Disclaimer: I'm writing a tale of our journey to adopt our third daughter who is our fifth child. Yes, we're crazy. No, I haven't won the argument to get an Armored Personnel Carrier to carry all these people. And yes, I'm writing it from a dad's perspective. I hope it helps some dad out there who wonders what in the world God has put on his plate.
The Queen and Bear went to China in September, 2019. I remember managing kids most of the week and praying hard for the two on the other side of the world.
We had a deal, though. A pact. No additional kid needed. God would have to write it in the sky or the kid’s name would have to be Leroy. That was the deal.
Upon return, the Queen was tired but alive on the inside, advocating for the children she had the opportunity to evaluate as a medical professional. I don’t know how many people across the US heard from my stick of lit dynamite. She had Facebook conversations, phone calls, text exchanges, emails, smoke signals, and two carrier pigeons. I lost count of who all and how all she was communicating with people and what all she was saying.
My wife has a way of generating ideas that release untold good in the world. If I get the chance to say what is on her tombstone, that’s what I’d say. It’s an unbelievable gift to me, to our church family, and to the world. Her idea was that she could network like a wild woman and come up with families who would be glad to step into the process of adopting and changing the world for the better by bringing an orphan home. So she went on about the business of carrying out her idea.
There was one little one who kept coming up that didn’t really get much traction. At one point, maybe there was a family but it was a complicated situation because of another agency being involved. So she told God and then me (in that order) that we were open to being her family even if we didn’t feel called to it.
I was…less than thrilled.
We had a deal. A pact. The kid’s name wasn’t Leroy. No sky writing. Nothing.
And I was pretty sure she was nuts.
That’s how this whole story started.
