This story starts a long time ago...more than half my life ago. I was 15 and sitting in Miss T's health class. Two women from First Baptist were presenting about their recent trip to work with the Romanian Evangelical Medical Mission (REMM) in Beius, Romania and about the effects of the communist regime and its fall on the situation of orphans there. At the time I had no idea how important First B was going to become to me, or that someday I too would get to visit Beius. What I did know was that no child should have to live like that, that every child deserves the love of a family, and that the abandonment of a child was a complicated, messy, heartbreaking loss for all involved. I used to love orphan stories - even used to make up stories to pretend I was one. Colleen and I would run away to the back pasture sometimes or build PlayMobile orphanages. Long after Colleen was too old to join me I still wrote romanticized stories about children living on their own. But after hearing and seeing that day in health class, my heart was tugged; the fairy tale stories of orphans, adoption, and finding a home were replaced by this real world picture of how real children were living, without a home and without a family. It was not romantic at all, but heart-breakingly sad.
Romania stayed in the back of my mind for a long time - all through college. After graduation I was all set to live in Romania for a year working with a mission group that served orphaned and vulnerable children. But God had other plans; I found out the mission group was not able to get me a visa, and the door opened to coach at GFU and go to grad school to become a teacher. They were all parts of my dream - they just did not line up in the order I planned them in! I spent an amazing 7 years coaching at Fox, while completing my degree through Willamette and teaching at both St. Paul and Gaston.
In the middle of it all (2008), I decided to spend a summer backpacking through Europe. Another long-awaited dream! I headed off on my own with a very detailed itinerary and plans to meet up with family along the way. That trip is the most consistent blogging I ever stuck to, so you can take a look at 2008 if you are interested! Towards the end of my trip, I spent five full days in Beius, working with REMM (by this time my family was attending First B, and our pastor connected me to them). The Lucacius, who founded REMM, were amazing hosts who welcomed me and let me volunteer, rest, and observe to my heart's content.
I spent a week learning about the Roma people and the discrimination and hardships they faced. I learned about the 8 little girls staying at REMM, whose adoptive families in the US had no idea when or if they would ever be able to bring their daughters home (Romania had shut down its international program in order to show the EU that they were tackling corruption). I picked up trash, shoveled sand, played with the girls, handed out Bibles in a Roma village, and prayed. When I left, my heart had stretched and grown - I was never going to forget those little girls. A seed had been planted - a seed of love and of hope - that just maybe someday I would be able to love on a child that needed a home and a family - a child that would be mine forever. Romania was closed and has still yet to open; maybe they never will. Those girls are 13 and 14 year olds now; still with families in the US, still unable to go home to them. They are loved and cared for by the amazing people at REMM, but they wish adoption was still an option.
For years after that trip I thought about adoption. I thought that maybe when I was married, and Romania opened its doors again, that I would pursue it. I thought sometimes about adopting even though I was not married - and started to feel that maybe God was bigger than the limitations I saw before me. But still, Romania was closed and I didn't feel led to take steps in another direction.
In 2012, I made the biggest move of my life and began to teach at an international school in South Korea. Four years later, I'm still teaching here! I never would have thought that would be my story when I first moved across the Pacific. Something about the kids and the community has kept me here. But it also opened a door that I didn't expect. My beautiful and loving, slightly younger and even more adventurous cousin, Paige, had moved to China for 9 months to work at an orphanage for special needs kids. I spent that first Christmas abroad visiting Paige's orphanage, and meeting and falling for the amazing kiddos there. There was love and laughter, and stress and heartbreak - all of it combined in a place where the staff were doing their best to love on well over a hundred children who may never find a family. It was a place where harsh reality met God-sustained hope, and I got to be present to see the beauty and the pain.
There were three little boys at the center who I fell in love with. I'm not sure of their ages, but I think they were about 3-5 at the time. One was a charmer who knew he had you wrapped around his finger the moment he smiled. One was the slightly more serious oldest who radiated both joy and wisdom. And the third, and youngest, was a newly abandoned toddler with a hug that was so tight you thought he might never let go. Again my heart just grew and at the same time hurt - hurt to say goodbye and hurt that they were there in the first place.
I went home and started looking into adoption, this time much more certain that it was a calling - that God had given this to me as part of my story. But adoption is not an easy or a quick process - and for someone with a phobia of paperwork it is a draining process. When I was looking in the winter of 2013, I couldn't find any agency that would work with someone living abroad - AND the financial requirements for a single woman were so far out there I couldn't even imagine being able to fufill them - not anytime soon, anyway. I put adoption on the backburner - something the future me would do, but not something I was actively working on in the present. I researched intermittently for a long while, but didn't send out another email asking or requesting info until...
Flash forward two years, to a crying version of me flying home for Christmas. I had met with my principal earlier that day, and because of new responsibilities in my job for the coming year I was being forced to let go of coaching soccer and MUN. This was heartbreaking for me, because it had been such a huge blessing to coach the previous year and because there were some pretty special senior girls that I wanted one last chance to get to be around. I felt hurt and confused and pretty upset about the situation. When I calmed down, I realized that nothing happens without God's knowledge and decided to ask Him what he wanted from my new-found free time. An old tugging to look into adoption again came back, and I researched and emailed a few agencies. Right before Christmas, I heard back from an agency that put me in contact with a home study provider who worked in Asia - and right after Christmas I found out that she was actually going to be in Suwon in February! Suwon - what are the chances of that! And the family she was already coming to see are people I know, love, and work with. I was shocked and more than a little excited - and a little overwhelmed that it could possibly happen that fast when three years ago I hadn't thought it could happen at all.
It truly felt, and has felt through this whole process, that God opened this door at this time for a reason. I am not sure what that reason is, other than that I believe God has been calling me to adoption over the course of my whole life. Through the stories I loved as a child and teen, to the love for 8 little girls in Romania, to holding the hand of a little girl who died a week later without a mama to hold her....God has been leading me to this. For the past year, I have been following - filling out paperwork, meeting with my social worker, sending more emails than I can count, getting myself and my generous and amazing roommates fingerprinted at the US embassy, writing big checks - following has not always been easy but the firm foundation that God is in it has always been there. I've doubted at times, especially when people I love and respect doubt it, but my faith in what God is calling me to is bigger. I'm thankful for my incredible family, who have been so supportive and loving and I know will welcome my kiddo with open arms; to my GSIS family who are so excited for me and have helped me walk through some of the hard days; to my family and friends who have written me letters, hosted or helped with a fundraiser, or sent in money to help with the process - it truly takes a village and you all mean the world to me.
So, as far as an announcement goes, this is pretty awful and long - but its my story for better or worse. Soon, hopefully, it will be our story - my child and mine. I don't know yet exactly when, although I'm hoping for this summer; and I don't know exactly who, although I'm hoping for a toddler-age child with mild special needs (the vast majority of children abandoned in China are special needs children.) Those details, when they arrive, will be so precious in the waiting. More to come when I do know!
If anyone is able or interested in helping me raise the money I need for the adoption (which is somewhere in the realm of $30,000) I would be so incredibly thankful! The link is on the top right of the page. Thank you!!
