Minds Opened, Hearts Expanded

You grow during the journey. You must.

In his first Letter to the Corinthians Paul says, “Brothers, I could not talk to you as spiritual people, but as fleshly people, as infants in Christ. I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to take it. Indeed, you are still not able, even now, for you are still of the flesh (1 Cor 3:1-3).”

As we moved positively toward our child we were, ironically, but children ourselves. In many respects we were and remain unaware. Okay, Rose has just a few things she needs to brush up on, and I am, to use the Great Apostle’s term, fleshy, maybe even a little doughboy-ish. Adoption presents so much: to consider, to learn, to reflect deeply upon, to prepare for, to experience, and…to accept on faith alone. God causes the needed growth, and He has his co-workers (1 Cor 3:5) to help in the process.

Did you pick up on the contents of the “Adoptive Child Desired” from a bit back? It included: Infant, under 18 months; and undecided on the handicaps. That is where we started out. We both wanted a baby. Rose was definitely open to a Special Needs child, and I definitely was not; hence, the undecided.

The age was important from two aspects. With a five, three, and one year old already in tow, and with the prospects of a two-year wait before bringing a child home, having a one-year old at the time of referral just felt and seemed right. Also, and probably the most important issue, is the attachment process. I won’t describe in detail what attachment is because it is very complicated for this space, and there are others who can explain in it much better than I ever could.

You may think of attachment as “bonding.” Bonding, however, is a one-way relationship that starts with the parent, fueled by the instinctive desire to protect the child (Melina, Lois [2006]. Raising Adopted Children. New York: Quill.). A cursory look to attachment, then, reveals a relationship where both parent and child acknowledge that the other is irreplaceable. Don’t be misled by the simplicity of that line: there are powerful and beautiful implications in the word irreplaceable when it is united with the underlying assertion of a reciprocal relationship between parent and child. Attachment can be more difficult, and take much longer, especially with older children.

Thinking back, my definitive no on Special Needs was such a primitive reaction. Part of it was due to sheer ignorance, as well as legitimate concerns about the dynamics of our family. Like most families, we have a lot going on in this household. And since in the beginning of all this stuff one has this noisy sense that I/we are “doing something wonderful for a child” you tend to – now isn’t this odd? – put limits on this wonderfulness. Seriously, bringing a healthy child into our family would be, well, you know, enough. I mean, wouldn’t it?

The deeper one gets into adoption the farther that aforementioned sense slinks into the background, and a subtle yet transforming difference emerges: you are being asked by God to participate in something wonderful for a child. When He is involved, the question begs whether we are open to Him. Sure, we respond – “Absolutely Lord, here I am!” That’s good, even beautiful, to hear. By the way, the question develops: to what extent are we open to Him?

This question is like a bubble wrapped around each person’s personal journeys of faith. It’s “unpoppable” (to offer a future entry for Mr. Webster), ever-present and unavoidable, like God Himself. Reaching toward it, rather than coiling up, brings us out of ourselves and nearer our God. One can see it is not a little matter of leaving some constructed comfort zone: We ponder what the Apostle Matthew was thinking when Jesus met him for the first time in passing and directed him to “follow me;” and we sit in awe because Matthew actually “rose and followed him” (Mt 9:9)!

Indeed, the whole matter can be unimaginably uncomfortable. In the Gospel of Matthew (19: 16-22) we witness a man who comes up to Christ:

"Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. He said to him, "Which?" And Jesus said, "You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The young man said to him, "All these I have observed; what do I still lack?" Jesus said to him, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

Oy vey.

But let us not focus on the fact the man then went away sorrowful (nor that we would have beat him to the start). Did we miss that he actually approached Christ and had a dialog with Him?

Bringing us back to adoption and tying this into the journey, the earlier question of whether carrying a healthy child into our family would be enough was the wrong question. It has a bogus built-in assumption that families who do adopt Special Needs are doing something more than those who adopt Healthy children; or, for that matter, that families who do not adopt aren’t doing anything. Poppycock!

It’s a matter of whether you are sitting at the feet of Christ, asking what His Will is for your family, listening, and then responding. God calls folks and families to many different things in life, all of which can be accomplished by shedding your self. To aid in the growth He may send those co-workers we saw noted earlier in St. Paul’s writing. As a matter of fact, a little boy directly participated in leading us toward our child.

This past February, two days after Valentine’s Day, Rose called me at work and shocked me – hard. It was early evening on a Friday. She had just hung up the phone with Kate from AGCI, who called with “some potentially great news for you” – a referral.

What??!!!!

My heart raced like a greyhound; it was trying to pound its way out from behind my chest. Tear ducts opened. In the few seconds that passed I just couldn’t wrap myself around the news. Like the Virgin Mary meeting the angel Gabriel, I was perplexed more than anything. “How could this be” – we weren’t even out of paperwork yet (akin to Luke 1: 34).

We immediately decided to be open to a conversation with Kate, and so I called the Oregon office and conferenced her in with Rose and me. We listened, with breath held.

About every three months they receive a group of folders on Special Needs children, generally between 20 and 30 in number. The health issues with these treasures really range from minor to major, from correctable to uncorrectable. There are children with major heart problems to missing limbs; Hepatitis B to vision problems; port-wine birthmarks to cleft-lip. Also, a healthy child is considered Special Needs if, simply, he or she is older. Many people want healthy babies, and factors seemingly controlling a child’s adoptability create special needs.

During the placement of these children the AGCI China Staff goes through a discernment process of their own. They review forms completed by families open to adopting SN children, and through prayer and a practical approach they do their best to match children with their Forever Families.

Kate had what she termed a “gut” feeling about a little 15-month boy with cleft clip / cleft palate. He had been abandoned roadside in Huhehot, the capital city of the Inner Mongolia province. She continued to tell us items in his medical report: he was a good napper, had a good appetite, liked to throw balls…and he had long eye lashes with big black eyes.

While there wasn’t much more for her to share about him, she did describe the potential next steps. We learned that SN families do not need to be completed paperwork to accept a referral – in fact they don’t even need to have started! That was news to us, yet irrelevant if only because we were nearly done the paper chase. Kate stressed we’d be on a fast track – rather than receiving a healthy-child referral in late 2008, we’d be traveling to China in June or July. (That gets one’s attention.)

Rose and I didn’t have any time together to discuss the options, yet with only two at that moment we accepted the opportunity to prayerfully consider this child over the weekend. I requested that we only be sent the child’s medical report, and not his pictures. If this seems odd, it may be; but we didn’t want a photograph to play into the decision.

The call ended, and electrons moved at the speed of light across the county to place the report into our respective e-mail boxes moments later. His name was Sun Ya Yuan. Not having a clue about Asian names, I immediately called him “Sunny.”

It was a good thing the roads were clear on the 40-mile ride home that night, because my mind was not. A child – now? I’d repeat that as many times here as I did in my head if I thought you had the time (you don’t), or would humor me to that extent (you may be good people, but you would not.).

Rose and I embraced when I came through the kitchen door. Only a few seconds had to tick by before Rose asked, “So, what do you think?” Ugh, she had beaten me to the question! Regardless of our sharing sequence, within minutes we learned that I was focused on the cleft palate, and not the little boy with the cleft palate; she was focused on the child’s age.

What were we to do? How was the decision to be made? Cleft palate had not been checked on our form to AGCI, so in addition to prayer and discussion, we knew education was needed. And beyond the discernment and discovery issues we found ourselves facing a timer that had started the moment the connection dropped with Kate, and it would go off on Monday morning.

We wanted to give Sunny and God our all, and yet it was frustratingly clear we were operating in reaction mode. This weekend of all weekends! I was frantically racing toward deadlines for the capstone course of my Master’s program and reams of writing were required. Rose? She and the kids were booked in Lancaster, PA Saturday and Sunday, to celebrate her sister Clara’s 40th birthday party. We would be distracted – and apart.

It turns out the cleft lip and cleft palate are the most common birth defect in the United States, with one of every 600 newborns being affected by cleft lip and/or cleft palate (http://www.cleftline.org/). For a head-yet-unturned, however, it did not help to Google-across a woman in her late 20’s who had nearly 12 surgeries to correct her palate. 12! “Rose, 12 surgeries…are we ready for that?!”

The Lord knows whether we were ready or not. As with most questions, though, there are others right behind it. I have no idea if that surgery count is low, the norm, or high, but Sunny would have his own number. So why shouldn’t we be right with him while he goes through this trial? Why him, but not us?

This and more bounded around my brain and hung on my heart that Saturday morning while working out downstairs. Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Speechless” CD was blaring, and I was alone, teetering back and forth atop a wall of tears.

The long awaited rains
Have fallen hard upon the thirsty ground
And carved their way to where
The wild and rushing river can be found
And like the rains
I have been carried here to where the river flows yeah
My heart is racing and my knees are weak
As I walk to the edge
I know there is no turning back
Once my feet have left the ledge
And in the rush I hear a voice
That’s telling me its time to take the leap of faith
So here I go

I’m diving in I’m going deep in over my head I want to be
Caught in the rush lost in the flow in over my head I want to go
The rivers deep the rivers wide the rivers water is alive
So sink or swim I’m diving in.

That’s Chapman (from Dive) who heard the voice – what about me?

Well I got myself a t shirt that says what I believe
I got letters on my bracelet to serve as my ID
I got the necklace and the key chain
And almost everything a good Christian needs yeah
I got the little Bible magnets on my refrigerator door
And a welcome mat to bless you before you walk across my floor
I got a Jesus bumper sticker
And the outline of a fish stuck on my car
And even though this stuffs all well and good yeah
I cannot help but ask myself

What about the change
What about the difference
(From Chapman’s Change)

Yes, indeed, what about my supposed change helps Sunny? Or the tens of thousands beside and behind him?!

I was a man overwhelmed.

We weren’t out of paperwork, but for the first time I was transported outside of and beyond the coordinating, shuffling and the hustling. Sunny was in front of me now. I was co-partner in a choice that impacted a fellow human being on the grand scale. There – right there – was the core of my angst: a choice. How were we to choose? Never have I felt more uneasy.

Let’s cut into the intimacy right here. Rose and I are unabashedly Pro-Life…and we were choosing. I seemingly detected the start of this when completing AGCI’s SN form with Rose (“Please complete this form by stating YES, NO, or MAYBE next to each of the possible special needs mentioned below.”) and now here we were.

Being in this state does not negate the fact that abortion is horrific and an abomination to God’s Gift of Life. I will not turn this into (too long of) a sermon. A grown man, however, can only hear that life doesn’t begin at conception so many times. Never a greater routine of mental gymnastics has there even been (Answer the question: When did you begin to grow?).

It is freely admitted this painful subject is complicated for the woman in the moment, and somehow for society in this period of history. Yet, I had misjudged the situation with Sunny. My emotions jolted the matter significantly off, and I was wrong. We were decidedly not choosing – we were discerning.

When pregnant with a child it is a fallacy with consequences for the creature to craft the notion that a choice exists; the Creator has already revealed His Will for the family. When adopting, you are trying to determine His Will for you. A monumental difference.

The praying continued, and so did the phone conversations between Rose and me. On Sunday evening, with the whole family back home safely, Rose and I decided not to move forward with Sunny. He was not the child God had for us. At the time, we were incorrectly labeling bringing him into our family as “Artificial Twinning;” regardless of the term’s misuse, he was but a month older than Elizabeth. Our second daughter is a tremendous toddler who we love dearly and, well, we’ll leave it at that – two of her would have bordered on two too much!

Kate’s call out of nowhere what not for naught, however, for in his young life Sunny had already served God. Rose and I were now focused in desire. She had been asking God to open my heart toward a special needs child, and this had been satisfied. Being confronted by Sunny, even if only on paper, moved me off of paper – I had an imagination now.

Oh, and who could have imagined Sunny! We eventually saw pictures of him and, my, my, how strikingly handsome he was. On the first day of March Kate sent an update that a couple had committed to him. We were so comforted in this news! Or were we? Unquestionably we were, and yet the news generated a genuine sense of grief. For whatever reason, it took some time for us to clearly realize that finding loving Forever Families for each child was God's priority. Our challenges of that weekend in February were embarrassingly inadequate when compared to what Sunny had endured in his short life-time. And so he has a special place in our heart for helping us mature as adoptive parents-to-be, and as Christians.