I teach the 14-15 year old Sunday School class each week. A couple of weeks ago we had a lesson on faith and how sometimes we don't know why we are prompted to do certain things but we are. We talked about how we may never know why we get promptings and I shared a story about my experience listening to the Spirit. Miss Emma Black asked me to type it up to add to her Young Women project. She's making a collection of stories of faith. I decided if I'm going to type it, I might as well post it here as this is the only type of journal/scrapbook that I keep.
(This is a little more detailed then what I shared with my class and/or what I'll print off for her but I wanted to put the whole experience down on pen and paper or in my case on blog via keyboard.)
So here goes.....
I knew the day Devree was born (our third child) that there was still another child waiting to join our family. James didn't have the same insight. The day we brought Devree home he announced that he was glad we were "all here". He was done. Three was plenty. I quietly let him know that we weren't all here yet but, that there was no rush, I certainly didn't want to get pregnant anytime soon and that I would patiently wait until he felt the same about adding to our family.
It took over two years but he finally was ready.
There's a whole big story to insert here about falling in a river at girls camp, almost dying and then clinging to roots and branches to pull myself out with the determination that I had to live, I still needed to have another baby. But that is not part of this story.
That fall I got pregnant but didn't know it. I was having a lot of bleeding. I had gone in due to the bleeding only to find out I was pregnant. I was elated but frightened. I had never had bleeding like this with my other pregnancy's. I was told to go home, go to bed and come back in two days to check my hormone levels. I did and in two days I was told I was losing the baby.
I sobbed.
I had waited so long and wanted this baby so badly. My sister was pregnant at the time with her first baby and our baby's would have been four months apart. Until you experience a miscarriage, you just don't understand how emotionally attached you can be to a little someone that you only knew about for two days. I'm not sure I've every cried more or harder in my life.
After a horrid experience which is yet again, another story for another day, (I ended up with an ectopic miscarriage that wouldn't pass and had to have injections to help break up the tissues - a thirty day ordeal and every other day blood draws at the hospital.) we were told to wait a few months and try again.
That few months seemed like an eternity.
At the time I was scrap-booking once a month with a group of gals. One of them worked for the State Shelter Family Program and she complained on how "all her shelter parents were going to foster". I asked her what that meant? She explained that she was over the shelter parents - the first place a child goes when they're pulled from a home or an unsafe environment - like mom or dad getting arrested and child in the car - and where they stay until the State decides if they'll go back to the mom or dad or if a relative is competent and willing to take over their care, or if they'll go into the foster care program. When a child goes to foster care, the shelter parent can elect to move to foster and then perhaps adopt if the parents parental rights are terminated by the court.
Oh.
I went back to my scrap-booking and hear a loud Voice in my mind. "You need to be a shelter parent." I tried to brush it off but it continued. "You need to be a shelter parent." This is crazy, I thought. There's no way James will go for this. I am going to get pregnant. This is not what I have planned for. All night long the thought keeps running through my mind.
"You need to be a shelter parent."
As I start to contemplate the situation it dawns on me that the witness I had that there was one more waiting in Heaven to join our family was gone? Since my miscarriage I hadn't felt that strong witness that there was someone waiting. That conviction that I had when I was being swept down the river that I had to live! I had to have another baby. Was that little spirit that spoke to me so strongly my miscarried baby? Did all he or she need was a little tiny body inside me to complete their earthly mission?
The next day - the Voice inside my head doesn't go away. It just gets stronger. Almost shouting. "You need to be a shelter parent!"
I wait all day contemplating and pondering and tell James that night. I tell him, I can't shake this thought/voice in my head that we need to do this and he says.......
"Okay."
Okay?
What???
I was really counting on him to shoot me down and then move on.
I call Liz on Monday and start the paper work. Getting licensed is no small feat. We had to take 12 hours of parenting classes, get our home inspected, get notes from doctors, referrals from friends and neighbors, background checks, fingerprints, the works. It's a whole lot of paper work and hoops to jump through!
It takes us two weeks. We were the record fastest licensed shelter parents in the history of the shelter program.
I got a call at ten am on morning that we were approved and at 2 pm the same day they called and said. "We have a baby for you."
Nathan.
Baby Nathan.
(We renamed him - his given name was Mathew but in the event he became ours we wanted to be calling him by a name that we would want to name him. Not that there's anything wrong with Mathew, but I liked Nathan. Besides he was two days old, he wouldn't know!)
Baby Nathan was born with his cord wrapped around his neck and had some bruising from it. The doctor wanted to keep him an extra day for observation and that caused the Dad to freak out and threaten to kidnap him from the hospital.
This caused the doctor to contact social services who found that Dad had a court order and was not allowed to live with children. (No more details than that were ever shared with us.)
So Baby Nathan came straight from the hospital into my arms.
I'll be honest with you, I was pretty sure the Lord was sending me down this path because this child was meant to be ours. I mean why else would I feel so strongly to do this?
It was great to take care of a newborn after NOT having given birth. I could jump right up and feed him in the night, haul him everywhere and it was especially fun when people would tell me how great I looked. (Thinking that I had actually given birth to him! Ha!)
I really enjoyed taking care of him and he was such a good little baby. He slept well, he ate well. He was ideal.
(Except that he wasn't circumcised and he would pee all over himself all the time. I wasn't good at getting him tucked into his diaper - no matter what I did, it would poke upwards like a little fire hose and he would leak out all over the front of his clothes.I was changing his whole outfit every time I changed his diaper and doing loads of laundry. James finally helped me out with a little piece of surgical tape to keep him pointing down into his diaper. I know, this wasn't something you were wanting to hear but it's something James adds every time we talk about Nathan so I'm documenting it for our posterity. Yes, he taped his penis down but we were all so much happier - me with less laundry and Nathan with less entire wardrobe changes.)
He'd wake up in the night and I'd jump up and make a bottle and hold him in the living room, feed him and sing to him. He looked nothing like my rolly-polly, blue eyed babies, he was skinny and bird like and I'd look into his brownish/hazel eyes and wonder, "Is the boy my son?" I decided that we were bonding because when I'd feed him I felt a pressure in my breast - sort of like when your milk comes in but different - just a sort of aching feeling.
He would be taken once a week to supervised visits with his mom. I would send him dressed so cute and smelling like baby lotion and he'd come back smelling like cigarettes. He came with a diaper bag from the hospital that I stored in the garage because it reeked so much of smoke smell. I never used anything out of it.
Mom was trying to get her act together. Get her own place without Dad so she could get her boys back. Yes, Nathan had a brother. He was six. I never met him. He was pulled from the home as well.
A few weeks into it I start feeling a little sick and then it dawns on me. Sick? Achy breast? Duh! I'm pregnant. And sure enough, I was!
I was thrilled and it was a good thing I was as knowing helped me get through the next part of this experience. I got the call that Nathan was going back to his Mom.
Oh my goodness. I cried. I wrote a letter to his mom telling her what a great baby he was and giving her his routine. Tears just splashed on the paper. I felt like I was sending away a piece of my heart.
He went back to mom and I proceed to jump right into morning sickness with a vengeance!
This pregnancy was typical of my other three successful pregnancy's. No bleeding and lot's of nausea.
Nathan was gone for about a week or so when I got the call he was coming back.
Dad was caught at the apartment - unsupervised.
It was decided a week or so later by the court that Nathan and his brother would be going to foster care and we were giving the first option to be their foster parents and perhaps adopt them if parental rights were terminated.
This was perhaps one of the hardest decisions in my life.
Is this what I was suppose to do?
Keep in mind I had three small children already.
A 7 year old, a 5 year old, and an almost three year old. This brother - whom I had still never met - would be sandwiched in age between my 7 and 5 year old, then I would have my three year old and two babies less than six months apart. Not twins, two different babies at different stages and different developmental needs.
I would have six kids under the age of 7 and one that had six years of questionable and perhaps painful/abusive history.
I thought I cried before?
Oh, my goodness.
We prayed, I cried. We prayed some more and I cried some more.
I couldn't understand why the Lord would direct me this way for me NOT to adopt these boys but I knew I couldn't handle it. I knew it wouldn't be fair to all six of these children.
There wasn't enough of me.
I sobbed as I told the social worker that I couldn't do it. But I felt such peace once I made my decision. I knew there was someone out there that was waiting for these boys. Wanting them so very badly.
I was told I would not be able to follow up or have any contact or information after Nathan left my home. That has been the hardest part. I just want to know that Nathan is okay. I wanted to know if his new foster family ended up adopting him and his brother. I still sometimes look for him. He would be 13- the same age as Alex.
I know nothing.
I really questioned my inspiration.
Why in the world did I have to go through this heart wrenching experience? What lesson was I suppose to learn? Did I fail?
At one point during my care of Nathan, he got an infected umbilical cord. I took him in and he was put on antibiotics. It was pretty serious. Maybe that was why I need to care for him? Maybe he would have died without being in my care and he needs to grow up to do great things? Maybe it was just the Lord testing me? To see if I'd obey? If I had enough faith? Testing James to see if he could have faith in his wife's promptings? I don't know. I still don't know. It's one of the first questions I'm going to ask in the next life.
So, to wrap things up. Our Rylee was born about five or six months later. We felt four was a great number but the night before James went in for his surgery to make four our permanent number we prayed - of course - and I told him that I KNEW I was done having babies but that I didn't know if we were done adding to our family...
Then six years later I got my stirrings and prompting that led to us adopting Alex.
When I hesitantly told James of my feelings that "someone was missing" he just held me and told me something to this effect, "Wendy, I am leaving this up to you. If it weren't for your promptings we wouldn't have Rylee and what would our family be like without her? We love her so much. I am just leaving it up to you and your inspiration. You must have that line to Heaven and our children that I don't. So whatever you feel, is what we'll do." Or something like that. And yes, I was crying.
Now when I look back, I think maybe my shelter parent experience was just a foreshadowing or grooming for our international adoption? Talk about paper work and hoops!
I will tell you that every time I see pictures of orphans, I get sweaty palms wondering if I'm going to get another prompting? Working with the Save A Child Foundation - I was worried. Our plate is really full right now but when I feel these promptings, I cannot deny them. I knew with a surety when Devree was born we weren't done, I knew we had to be a shelter parents, and I knew I needed to find Alex.
And I know that at anytime, I could get those feelings again?
James knows it too.
When I talked to him about going to Ukraine to deliver Alex's Eagle project, his joking first response was "No, you'll find another kid to adopt!"
Anyway, that's my story.
