“CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE A GIRL!” Kristy sang from my phone.
Elation washed over me. After months of hellish paperwork, we knew any day we were going to get an adoption referral.
The case worker chirped, “Let me tell you about her!” (Loooong pause as she opened the report on her computer.)
Kristy continued, “OH MY GOSH, she’s ENORMOUS! This baby is like half the size of the Thai man holding her… I didn’t even know they made them like that in Thailand!”
My laugh was uneasy as Kristy continued.
“It says that her birth mom nicknamed her ‘Ice’, and that she is NOT an easy child. She has colic, gastritis, and breathing noise…
It also says she hardly ever smiles.”
My body was shaking as I broke the conversation, “Kristy, that’s probably enough info for now. My husband gets home in a few hours, and we’ll look at the referral then.”
As I dropped the phone, I knew I was going to be sick. Up until this phone call, I’d been 100% certain that we were supposed to adopt. Now I only felt one emotion… ABSOLUTE TERROR.
With no way to escape the house, I poured myself a generous tumbler of Merlot and knocked myself out until my husband came home.
With him kneeling by the bed, I confessed what Kristy said…
He responded, “This child may not be a lovely rose bush; she may be an oak tree. But with love, she’ll be the most beautiful oak tree she can be.”
As I laid awake that night, I thought back to where my conviction to adopt began.
I’ve always had a daring love of life. In college I ventured the world, watched stars from rooftops, even rode on top of a train. No one was more shocked than I was when three years ago the desire for a baby pummeled me. My best friends were still wandering the world, but my heart knew it was time.
Nine months later my son River was born.
Something about being a mama with a sweet babe at my breast, I was forever altered. A truth began to haunt my soul as I considered my son’s life… EVERY child deserves to be loved and protected.
Much of what I’d absorbed from my travels was glorious, but I’d also smelled the stench of precious children not just being neglected, but exploited.
As a college student, I’d ingested the scene with wide eyes and a quiet mouth, but now as a mom it was like a rotting meal I could no longer hold down.
I began to wake up in the night, weeping for these children that I ached to help.
As Hans and I started trying for our second child, the nightmares got more frequent, the burden more intense.
I hung a silver angel in my review mirror because etched in it was this quote:
“To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.”
I couldn’t save the entire world, but maybe I could alter the life of one.
It was a frigid January morning, and I was convinced I was pregnant. A quick blood test at the doctor’s office proved me wrong. As I drove home, the angel clunked against the mirror, and I was reminded to pray for my “one”.
This thought screamed at me so loud it might as well been shouted:
“THE REASON YOU ARE NOT PREGNANT IS SO THAT YOU CAN ADOPT.”
In that moment I was washed with peace, and I knew for certain I would never have that blond haired little girl. I no longer wanted to.
The entire drive, one word pounded in my being…
THAILAND. THAILAND. THAILAND.
Now after Kristy’s phone call, I lay in bed thinking on these things, and the prayer I’d made to God before she called.
With adoption, once you are referred a child, you have 24 hours to either accept or reject that child. I had pleaded to God that He would refer the little one meant for us because I couldn’t stomach the thought saying no… Of course, Hans was right. This oak tree was ours.
Every mother is required to labor for her baby. For River that meant three months of nausea, nine months without wine, and several hours of piercing pain followed by the fiercest love I’d ever known.
With this adoption, labor meant endless official papers, in depth home studies, and sobering financial payments taken from our humble income.
Few experiences in my life had been as raw and life shattering as giving birth and adopting. With giving birth, I’d been physically exposed… legs spread, body convulsing, with no choice but to surrender to contractions, all the while praying for a healthy child with ten fingers and toes.
With adoption, my heart is what was left naked.
After months of jumping through hoops and meeting incessant requirements, there still was this large fear that some authority, some distance, some payment would keep me from my child. And now, after Kristy’s phone call, I had a deep, raw hoping that this child was meant to be ours, that this story would be a happy one.
We had to wait SIX MONTHS after receiving that phone call until we were given the green light to travel to get our baby.
FINALLY, on July 7, 2007, the day came to meet our chosen one.
After flying to Thailand, Hans and I were directed to an empty meeting room located in our hotel. Another couple from Norway waited tensely beside us. A movie played in the background about adoption, the words smeared and dripped together. All eyes were on the door not on the fluorescent screen.
Without warning a social worker appeared, carrying a girl for the Norwegian couple. I tore my eyes away from their joy in time to witness my daughter’s entrance. Avia resembled a baby koala bear with frightened eyes. She clung to the social worker as if her life was at risk.
I forgot to breathe as I took her in…so beautiful, so small.
Her black hair…pulled high and tight like Pebbles from the Flinstones.
Her dark eyes…gorgeous, scared.
When I saw Avia’s terror, my fear vanished. My only aim was to comfort her.
I cautiously approached the social worker, and she insisted, “Take her and walk with her!”
Without waiting for her to protest, I hoisted Avia on my hip and sprinted through the door.
Once alone in the adjoining room, she dared to look at me.
And. That. Is. When. It. Happened.
I became Avia’s mom, and she wouldn’t let me go.
That afternoon I finally got answers to Avia’s frightening first report, and they was seriously laughable! It was like God was testing me to see if I trusted Him.
The only reason Avia had looked “enormous” in the picture was because she WASN’T being held by a man… She was being held by her “4ft-nothin” foster mom who didn’t even come up to my armpit, so the picture had been distorted!
Nicknames are common in Thailand, and her birth mom nicknamed her “Ice” because her older sister was nicknamed “Soda”.
And it turns out the reason Avia “was not easy child” and “hardly ever smiled” was because she was scared of the case worker who wrote the reports.
As far as the colic, gastritis, and breathing noise…all of that had been true (probably caused by her birth mom’s distress), but Avia healed from all those conditions while under the sweet care of her foster mom.
Someone raps on my car window, and I see Avia, now 16, mouthing “Can I drive”?
I only half listen to her happy chatter as I take in my gorgeous teenage daughter with her laughing eyes and long legs. Her most stunning feature, however, is her kind heart. Everyone in our family agrees that we’ve never known a truer spirit.
The years have gone by and not all of them were serene.
When Hans and I went through a heart wrenching divorce, it was Avia who became my reason to get up each day. We clung to God and each other and came out on the other side more bonded than ever.
As she continues to chatter it hits me:
All this time I thought the message etched on that angel was about me, but now when I think of the quote, I see it was all about her…
“To the world you may be one person, BUT TO ME YOU ARE THE WORLD.”
- All
- Gallery Item
