Compassion International in Haiti sparked my love and made me aware of the abandoned and forgotten youth of the world. I was eleven. It would be a couple of years later before my family’s adoption journey would begin, but the seed had been planted.
I have always loved kids, but I just didn’t realize the extreme poverty most of the world lives in, until our trip to Haiti. It just pulled a pretty big heartstring inside me because these kids just had so much joy no matter their circumstances. When I returned home, one of my best friend’s family was adopting their second child. They already had four biological kids, and that got me thinking. My parents told me we helped orphans by supporting them financially, but I wanted to know why we couldn’t take the next step and bring a baby home.
I had two little brothers, and I started asking for a little sister. At first, my motives were more for me. I wanted to bake cookies and have tea parties instead of playing ninjas. So I started writing “baby sister” at the top of my Christmas and birthday lists. My mother said there was no way that our family was adopting. I was obnoxious in my pursuit. I wrote petitions and had my brothers sign them and left them on my parents’ bed. I even wrote them a note that said they were disobeying God by not adopting. I spent my own money one time and bought a book on adoption that I would keep in the car and read to my mother when we were driving. I was making her crazy.
Finally, after more than a year of praying and trying to persuade my parents, I went to visit our pastor. I asked him, since the Bible says that God will give us the desires of our heart if we ask him, why I wasn’t getting a baby sister when I really had been praying and believing. My pastor asked me if I was praying for Emily’s will or if I was praying for God’s will. So I started praying, “Lord, if this is your will, you’re going to have to work a miracle in my mom’s heart.”
Once I left it in God’s hands and stopped bringing it up so much, that’s when things started changing. The Lord did begin to work in my mom’s heart, and in March 2000, we traveled as a family to China to bring home Shaohannah, my little sister. Little did I know that when my mom’s heart was finally filled with a desire to adopt, God would over-fix her! In 2003, we brought home Stevey Joy. Then my dad got over-fixed, and in 2004 we brought home Maria. My family also created Shaohannah’s Hope, an organization to help other families financially so that they can bring their adopted children home.
While my parents do not plan to adopt any more kids, I am the next one in line. I am still in college, so it won’t be for a while, but I definitely plan to adopt someday. It’s funny, because most siblings sit around and talk about how many kids they’ll have one day. My brothers and I sit around and talk about what countries our kids will come from. That’s our adoption miracle.
I was on the Internet late one night in my office when I came across a Web site that had pictures of orphans available for adoption in Haiti. I just saw those faces and felt an instant connection to a five-year-old boy named EJ.
“EJ is a charmer,” the accompanying description said. “He is the first to hug the workers at the orphanage each day and is easily one of the fastest learners in our classroom.”
I asked my husband, Don, if we could adopt this child. He felt the same connection. There was no hesitation. I printed EJ’s picture, and the next morning we asked our kids how they would feel about having a brother from Haiti. They agreed that we should try to bring EJ home. We contacted the workers at his orphanage and began putting our dossier together. While we were accumulating the paperwork, I noticed another face among those pictures— the face of a six-year-old boy named Joshua. I asked Don if we could bring home two boys. He agreed, and the kids did too.
We contacted the orphanage and said we wanted to adopt both boys, but a worker told us that Joshua’s information on the Web site was wrong and that he was a difficult child who would not blend well with the other children in our family. Reluctantly, we put aside the idea of adopting Joshua and decided on a different six-year-old boy named Sean.
Six months later, it was time for me to bring the boys home. I traveled to Haiti to pick up EJ and Sean and bring them home. I went to the orphanage and met EJ and Sean. They did not speak English, and I did not speak Creole; but we smiled at one another, they sat shyly on my lap, and our first meeting was a lot like I had expected it would be. Except for one thing. As I sat there, a little boy walked up,brushed some hair from my forehead, said, “Hello, Mommy” in English, and began singing for me the popular praise chorus, “Lord, I give you my heart. I give you my soul. I live for you alone.”
I asked him his name, and he said, “Joshua.” This was Joshua, the same Joshua that I had been told was too “difficult” to adopt. The worker had given me wrong information, and this was the boy I decided not to adopt and instead had chosen Sean. To make matters worse, Sean, EJ, and Joshua were best buddies. The three of them were inseparable at the orphanage. Now I was here to take Sean and EJ away and leave Joshua behind. I called my husband that night weeping. He said, “Two, three, what’s the difference? Bring him home.”
It was not quite that easy. We did not have paperwork completed for Joshua, so he did remain behind while Sean, EJ, and I returned to the United States. I frantically began the paperwork process again, and six months later, Joshua joined us too.
Today, the boys are young men, soccer stars in our community, and loved by all. It is hard to remember what our family was like without them. Our first days with the boys were such an experience. I’ll never forget how delighted they were the first time they felt running warm water or the way their eyes grew wide the first time they entered a grocery store and saw all the aisles of food. Our boys had lost parents to starvation or illness, and had gone without food for days at a time. They customarily ate something called “dirt cakes,” which looked like cheap pottery made from clay, dirt, and water. Village women mixed this recipe, baked it, and gave it to the children to ease the pain in their empty tummies.
Adopting has made me more compassionate in my writing. That much is evidenced by my mention of adoption topics and the intense emotion in several of my novels, including Even Now and my A Treasury of Adoption Miracles. Another blessing has been realizing the depth of faith these children have. They had nothing in Haiti, not even a chance to live. But they had a deep love for Jesus and prayed and sang throughout the day. Even now, the children love singing for God, and sometimes cry during worship time at church.
“Are you sad, honey?” my husband will sometimes ask.
“No, Daddy. I’m just so happy when I think of everything Jesus has done for me.”
The statistics on homeless children in our world remain daunting, but our family has seen this truth at work: adoption makes a difference.
Just ask our three sons. EJ, Sean, and Joshua.
(Find out more about Karen, her books, and her family at www.karenkingsbury.com.)
Adoption is a family legacy for me. I have a sister and a brother who are adopted. My grandparents adopted children; my aunts and uncles adopted children. It used to be my fantasy when I was a little girl and in trouble that I was adopted and my real parents were going to come rescue me. So when I grew up and married David, we always talked about adopting. We had our daughter Jasmine first; then a year later I had a miscarriage. The doctors told me I would probably have a premature birth if I had another baby, so that’s when we knew we would adopt. We did our home study and applied to a couple of agencies. We met a birthmother who was really young and wanted us to adopt her baby. I was there at the hospital when he was born, and I cut the umbilical cord. He was the first Max, and we had him for three days. In Tennessee at that time, the birthmother had ten days to change her mind; and on day three, she decided she wanted to keep him. I remember the trauma of us crying, and David and I prayed, “Lord, if this is the child for us, soften the biological mom’s heart. But if not, protect this child to be raised to love and serve you and bring us the child you have for us at the right time.”
We knew that God had the right child for us. It hurt, but at the same time, we had a peace. We had confidence that God was in control. We had to find out that every need is not a call. Wisdom is discerning which is and which isn’t. We had other babies offered to us, but when we found out about the baby who is now our Max, I didn’t know if David was going to say yes or no. But we both had peace, and we drove twenty-two hours to bring the right Max home. We have told him this story since he was small, and he loves to hear how he was the right Max for us. We have told him that his sister Jasmine was born out of Mommy’s tummy, but he was born out of Mommy’s heart.
I am definitely an advocate of adoption, and I’d rather have my heart broken a thousand times to have the right child that we have now. Our Max was worth the pain of losing the first Max. I gave birth to my other two children, but Max is the only one who looks just like me. People say, “Oh my goodness, your son looks just like you,” and I just laugh and say, “Yes, labor was so hard.”
I hope that more godly people will stand up and adopt. You won’t love your adopted child “like your own.” Your child will be your own. Some friends at school said to Max, “So, you’re adopted? So that means Miss Nicole is not your real mom?” Max said, “Yes, she is,” and the boy protested, “No, she’s not.” When I heard the story, I said, “Where is that boy, so I can tell him a thing or two?” I asked Max, “Who does your laundry?” He said, “You do.” I said, “Who takes care of you when you are sick?” He said, “You do.” And I assured him that I am his real mom. He is my child. He is the son of my heart. He is wild and crazy and all boy, and I could not have had a more perfect person placed in my family. He is my adoption miracle.
When I was a little boy and my sister and I were thumbing through the pages of our photo albums or baby books, I noticed that my book was different from hers. It had other documents or something, so I called my mom in from the other room and asked her why mine had different documents and such. That was when she explained to me that while they did not have a choice in what they were getting when they had my sister Susan, they got to pick me out special. Basically, they made it seem like they got a raw deal with my sister.
I don’t remember being adopted as traumatic or anything. My mom always made me feel like being adopted was something to be proud of, and I really feel like it was. Especially when I think about the fact that my birthmother could have chosen to abort me or keep me in a situation that was not healthy. I think it made me the kind of person who doesn’t take life for granted. I am grateful for the one I got.
When I think about God’s grace and the way he adopts us in much the same way into his family, it’s pretty cool. I remember when I was a sophomore in high school, I got the opportunity to go to the state basketball tournament. I wasn’t supposed to be one of the ones to go, but one of the players broke his leg or something, so they called me the night before the tournament and asked if I could go. I got to go with the team, and that was huge for me. I’m sure everybody enjoyed it, but not to the extent I did, because I knew I wasn’t good enough to go, had not been chosen to go, but still I was invited—just like God invites us. I am just in awe all the time that I get to be included in his family.
I think being adopted actually helps me live life more freely. I don’t get embarrassed easily; I love to hug people. I’m definitely a hugger. I can’t say that being adopted is something I really focus on a lot. I don’t really even remember that I am adopted unless someone in the room asks how many people are adopted. Then I look around for a minute at the hands before realizing I need to put mine up too.
I have never searched for my birth family, because I really have not felt like anything was missing in my life. If anything, I am just grateful for the choice my birthmother made. She could have said, “Gee, my life would be a whole lot easier if I had an abortion.” The easy way out for a birthmother would be to have an abortion or to selfishly keep the child, knowing she would not be able to give it a good home. The hardest thing to do after nine months of carrying a child inside is to say, “You could give them a better life than I can.”
I really think God matched me with just the right family. I think he knows what he is doing when it comes to adoption. My dad is an athlete and a coach, and I played football, college baseball, and ran track. I have never felt as though I am not complete. The percentages of my even being here at all are smaller than most people’s, and I am grateful for every minute of it.
You can find out more about Mark at www.markschultzmusic.com.
Excerpted from Successful Adoption: A Guide for Christian Families, Copyright © 2006, Integrity Publishers. Used by permission.
