Diary of a Soon-to-be Daddy
From Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Psalm 68:6 “God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing…”
It’s approximately thirty minutes before Mel gets home from work, and I have something I’ve been waiting to tell her – Happy Mother’s Day.
Yes, that’s right, Happy Mother’s Day. No, it’s not quite Mother’s Day yet; it’s coming up on Sunday. But I want to tell Mel that beautiful blessing today because I have just made the biggest decision that we have ever made, at least the biggest decision after my decision to ask Mel to marry me.
I have decided that we are going to go ahead with adopting a boy we’ve been looking at on the Bulgarian orphanage’s list. Yes, we are finally adopting an actual, single, unique person. We are taking the plunge. No longer will the adoption be about “a kid” or “a Bulgarian child with special needs.” No, this adoption will be about a boy named Val – well, that is not his real name, but it’s what we will call him here on the blog – for now anyway. A person. A boy. Unique, special, blessed; a future Elliott!
I can’t wait to tell Mel. I am crazy with eagerness and joy. But I am also strangely hesitant and nervous. This is a huge decision. This is our parenting future coming into existence right before our eyes. This is something that will change the life of a human being that we’ve never met, that doesn’t even know we exist. Thousands of miles away, someone’s life is changing, and he doesn’t even know it!
So how did I reach this decision? Well, the decision was not made alone. It was not made without Mel’s input. While the final decisions for our family are ultimately up to me, I always seek Mel’s input. As my wife she is my strongest ally. She’s insightful, intelligent, and thorough. Any decision I make for our family will be made indubitably stronger with her wise input. And her wise input came into this decision quite strongly.
She found Val a couple days ago on the adoption agency’s website. Every two months the adoption agency is sent a new list of children for adoptive parents to review and consider adopting. Every two months Mel and I look over these kids and discern whether they would be a good fit for us. Every time that we’ve done this thus far, we have come away with the decision that none of the kids is ours yet. Every month I have waited on the Lord and He has said, “No, these kids have futures that don’t involve you.” Every month I have submitted to the Lord’s perfect plan, but I have done so with immeasurable heartbreak.
But this month we saw Val. He is a happy-looking little two-year-old boy who has vision problems and s apparently slightly “lame” in his lower legs, meaning that he has difficulty walking without assistance. He also has some lung issues. The medical paperwork that came with him gave inconsistent information about his condition, but we were reassured that, with a loving family, his development as a person would come along quite well. All in all, he looked like a strong contender.
So we began praying. At first, I was hesitant to pray. It’s not that I was lazy or that I wanted Mel to make the decisions. No, no, and again no. It’s that putting before the Lord the lives of these children and the future of our role as parents is very difficult for me. I have a father’s loving heart. I want to be a dad so badly that I get so emotionally wrapped up in the fact that, with a simple Yes from the Lord, I might suddenly be a dad, or that with a sudden No from the Lord, my years of waiting will continue. So Mel prayed, and I dithered.
Yesterday, Mel was praying and kept hearing the name Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan. She figured, rather downheartedly, that it was the Lord saying that Val would be adopted by another family and that their new, adoptive name for him would be Jonathan since we have our own new adoptive name planned for him. But the Lord prompted her to do some biblical research on the name Jonathan. She did, and came to the story of Jonathan, the son of King Saul in 2 Samuel. The story basically goes that David, the new king of Israel, wanted to reward the loyalty of his deceased best friend Jonathan by accepting members of Jonathan’s family into his kingly family. He searched for members of Jonathan’s family but came up with only Mephibosheth, a young man who had been lame since birth and who was Jonathan’s son. King David told this young man that due to his father’s loyalty to King David, he would adopt him into his family, let him eat at his kingly banqueting table, and give him all the lands that had belonged to his father’s family. It was a story of love, adoption, redemption, inheritance, and awesomeness. I read this chapter at Mel’s request and the story began to make sense to me – there were just too many parallels!
First, Val is “lame” in both feet, and has been since he was very young, just like Mephibosheth in the story. Secondly, he is a person without a family who has lost everything. He was born into a family, but was dumped on the state and abandoned. When he becomes part of Mel’s and my family, he will receive the reward of his adoption – love, a rich spiritual inheritance, and so on. And best of all, he will eat at my banqueting table!
For any of you that really know me, you know what a big deal “my banqueting table” is for me. One of the ways I show my friends I love them is by having them over to good dinners; dinners where Mel makes amazing food, where I brew amazing coffee and espresso, where I lay the table in our wedding china, and where I have people sit In specific places at the table, old-fashioned-style, depending on how best I wish to honour them! It’s all very old-fashioned and silly, but it’s me, it’s who I am, and it’s how I bless people. King David’s royal banqueting table is mentioned several times in the story, as if to emphasize it above many other details. This may seem like a coincidence to you, and maybe even not enough of a concrete detail to base an adoption on, but for me, it’s the little details, “the foolish things” that confirm to me that this is right.
So, my interest was piqued. I got into the shower late this morning (I stayed home from work since I have a dental appointment today to talk about extracting two teeth tomorrow!) and began praying. I asked the Lord whether we should go ahead with Val. I asked Him to confirm that the scriptural direction He gave Mel was adequate enough for us to go ahead with this. He said simply “Yes.” I prayed harder, not satisfied that this one, single, simple word was enough to base changing our lives and the life of someone else across the globe. “Lord,” I pleaded,” I need something bigger than that! This is another person’s life I’m talking about! I don’t want to test Your word but You know this is a big deal to me!” All of a sudden my mind was led to the story in Matthew 8 about Jesus healing the Roman centurion’s paralyzed (another coincidence?) servant. The centurion came to Jesus and asked Him to heal his servant. Jesus said yes, He would, and that He would go see him. The centurion said instead that all Jesus had to do was give the word and he, the centurion, would know that the healing had been done. He clarified that since he was a military man, he understood the concept of a single word being given and the resultant orders being carried out. Jesus responded to the centurion by congratulating him for his rock-solid faith and telling the twelve disciples how steadfast the centurion’s faith in God was, even though he was a gentile and didn’t have the traditional Jewish understanding of God.
This was all the confirmation I needed. Jesus was reminding me that as a person of faith, which I am and have been since a young age, I understand the concept of acting based on a single word. I don’t need God to repeat Himself like a broken record to get me to move. I don’t need to lay out fleeces like Gideon for God to prove that He’s speaking to me. All I need is the word, and I know what to do. So in this moment, I knew the Lord was confirming to me that He had said Yes, and that He was telling me to make the final “Yes” decision for this adoption! AND, He was congratulating me for my rock-solid faith – a faith that doesn’t need to ask God to repeat Himself; a faith that hears the word and acts on it.
So here I am, 5:55 on a stormy, springtime Wednesday afternoon, now twenty minutes before a very unsuspecting Mel gets home, and I am going to tell her she has a son across the pond that we are going to adopt. I have Mother’s Day flowers and chocolates in the dining room with a card tucked in the box of chocolates saying that I know she’s going to make a great mommy. I am nervous, crazy, joyful. I know the adoption isn’t done yet, not by a long shot. I know full well that the worst-case scenario might happen and this kid might be adopted by someone else or might vanish into thin air or might…whatever! It may not be a done deal yet, but it’s a deal, it’s a decision, it’s parenting, I guess!
So, with faith, hope, and love – and a lot of crazy emotions – here we go!!!
I've been wanting to write a very deep blog post about the parallels between this adoption and something profound... because this feels very profound. But it is too much for me to grasp right now, when my whole world is spinning. It is hard enough for me to think, "We are going to need a high chair, some baby gates for the kitchen, and lots of diapers..." To think that we have son waiting for us to come and swoop him up is beyond me right now... almost... sometimes it hits me with full strength. It is in those moments that I need to breathe into my brown paper bag. So the very deep blog post will have to wait.
