In 2002, we began the process to adopt our first daughter,
Claire, from China. It was the end of
what had been a long journey through seven years of infertility struggles and
the beginning of what would be a new journey of seeing God’s perfect plan for
us fulfilled. Through our adoption
journey, we saw the hand of God directing us every step of the way as we laid
down our hopes, dreams, and desires at His feet and allowed Him to resurrect
them and bring life in His perfect way.
"I don't think the way you think. The way you work isn't the way I work." God's Decree."For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Isaiah 55:8-9 (MSG)
To tell the whole story, I guess I
would have to go back to my childhood, specifically the fourth grade. Miss Boyd was my teacher. She was young and
beautiful. She made school fun and I
hung on her every word. I still
remember vividly, studying about the country of China and how the people road
their bikes around due to the traffic.
Being a nine year old growing up in the late 70’s, early 80’s, bicycling
was my new found freedom and I think that was my first attraction to the country
of China. I have to admit though, that
there was something more about the
culture that intrigued me, I cannot explain it but from those early years, I
had an infatuation, almost a homesick type of love even, for this country that
I had never even been to. It was also that same year that I became best friends
with a girl named Sara. She was one
year older than me and she was adopted from Korea. We became fast friends and she shared openly with me her adoption
story. I also declared to my mother
that year that I would one day have a Chinese baby – don’t know why or how that
came about – I just remember saying it like it was a fact and moving on. And as
everyone’s does, my life moved on. I grew up shaped by events and experiences,
changing and losing some of those childhood dreams along the way.
Fast forward to 1997. My husband and I had been married 5
years. We wanted children, in fact, we
had also been Children’s pastors those 5 years and our life pretty much
revolved around kid’s ministry. Our
plan (because we always have our own plan –don’t we?) was to wait 5yrs into our
marriage to get established and then start trying to have a family. By the end of the first year of trying, we
began to realize that things might not go the way we planned. Those thoughts were confirmed as we sat in a
doctor’s office and heard the words, “Your chances of conceiving a child are
less than 1percent. Basically, you will never have children of your own.” Yes, the doctor was that blunt and
emotionless. I don’t know if it was his
poor bedside manner or my stubborn dislike of being told I couldn’t do
something, but I left that doctors office madly determined to prove him wrong.
I could not comprehend the fact that God would give us a passion and love for
kids only to deny us the joy of having our own.
And that day began a seven-year
journey of walking through infertility, barrenness, and finding God grace,
unending love, and an intimacy with Him that I had never known before. During
that time God gave us two promises repeatedly.
The first was a word that “we were going to receive a double blessing”.
The second was that “our camel was on its way”. I had no idea what exactly these two promises actually meant but
I knew the Lord had spoken and I clung to those promises. It was a journey that
I will always be thankful for. It was painful, lonely at times, and emotionally
draining but I can look back now and know that it was all worth it and I would
not be the person I am had I not walked through it.
In early September of 2001, we had
the opportunity, as Children’s pastors, to travel to Mongolia on a mission’s
trip and assist a team in holding kids crusades there. It was an exciting adventure that proved to
be more life changing than we ever imagined.
I remember as our plane took off, I felt this strange release in my
spirit, and I just knew that we would not return to the same life we had
before. As we settled into our hotel
room in Beijing, China that night (the first leg of our trip) those feelings
hit a new height when my husband turned on CNN and watched the second plane hit
the Twin Towers. I remember being so
jet lagged that the announcement was almost like a dream and as I passed in and
out of fogginess, it took a while for the reality to set in. America was under attack. We were separated from our friends and
family with no way to contact them.
Although it was a lifelong dream for me personally to be sitting in
China, the fact remained that we were foreigners in a communist country while
our country was under attack from an unknown source. Let’s just say that at times like that you get exceptionally
close to God. If ever we were ever in
tuned to hear His voice, it was then.
A few days past and we able to
make contact with our family and let them know we were all right and we went on
with our mission since the possibility of coming home at that time was out of
the question anyway. We spent a lot of
time working with the missionaries in Mongolia and were so impacted by their
openness and shepherding of the people God had called them to. The idea of pastoring as a shepherd, we felt
had been lost, as the corporate church movement had come to America. We sensed
God calling us to plant a church and become shepherds to the people God called
us to. We finished our ministry in Mongolia
and returned once again to China to spend a few days before being able to
return to the States. One of my biggest
dreams came to reality as I stood on the Great Wall on a day, which happened to
be my 29th birthday. I could
not have asked for a better gift! While
there, we also saw many adoptive families also who were there with their
Chinese babies and my heart began to stir again to the dreams of my childhood.
However foreign adoption seemed just that a dream, as we had no idea what the
process was. We only knew that it must be very expensive and out of our
financial capabilities.
We returned home to a very different
country, as very different people. It
was clear that we had been released from our Children’s ministry position of 11
years and that God was calling us to plant a church. We finished up our commitments for the year, turned in our
resignation and said goodbye to a life that we had known our whole married
life. We didn’t know how it was all going
to work out but we knew God was calling us and so we just waited for His next
step.
It came in the form of an
invitation. It was the last piece of mail that we received before leaving the
church office and it was an invitation to a meeting about adoption from China
that Wednesday night. Since we happened
to be free that Wednesday for the first time in 11 years, we decided just to go
and check it out. We felt an immediate
peace at the meeting and began to just walk through the doors as God opened
them. We began paper-chasing and our
first round of paperwork was turned in. That same week, we held our first
Tuesday night Bible study for our church plant. The following Wednesday night, my husband sat in a mid-week
church service and God spoke to his heart and said “I have given you your double
blessing. Your twins are here - the
start of your church and the start of your adoption. From that point on we had two “babies” on the way and each stage
of the adoption and the church plant seemed to move simultaneously.
On January 29th a
meeting was held by our denominations district officials and the following day
we received a phone call notifying us that there was a church on 5 acres of
land in our area that was unable to keep their doors open and the district
would like us to move our church onto the property. We were elated and three weeks later we began holding services in
our very own building! Seven months
after that, we finally received a letter from China notifying us that we had
been matched with a seven month old baby girl (who we had already decided to
name Claire). Her birth date was
January 29th (the same day we received our church building) and her
name was Fu Hui Feng which translated into English meant:
Fu- Double Blessing (the first promise God
had given us) ,
Hui – Clear and Bright (same meaning as Claire, the name we had chosen),
Feng – Camel’s hump (the 2nd promise God had given
us).
Only God could have orchestrated
all of this and it was clear to us that He was doing far above anything we
could have ever asked or hoped for.
On October 27th, 2003, we
stood in a hotel lobby in Chongqing, China and held our baby girl for the
first time. I cannot even put into
words what that felt like.
Today Claire is a happy, healthy
nine-year-old girl who loves to read and write in her journal. Our church plant, The Dwelling Place will
celebrate it’s 10th year anniversary this year. We have also had the opportunity to go back
to China and adopt again. Our second daughter, Ella was adopted in April of
2007 and she is now 5years old. She is
a busy little girl who loves people like nobody I’ve ever seen and she keeps us
laughing with her quirky 5-year-old outlook on life. Our children have been such a blessing to us and that is why I
share this story. If you are struggling
through infertility or considering adoption, I hope our story will encourage
you to never give up on what God has for you and to trust in His timing.
Psalms 103:8, “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger,
abounding in love”
“When you don’t understand His timing, trust in His character”
That is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteSo touching. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! Thanks for reading!
ReplyDeleteLove your story. So encouraging. :)
ReplyDelete