I cannot wrap my head around the news we received in the call.  John's dad called to tell us that Paizley had called CPS and told them to get the babies because she was going back.  She was leaving her babies to return to the man who was abusing her. Truly, I couldn't understand.  I cried, I screamed, I shook my fist at God, and I begged Him for wisdom and guidance on what next.  John got on the phone to CPS, had to threaten to go to the media with what we knew of the case before we could talk to the person making the decisions, but when he finally spoke to her, she informed us CPS would be seeking custody of our grandchildren as soon as they and courts opened back up after the holidays because there was no one there to do anything at 4:30 pm on July 3.  She informed us that we, as grandparents, could hire an attorney and petition the court for custody.  We had already been told by the original CPS worker that she would not place the grand babies in our home because we had "too many kids" and instead would place them in the home they had been in for most of the past year where they would be in no less harm than they had been the entire time....with a caretaker whom we had been told couldn't watch Peighton for three hours a day for Paizley to go to school but would now be full time care giver for a not yet 11 month and a 3 week infants.

Rewind to the night before.  It was the first time since the events had happened that John and I had been alone and could really digest what the future might hold.  Neither one of us could really wrap our heads around what life would look like with a 3, 2,1 and newborn along with our other 4 kids.  We talked about how our family had already been hemorrhaging over all the events of the past 2 years, and had just felt like we had just now stopped the bleeding.  This would most likely start the hemorrhaging again.  Surely that can't be what we are to do?!  We couldn't fathom the financial responsibility of two more children along with the legal fees they would bring.  And on the other hand, I couldn't come close to settling in my heart that my grand children would enter the system I knew was so broken and very ill equipped to ensure their care and protection.  I kept going back to the times when Paizley was pregnant, and I stood in her room saying, "This baby will not grow up the way you did.  There are two ways for that to happen.  You raise her in a new life or someone else raises her.  Let's work toward you raising her in a new life!"  I said I would never raise my grand children.  I wasn't ready to be a Mimi, but I didn't want to raise them as mine either.  I wanted my daughter to raise them. I wanted to invite them over for sleep overs so my daughter could have  break.  But that decision was out of my hands.

John hangs up the phone and tells me the news.  What do we want to do?  We agree to call an attorney to find out what we can do.  We find one who will agree to work the 4th to draft papers to petition the court on Friday the 5th for custody.  We agreed this was what God was asking us to do.  We had no answers.  We didn't know how it would all work. We didn't know where the $6,000 we had just been told we would need to get this done would come from.  All we knew was God said, go get your babies.  And we did.

My father-in-law in great wisdom talks to my daughter for the hour drive back to the abusive boyfriend.  He stops before getting to the spot where she wants to be left with him.  He once again asks if this is what she wants even if it means she may lose her babies.  She nods and he starts up again.

An army of people stepped in at this point to provide for two children now abandoned.  My in-laws spent 48 hours charged with the safety and responsibility of these two babies until we could get court papers.  We went and spent the day to help them, another angel friend came over and stayed to help when we weren't there.  Our friends started collecting baby items as we had gotten rid of everything feeling pretty certain we were done with babies.  And on July 5, we were awarded custody by a court due to evidence of abuse and neglect.  We received a very wounded not yet 11 month old and a starving 3 week old.  He ate every three hours around the clock and gained much needed weight to get him back up to and beyond his birth weight.  Peighton had spent her entire life in the arms of her mother.  Now she didn't have her.  She didn't want to be consoled.  She didn't know how to be consoled.  She would sit and rock with her blanket back and forth.  She would scream, but wouldn't let us console.  She would pull away when we tried to pick her up.

I look back on the past year, and truly, I am amazed we survived.  I look back and while I know my other children had to sacrifice, I know they are better people for having walked the path.  I look at them now with Peighton and DJ and see the love and nurture they give them..and are starting to get back in return and I know they understand caring for the hurt and the least of these.  We have a long way to go to healing - for all of us.  There are days I think we will never make it.  But when I look at where we were a year ago, I can't help but be encouraged.  It is in these times I have to not look at where we have yet to go, but look at where we have come from!  And when I see the progress we have made, when I see the God that has carried us, I know by faith that we can make it.

So today I choose to not let it be a day of defeat.  As we come up on one year of caring for 8 children in our home with four being toddlers and under...as I look at my 2 one year olds (you should NEVER be able to day that by the way :)  ), I choose to keep my eyes on Him.  I choose to believe that what the enemy has tried to steal from my family God will redeem!  I know that we are redeeming a generation!  I will not let the enemy steal what God has given to me to restore.

And as we celebrate Independence Day this year with our now 8 children, I will celebrate freedom on many levels!  I thank God that Truth sets us free and when that happens, we are free indeed!