Nearly 9 years ago Michelle and I dropped everything for an unscheduled winter trip to Florida. We left Charlotte with a Crock-Pot, sun-screen and a month’s worth of margarita mix, heading south on I-77 as fast a our little Nissan Altima would take us. Ten hours later we were in Sarasota Memorial Hospital holding our newborn son in our arms. That was Andrew. A couple of years later Joseph came to us right here in our hometown, and then a few years later came our California girl Rachel.
Next week we will take our 4th “unscheduled” trip!… this time to China to bring home Anna Pearl. A lot has changed- and we’ve learned a lot- since that first trip. Things like:
1. Parents don’t really need a month’s supply of margarita mix on an adoption trip… that’s way too many calories for 40 year olds so we’d better make it gin and diet-tonics-
2. We can survive with Cheerios. We cannot survive without videos. Crock-Pot out, iPod in.
3. Sunscreen gets in eyes and makes kids cry. Outdoors is over-rated anyway. See Lesson 2.
Actually, the biggest difference in this adoption is not that we are traveling around the world, nor is it that Anna Pearl is already a toddler, nor is it that we can’t take our Crock-Pot nor is it that Michelle has had to navigate 3 years worth of byzantine bureaucracy.
No, the biggest difference to us is that this time we will not have the honor, privilege and blessing of meeting our birthmother and her family.
Most of us who are parents cannot fathom our lives without the children who have come to us. If you’re like me you can’t even remember what life was like before these little gifts from our Creator. But adoptive parents enjoy not only a gift from God, but also a gift from a young birthmother, who under difficult circumstances, made a decision that was much bigger than self.
Without Denise’s love, Kim’s courage and Keri’s determination where would Michelle and I be? I don’t know. We wouldn’t be watching Andrew, Joseph and Rachel play soccer, sing songs or roast s’mores around a campfire with our friends. We wouldn’t have seen Andrew win a Lego contest, or Joseph get MVP in karate class, or Rachel do her belly flop into the pool.
Our birthmothers have given us a family. And that now includes Anna Pearl’s birthmother. While we know that Denise loves McDonald’s, Kim is a mountain girl and Keri loves to snowboard we won’t know anything about Anna Pearl’s birth family.
Well I take that back. Anna Pearl’s mother will have a lot in common with Denise, Kim and Keri. Things like morning sickness, difficulty sleeping, crazy food cravings, fatigue, fatigue, fatigue. And we’ll know that like all birthmothers she shared the fear and excitement of childbirth, and the desire for her baby to have the best life possible.
Going to China, we get a lot of comments about the long flight. It is long… 24 hours over there and 24 back. But when we’re in the 40th hour of travel and dealing with fatigue, difficulty sleeping, tasteless food and other inconveniences of travel, I’m going to concentrate on the 6000 hours that each of our birthmothers carried Andrew, Joseph, Rachel and Anna, and on how each of those hours was a choice greater than self.
And most of all I'm going to concentrate on all the hours Michelle put into our marriage, our family, and our adoptions. She has truly carried the load in each effort, and we are so much richer for her efforts. Our journey to Anna Pearl has been hard. Almost 3 years of mind-numbing paperwork, exams, visits, etc... and she's accomplished this while raising and teaching 3 children at home, working in her career as a Physician Assistant and trying to keep track of a husband who is easily sidetracked by silly things like the newspapers, ball games and other minutia. She too makes choices greater than self, and she helps me be a better person.
We appreciate all your prayers and we hope you enjoy following our trip on the blog. As we say in the Navy, "Let the Journey Begin!"
