And then suddenly it was us.
We were fairly new parents, with a big stack of bills and an insecure job future. If a list existed of people equipped to adopt a child, especially one from halfway around the world, our names weren't near the top. We maybe weren't even on the list.
But we forged ahead, sometimes not looking at the millions of steps we needed to take, but just looking at the next one. We filled out paperwork, we filled out more paperwork, and we wrote a couple small checks and a couple bigger ones.
We picked a name for a girl who we didn't know hadn't even been born yet. We weighed every penny spent against whether it was more important than giving her a home, and in the process learned how much we can do without.
We prayed. We held fund-raisers. We became humbled by the generosity of our family, our friends, and people we barely know.
And then, after almost two years of paperwork, and thanks to some heroic efforts by our adoption agency, America World, we were matched with a little girl. A little girl, six months old at the time, whose parents could not take care of her. A little girl with the most piercing dark eyes and the bravest little smile, who didn't yet know that she needed someone to take care of her.
We didn't know that we needed her, too.
This little girl, whose picture melted me then and melts me now, ignited in us a fire, a passion, to stand up for her, and the estimated more than 150 million orphans in the world, who have no one to tell them they matter.
Because she matters.
When we filled out the initial application, four years ago, sitting in a condo in Destin, FL, we could barely wrap our minds around the final result -- that we would actually bring a child home. Save a child. Rescue a child. We just did the next thing, and then the next thing, and then the next thing.
And it was hard. Oh my goodness, it was hard. Some days it was really, really, really hard. The paperwork. The endless questions. The paperwork. The sometimes painful checks we wrote. The paperwork.
But then we saw her picture, and the work didn't matter anymore. She didn't have a say in how she was brought into the world, or the circumstances surrounding her situation. She was born innocent, just like my son and every other child, into a world where people make bad choices. She was paying a hefty price for other people's bad decisions.
How could I not do the hard things for her? How could I not?
And now here we are. In a couple days, we will get on a plane, and we will go get her. And we will bring her home and she will be ours. She will be raised by an ever-patient father and a mother who tries really, really, really hard and stumbles a lot along the way. She will know the love of so many people, who have fought for her, advocated for her, prayed for her, and believed in her.
In the last few days, I've been getting caught up in the details. Travel arrangements. So. much. paperwork. Tying up loose ends. Packing. Finishing work so I don't have to work in India. Making sure Reagan gets enough attention.
And then, I remember. I remember that soon there will be one less orphan. One less. We cannot save them all, but we can save one.
One less orphan. Soon. One less.
And maybe the hard work is really just beginning.
I love this post by speaker and author Jen Hatmaker, who adopted two children:
I’ll not win any points here, but I bristle when people say, “Our adopted child was chosen for us by God before the beginning of time.” No he wasn’t. He was destined for his birth family. God did not create these kids to belong to us. He didn’t decide that they should be born into poverty or disease or abandonment or abuse and despair aaaaaaaall so they could finally make it into our homes, where God intended them to be. No. We are a very distant Plan B. Children are meant for their birth families, same as my biological kids were meant for mine. Adoption is one possible answer to a very real tragedy… after it has already happened, not before as the impetus for abandonment.
We are certainly not going into this with rose-colored glasses, assuming Marella will, at not even two years of age, realize how fortunate she is to be with us, and become the perfect child, overwhelmed by gratitude that we have redeemed her from her circumstances.
She knows the people taking care of her. She has friends. She has known one place to live for almost her entire life. She is about to travel halfway around the world, with a travel day spanning almost two full days (Lord, have mercy), with people she doesn't know, into a place where she knows no one, where we eat different foods and talk different and look different and act different.
It's going to be hard. We get that. I get that. If I'm honest, if I'm really, really honest, I will admit that I have second-guessed our decision at least a thousand times. Maybe more. Probably more. Reagan is at an age where he is becoming easy. He plays by himself, he's in school three days a week, and I don't need a diaper bag, a stroller, or a bunch of extra stuff when we walk out of the house. He has one more year before kindergarten for him, freedom for me. And sometimes, I've thought we might be crazy.
But then I remember her. Sweet Marella with those eyes. That smile. The innocent look on her face, which hides the difficulties she was born into, and has lived with for almost two years. And then, I feel foolish and selfish and embarrassingly entitled that I for one second thought my freedom to have coffee with a friend is more important than her entire existence.
We are choosing to travel to India, this time, but that is not to minimize the plight of orphans who desperately need people to love them all over the globe, including in our hometown. This is not an international problem, reserved for foreigners. It's a problem everywhere.
I had someone tell me once that all my talk about orphans might make people uncomfortable.
Thank God. I hope so.
Consider this: 81.5 million Americans have considered adoption. If just 1 in 500 of these adults adopted, every waiting child [in America] would have a permanent family.
Every child. Every child in America would have a home with parents. Every. One.
Or this:
The births of nearly 230 million children under age 5 worldwide (about one in three) have never been recorded, depriving them of their right to a name and nationality.
I'm always happy to talk to people about our process, and answer as many questions as people have. I'll talk about it all day, every day, if it saves one child. I will, and I won't shut up. But I'm always a bit stuck when people say to me -- which I've heard in almost every conversation I've had about adoption -- "We'd love to adopt, but we just can't afford it."
It's not their fault. I don't blame people who say that, ever. We've been brought up in a culture where our measure of success is weighed by the size of our bank accounts, and the things we can afford to do with the money we earn.
We have all royally screwed it up in the process.
We've been taught to believe that living in a nice house with nice cars and having relaxing vacations and nice clothes are our rights, while giving an orphan a home is a privilege.
Please don't miss that.
We've been taught to believe that living in a nice house with nice cars and having relaxing vacations and nice clothes are our rights, while giving an orphan a home is a privilege.
We enjoy those things, forgetting the millions upon millions upon millions of children who get one meal a day. Or not. But to feed one of them, just one, might mean giving up all the things we've worked hard to accumulate.
It's hard to even fathom the orphan crisis without seeing it firsthand. It's been hard for me. But, in those hard times, this is what I consider: My husband and I are fortunate enough to have guardians picked out for Reagan and Marella, should something happen to us. They will be so deeply loved and cared for, and I have complete peace about their well-being, should we both pass away.
But what if that wasn't the case? I actually know someone, personally, who was in that exact situation. Her parents were killed in a car accident, and no one stepped up to take her. No one. She was an orphan.
That is my single worst nightmare -- of something happening to us and no one taking care of my children.
Why are we not taking care of God's children? We can't change it, skip it, gloss over it, ignore it.
Ps. 82:3: Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Isa. 58:6-7 Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
James 1:27: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
On Sept. 10, we will return to Nashville as a family of four. I hope some people come out to meet her. Our friends have walked this journey with us since we first started talking about it. It only seems right that they celebrate the milestone of bringing her home.
But after that, after we leave the airport and come home to our house, we're going to hunker down for a bit. My friend, Kristi, who also just adopted, writes it all out beautifully in her blog, Embracing the Journey, which I hope you'll take a minute to read.
Basically, our first priority over the next few weeks and months, is making sure Marella knows we are her people. We are her tribe. We are her safe place. What that means is, for the first few months, we need to be the ones who hold her. The only ones who hold her. She's ridiculously cute, so I understand this will be hard (wait until you see the eyes. I'm not even kidding). She needs to know that her people will always be her people, and that we aren't leaving her. We're stepping away from some of our obligations for a season, and we'll figure a lot out as we go. (But please come visit, because we will be desperate -- DESPERATE -- for adult conversations).
For the people -- so, so, so many people who have asked (which makes me weep all. the. time. at how blessed we are by the friends in our life) what they can do, I have an answer. Love on Reagan. Please love on him. This sweet little boy is going to have his world changed. Love him. Love him through this. If you come to welcome us home at the airport, please welcome him first. If you make a sign, please put his name on it. Our girl won't know her name, and we won't care, but he will know. So please, love him first. Welcome him first. Make him the most important person that day.
This was long. I intended to make this into two separate blogs, and thanks to insomnia and the now empty pot of coffee, it's one long one.
I'll close with this: To everyone who has helped us, believed in us, prayed with us, laughed with us, cried with us, stood by us, thank you. I feel like I will never, ever, ever be able to say that enough. The people who showed up at every fund-raiser, who sent us emails and cards, who listened to us in our frustration, who stood in the gap with us, thank you.
One less orphan.
Marella Hope Grace Thompson, we are coming to get you. We love you. We can't wait to meet you. Your name, the thought of your existence, your picture, has never made me not get tears in my eyes. Our love for you is deep, unconditional and forever.
One less orphan. She has a name. And she is ours.
"I don't want a flame, I want a fire. I wanna be the one who stands up and says, 'I'm gonna do something.'" ~Matthew West, 'Do Something'
