It’s significant. As a team, we step out in faith, some traveling across oceans for the very first time. It is a big deal with lots of preparing and lots of money, team conference calls, and coordinating. We don’t do it to “give back;” we can’t possibly serve for essentially a week at a Chinese orphanage and come remotely close to giving enough to warrant the phrase. We go for relationships, to enter into life with people–the children who are alone in crowded rooms, the women whose lives are about caring for children so that they can become someone else’s son or daughter, and the men responsible for leading and making decisions that change other people’s entire worlds. We go so the bridge between us can get a few more planks. It’s what He is about, so it’s what we want to be about too.
On February 18th, registration opened up for our next trip scheduled for October 7th-18th, 2015. 3 hours later, registration was closed. In just a few hours, 11 women who had heard about the trip and prayerfully considered the trip opened their hands up and said yes, jumping right on in there. We have room to take 15 people total, but I closed registration with those 11.
Why?
Because we need a few good men.
I have served alongside women on previous teams who are 110% present. I’ve seen God use those women to meet the needs of those children and caregivers in such specific ways. Sometimes I have gotten to be a part of that, and sometimes I have gotten to stand back and simply watch God’s hands around someone using her as His instrument.
But, there is something men are able to do there that women simply cannot. In the orphanage of 300 children, there is not a single caregiver there who is a man. There are men on staff there, but they are the directors, the executives. The ones charged with the daily role of feeding, changing, wiping noses, calming the crying child? They are all women, a good number of whom grew up there themselves. The staff is amazed when a team of Americans is willing to come across the world to build relationships and serve alongside them. When that team has a few men, their amazement is multiplied, more questions are asked as to why we are there, more smiles are exchanged, more pictures are taken of the foreign men who were willing to play with children…and God’s work is magnified. All because a few good men said yes to being used by Him on a team full of women.
If you want to learn more about the trip, email us, and we’ll reply with more details for you. If you think your husband or your son or your nephew may be interested, send this link to him and tell him you think he’d rock it loving orphans and those who care for them.
Our first team conference call is next week. If we don’t get a few good men to join us in the next week or so, we’ll open those 4 remaining spots up for other women.
We can’t wait to see who is on this next team.
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Kelly has a passion for supporting adoptive families, specifically to encourage parents to be intentional and understand their own hearts more clearly as they seek to care for their hearts of their children. Kelly cofounded The Sparrow Fund with her husband Mark in 2011 to serve adoptive families. After a long time using her Master’s degree in counseling informally, Kelly recently joined the team at the Attachment & Bonding Center of PA as a cotherapist. Married to Mark since 1998, they have 3 biological children and 1 daughter who was adopted as a toddler from China in 2010. You can learn more about their adoption story, how they’ve been changed by the experience of adoption, and what life for them looks like on Kelly’s personal blog, My Overthinking.
It was just over a year ago that I answered the phone call that changed the trajectory of our lives. It was the call from our adoption agency family coordinator letting me know that she had two referrals for us to consider. As she began to describe the children my heart raced. This was it! This was the moment I had dreamed about and anticipated for so long. Could it be, that I was about to be introduced to my children for the first time?
It had only been the day before that call, that, I had received a text from a close friend, letting me know she had a dream that Kirk and I were walking out of the airport holding hands with Lily and Liam. Both children had excitement and a bit of worry in their eyes—but more excitement. She elaborated and said, “But the look on your hubs face, it was priceless!” She encouraged me that our referral was coming, “But not when you think.”
I woke the morning of January 16, 2014 at 5:30am feeling impressed to get out of bed. I was tired, but felt urged to read my Bible and pray. I’m not even sure how I came to this next verse, but when I did, I felt sure there was a hidden message in it for me. Habakkuk 2:3 says, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and not delay.” I wrote it down unsure what it meant. I had no idea that the calling we had been given, to adopt a boy and a girl, was about to be revealed but in the way I expected.
At 10:33 am my cell phone rang.
I saw the (703) area code but it did not register. Ashley (our family coordinator) was calling to let me know she had two referrals for us to consider. I was beside myself when I realized who it was and why she was calling! After she explained the purpose for her call she gave me some preliminary information about the children to allow me the option of reviewing their files or waiting for another match.
She started by saying, “Okay, I have a little girl that is considered special needs. She is almost 8 years old. She has a vision problem, (crossed eyes). Would you like to review her file?
I swallowed hard. “Yes!”
“Okay.” She went on, “There is boy almost 10. He is only three months younger than your youngest child, would that be a problem if your children are in the same grade?”
“No.”
She proceeded, “Would you like to review his file?”
“Yes!” I squealed.
“Okay, I’ll send you their files. Examine them with your husband and let me know if you’d like to proceed with a full review.”
After the longest ten minutes of my life, I had their information in my inbox.
I was floored with emotion as I opened those files for the first time. This was the moment I had waited so many months for. I can still recall the intense emotions that sunk deep into my chest, as I looked blurry-eyed at their photographs for the first time.
Time stood still.
He was a handsome boy, an older child whose only special need was that he was older and harder to place and she an adorable little girl with what appeared to be a minor vision problem. I called my husband and forwarded the files to him. We were both at work, so we agreed to look them over together later that evening.
During the waiting, I had envisioned what it would be like to receive my children’s referrals. I wondered, how would I know if they were mine? Would I feel a connection immediately, or would that sense of knowing they were mine come gradually over time? The moment of discovery had finally come.
Months earlier we had discussed the list of possible special needs we felt comfortable with. I had done research on the various conditions and reviewed the information with Kirk. Somehow checking the boxes of special needs that we both were comfortable with felt awkward, but this was a required step. Part of the home study is designed to evaluate and approve a family to care for a child with special needs. The family is assessed by the social worker to determine if they are equipped to care for a child with needs noted on the list. Kirk and I had agreed that only special needs that we both were comfortable with would make it on our list. If one was okay with a special need but the other one not, then it was a no. It seemed simple enough.
At first glance the needs of these two children appeared to fit within our list of approved special needs. Yet, as we read through the little girl’s file more closely, we discovered she had significant developmental delays. This was an immediate red flag. We were adopting two children at once and we already have one child whose needs will require life-long support. Neither of us felt comfortable taking a second child whose needs will likely necessitate the same.
Despite the red flag, we both felt paralyzed to make any decision.
We questioned ourselves. Was God calling us to take on more than we had planned or anticipated? Or was our discomfort a signal meant to offer us direction? Either way, we were not ready to decide as we both felt unsure.
We immediately bathed our decision in prayer and then sought additional information to help guide our steps. We started with requesting an update from the orphanage. We sent a list of ten questions, and waited for their reply. Next, we obtained an expert opinion from a physician who specializes in reviewing adoption referral files. Next we reached out to the adoption community, requesting feedback regarding ‘how to know when to say yes’ to a referral.
The orphanage updates were a mix of good and bad news. The boy’s update stated he was on grade level in school and appeared to be healthy in all respects. The little girl’s update indicated that her delays had prevented her from attending school and she was unable to speak full sentences. This news heightened our hesitancy about accepting her referral.
Next, we sought the opinion from a physician who reviewed adoption referrals. She stated very matter-of-factly that in her opinion, the boy was a healthy older child with the exception that he appeared to be very small for his age. She pointed that the little girl had significant delays that would likely prevent her from ever living independently. She held nothing back and gave me the worst-case scenario to think about. At first, I was a bit taken aback by her negativity, but later I realized she had done me a favor by making me see what I did not want to see.
While all of this information weighed heavily on us, we were eased by the encouragement we had received from the adoption community. So many families responded positively regarding how they had come to make hard decisions. Some told us of ‘knowing’ it was their child the moment they saw a picture. Others said they did not know right away but came to their yes more slowly. Others told of stories where they did not accept the first or sometimes even the second and third referral they were given. I was comforted by the fact that there was more than one way to ‘know’ and that not everyone accepted the first referral. It became clear that there was no perfect formula we needed to use, we just had to keep asking, praying and waiting until a clear answer was revealed.
Why was this so hard? The answer I discovered was painful.
In that period of waiting I came to understand that part of my hesitancy to not saying ‘yes’ to adopting this little girl, was the implication that our lack of a ‘yes’ was really a ‘no’.
That was it. I knew that I was struggling with saying, ‘no’ to a child who really needed a family. Despite my gut feeling that this was not our little girl, I was not comfortable sending her file back and saying—no.
I wrestled with this one for several weeks until I found some encouragement from a book I was reading, Kisses from Katie, by Katie Davis, a(single) adoptive mother of fourteen former-orphans in Uganda. As I read her story, I found answers to mine.
After adopting her eleventh child, Katie had decided not to adopt any more children. She felt her family was complete, until the Lord made it ever so clear she was to take another and not just any child. The child presented to her had significant delays. Katie described how she was hesitant to take a child with limited mobility since she already had a large level of responsibility to her other eleven girls as well as to the people she ministered to in the villages. Having a child who could not walk would mean she would have to carry her everywhere. But then one day the Lord made his plan so clear Katie could not deny it, and once more she embraced a new daughter.
I connected with this story, and wondered if this was my answer. Did God want us to take on more than we had planned but not more than He had planned? Though I felt willing to move forward with her, my husband did not. I wondered at this discrepancy. We would have to move on this decision soon. Although the adoption agency had given us a lenient two weeks to decide, the clock was ticking and we would have to give an answer soon.
January 27, 2014 “Not every child that came to Katie was Katie’s child.”
Those were the words I heard the Lord speak that morning as my husband prayed for God to show us his plan for these two little ones. One would become ours and the other one not.
After hearing from he Lord, I recalled the rest of Katie’s story. I realized that many, many, many children came to Katie for help. Sometimes people would bring children to her or ask her to adopt them, but she did not adopt every girl that she ministered to or every girl that needed adoption. Katie adopted only the girls that were her children—the ones that God had chosen for her.
God made his plan for us clear that morning. Our first referral for a girl was a no. She was not ours. My wrestling was over as quickly as it had come. In that moment of prayer, I knew this little one was not my daughter. I realized that even though I was not called to be her mother, she was His child. It wasn’t up to me to save her or any; I only need be obedient to the calling he set before me.
If you are waiting on a referral, here are some tips on how to get ready for your yes:
Pray for your child while you are waiting. (I am in awe at how our Lily’s personality matches the prayers I had prayed over her exactly).
Seek the Lord throughout the process and follow His lead. (Getting behind God instead of running ahead was a hard lesson for me at times).
Seek godly men and women in the adoption community to offer their wisdom when you need help, support, encouragement or direction. (This is vital!)
Seek to understand your spouse’s concerns about the adoption. Move forward only when you both agree.If one spouse is in on board and the other not, take it as either a no and move-on, or a wait-not-yet, but do not push. (There was a lot of waiting I had to do. God will move in a spouse’s heart, you just need to get out of the way and then wait.)
Be prepared that if you do not accept the first referral that comes your way, there may be some people that will not agree with your decision. You may feel rejected and judged, but do not be discouraged. It is only God you need to please.
Do not adopt to try and save anyone. That is God’s job and only He can do it. Adopt out of obedience to your calling then rely on Him to carry you through. (It is hard work but oh so rewarding!)
Realize there is no perfect formula for deciding to accept a referral or what special needs (if any) you’re equipped to handle. “Pray like it depends on God and then work like it depends on you,” (Mark Batterson).
One last note–one of my concerns in writing this is that it would discourage a family from adopting a child with significant delays or offend someone who already has. So before I leave anyone with any negative impression of how we feel about children with severe developmental delays, let me clearly state that we highly value all children, but especially those precious ones with significant needs. They need families too! We are parents to a child with special needs and he is our pride and joy! Our hesitancy to say yes to another child with significant developmental delays was based on what we felt we could manage in the mix of our other responsibilities. We prayerfully considered it and do not want our decision to discourage anyone who has been called to embrace a child with significant developmental delays. Go and do what you are called to do and if you already have, then Amen!
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Tiffany Barber
Tiffany is a wife to Kirk and mother of eight including six biological and two newly adopted from China. With a looming financial crisis at the outset of their recent adoption, God took their family on a journey of faith. Having been home just over ten weeks, they are currently working through the transition phase of their new adoption. Tiffany writes an honest account of challenges of adoption and the redemptive work of her savior Jesus Christ at Extravagant Love. Though her faith and limits have been tested, she points that adoption is paving the way for her to grow and experience God’s presence as never before.
Since coming home with Silas, we get a lot of comments from people about how wonderful God’s plan is and how much better his ways are than our own. Talking about God’s plans with this cliche simplicity is something we Christians love to do. But when it was said to me in reference to infertility and adoption, something about it really irked me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I really sat down to think about it.
Here’s the thing. Adoption was always a part of our plan. The infertility part wasn’t. So, adoption was not some “new plan” from God that came about because our original plan didn’t work out. In my mind, they are two completely unrelated things. The only thing that ties them together for us is the timing. We didn’t choose to adopt because of infertility. We chose to adopt because God called us to it long before we ever knew we would deal with infertility, and because it was as much a desire of our hearts as having biological children was.
And here’s another thing. I do not believe that the infertility was God’s plan for us. I don’t believe that the pain and struggle our birth mom had to endure in life was a part of God’s plan for her. I don’t believe that parents who can’t have children and children who can’t have parents is ever a part of God’s plan. But I do believe that God, knowing the challenges and pain we would have to face, did make a plan for us and Silas to have each other. Because, God “causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him.” (Romans 8:28) And this is so, SO good.
And one more thing, isn’t it God’s plan for all of us, as Christians, to care for the orphans….not just those of us who deal with infertility?
“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.” James 1:27
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Mindy and her husband, Nick, adopted their son, Silas, domestically in August of 2013 after seven years of marriage and two years of unexplained infertility. They live in Southern California, where Nick is a pastor and elder at ROCKHARBOR church and Mindy is a part-time teacher. She also hosts an infertility and adoption group each month, where she gets to do life with women who share her deepest pain and her greatest passion. She blogs at Finding Sunday.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I remember the way she stared. Bound tightly in a double leg cast, her eyes begged for freedom. She had only been in this world for three months. She didn’t understand. I held her and winced as her broken ribs popped with each breath. I was only 8-years-old. I didn’t understand.
I remember the way he cried. Born addicted to drugs, his crying never stopped. His body was tense. He went through withdrawals from a substance never designed to be in the body of an infant. The effect this would have on his life was astronomical. I failed to understand.
I remember the way she gorged herself with food. She was left at the scene of a crime. Neglected. It was her first birthday, but her guardian left her. She had the most beautiful smile. She knew that food was comfort. I was 9-years-old. I could never identify with that level of abandonment.
I remember the way he struggled to suck on a bottle. Fresh from the hospital, the drugs had significantly manipulated his reflexes. I watched my mom meticulously and persistently care for him. Each day he swallowed a little bit more. He became strong, and for 11 months he was my brother. I felt pride in his achievements.
I remember the way her skin turned red. Trapped in a spicca cast, it repeatedly rubbed against her once-soft baby skin. The hardest bone to break in a human had been broken in an 8-week-old. Her dad had been mad that day. I was angry.
I remember the way she talked about getting to ride in a police car. Her mom was going to jail, but she learned that day that police are there to help. She loved her mom deeply. Her loyalty was both admirable and heartbreaking. Her loss was too deep for me to understand.
I feel lucky that I called these babies my foster siblings. They were, without a doubt, the most courageous little human beings I ever had the privilege of loving. These kids, plus many more, are a vivid part of my childhood. Their stories are real and their faces appear in my mind often. I wonder about them and sometimes even worry about them. They were astonishingly resilient, but I wish they had never been forced to know the depth of that human resilience.
National Child Abuse Prevention Month. It’s a month where we, as a nation, stand up and say ‘no more’. It’s too easy to remain quiet, to pretend like it doesn’t exist, and to push away the faces and names behind the statistics. But in doing so, we inadvertently are minimizing the hurt of 686,000 children who experienced abuse and neglect in 2012 (source). We’re saying that hurt and that pain and those experiences aren’t big enough to bother us.
On the other hand, I see my generation treating philanthropic work as a fad. Come to my college campus, and you’ll see that short term non-profit volunteering and instagramming photos with at-risk kids is all the rage. These kids deserve to be advocated for, cherished, loved, heard, protected, and wanted. That’s not a fad. That’s life-long pursuit and deeply-rooted intentionality, friends. I want my generation to hear that. There’s a longevity associated with this cause. We need to be in it for the long-haul.
For the past seven months I have been completing an internship at an emergency shelter for foster children. I often times sit in the office reading through endless case files filled with some of the most horrific stories I’ve ever heard. Tears frequently fill my eyes as I further grapple with the reality that children in my own community face. I complete intakes and hear things from 6-year-olds I pray I never will grow accustomed to hearing. God, it’s awful.
Then, I go inside the shelter right as the van pulls up from school, and I am met by kids who choose to be so much more then their horrific pasts. They sit at the table and work on multiplication tables, talk to me about art class, eat chicken fingers, watch movies, and sing along to the latest Katy Perry song.
It’s not that they live care-free lives. Their needs are deep, please hear me say that. The reality of their abuse has devastating repercussions. The calendar is full of psychological appointments and counseling appointments because healing is hard. Their situation, living in an emergency shelter, is not the normative, and it is far from ideal. Even still, many of them choose to be more than what life has given to them. That’s admirable.
I want to be like that.
The image for National Child Abuse Prevention Month is a pinwheel. It is childlike and playful, but represents the many different people and disciplines actively involved in ending a nationwide tragedy. It takes teachers, social workers, nurses, first responders, investigators, health-care professionals, social and family service workers, and educated citizens to get the wheel turning. It truly takes a village, friends.
{I recently attended a community child-care conference where I received a pinwheel. This 6-year-old sister was elated.}
The statistics are deafening, but necessary to understand. (These were taken from the Child Maltreatment 2012 Children’s Bureau Report produced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
In 2012, There were 678,810 unique reported accounts of child abuse and neglect (meaning that each child was only counted once, regardless of the number of times he or she was a victim during the reporting year). The total number of reports of roughly 686,000, broke down into 78.3% neglect, 18.3% physical abuse, and 9.3% sexual abuse.
In 2012, there were 1,593 recorded fatalities due to child maltreatment.What that means is that every day we have upwards of 4 children dying in this country due to abuse or neglect.
Tears fill my eyes just typing that.
I think of my foster siblings and the kids I see every day at my internship. Their lives matter so deeply. They have personalities and passion and value. They matter. We cannot have four kids dying every day. It is unacceptable.
Prevention is hard, we know that. But I have to choose to believe that this number can decrease. Our kids are worth it. It has to decrease. We tell our kids they are important all the time, but I want to show it to them. I have so much to say about this topic, but for now, know this:
Awareness is important. It is so, so vital that we are not only aware of the magnitude of child abuse, but that we are also aware of our surroundings. As citizens, we have a responsibility. All of us come into contact with kids in some form in our daily lives, and that means that if we see something, we are held responsible to report it. If you don’t have your state’s abuse hotline number saved to your phone, do it. A phone call could save a child. Calling a hotline does not mean automatic removal of a child. Please know that. If you report what you see, and leave it to investigators to do the rest, you will never, ever, ever be responsible for “ripping apart” a family. Let that one go. The result of not calling for a sighted abuse case could be devastating.
I plead with you today to educate yourself on the signs of abuse and neglect, and to not grow idyll in protecting the kids that walk through our school halls and play in the neighborhood park, alongside your child.
There is no separation. The hand of abuse is everywhere. This has become your cause, too.
In honor of the foster siblings I so fiercely loved as a child. Because, friends, I whispered in their ears that I loved them, that I wanted to take away their pain. As a child, I held them close to me and cried many, many tears over them. They deserve this. They were lovely. In honor of their courage and fight, and my promise to them, I ask that you understand the importance of this topic.
Stand with me this month, friends. May our words and gained awareness be moved into diligent, life-changing action. May fierce, protective love be our heartbeat this month, and every month.
“They deserve a voice. Not a quiet, meek, timid, and reserved voice, but a resounding and reverberating cry for justice, for unconditional love and the right to live in safety and peace. Granted, that voice may not be their own, but they deserve to have someone embrace their cause and make sure it is heard. They deserve to be valued, to know that value and have it instilled in them. They deserve to internalize the truth that they are worth fighting for.” -Christine Erwin, The Middle Mom
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Kylee is a college student who is passionately pursuing a degree in Social Work while simultaneously learning what it means to be a big sister to kids from “hard places”. Her parents jumped into the crazy world of foster care just days before her 8th birthday for numerous infants and toddlers over a ten year time span; four of those children became permanent family members through adoption. Kylee loves sharing about foster care and adoption and is passionate about advocating on behalf of vulnerable children on her blog Learning to Abandon.
I have served alongside women on previous teams who are 110% present. I’ve seen God use those women to meet the needs of those children and caregivers in such specific ways. Sometimes I have gotten to be a part of that, and sometimes I have gotten to stand back and simply watch God’s hands around someone using her as His instrument.
