We Must Not Grow Weary in Doing Good

 

 I was blessed with three pregnancies, all of which resulted in the birth of a healthy (well, healthyish) baby boy. Some of these pregnancies were hard, especially the labors. I didn’t know how long labor could last until my third pregnancy where I was in labor for five days, in the middle of a heat wave, with a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old at home! Yes, my contractions were 3-5 minutes apart that whole time. But little did I know that the waiting for these precious babies was easy compared to what was ahead!

 As my pattern had proved out, by the time my third baby was about 1 year old, my heart started longing for another. The thing was, three c-sections in four years had devastated my body and it was clear that I couldn’t do that again, not any time soon at least. That was ok though, because since I was 16 years old, I’d had a heart for adoption, international adoption in particular. I think it was influenced by the time I spent with my niece when I was that age. She and her parents spent about a year here in the states from their home in Japan and while her mother struggled with deep depression, I got the blessing of being able to be a care giver for this sweet, baby girl. So while my womb had a “Closed for Refurbishment” sign up, my heart sought out my daughter. We knew we wanted to adopt a girl from the get go. My oldest son said when my youngest was born, “Mom, you keep having babies and they keep coming out boys. When am I gonna get a sister?” But where to adopt from?

 As an empath, my heart just broke seeing all the children around the world without a home. I wanted to take care of them all, but I knew that I had limits, well the logical part of my head knew that but my heart still wanted to do it. Our primary involvement internationally was with India, so logic said that this is where we should look to adopt, but that road was laden with trouble and danger. The more we looked into it, we realized that many if not most of the adoptions we had seen from India were barely legal at best. On top of that, my husband spent time on a trip he was taking there to investigate the situation and he visited an orphanage. You should have seen the look on his face when his host told him they were going to stop at the store on the way for pencils and rubbers to give the girls! In case you’re reading this from a country where that makes sense to you, where we’re from rubbers are condoms, so that was a shocking remark! Turns out the British-English of India has the word rubbers referring to pencil erasers, you know, the pink rubber ones. His biggest takeaway from his visit, though, was when he asked if the girls looked forward to being adopted. The staff member looked at him with dread and explained how that would be awful because it would give all the other girls false hope. You see, in India, at that time at least, they had a rule where they would only allow one international adoption for every two domestic ones. Because most of India is Hindu, they see the world through the lens of karma and believe that the situation into which you are born is the one you are intended to live out well, so that you might be born into a better one in your next life. Adoption would interrupt this cycle and effectively curse the child to be born next as a lizard or a cockroach or something, so no one wanted to do this. Because of this, there typically were no adoptions out of this orphanage. It was the girls’ home for their young years, until they were married off at the ripe old age of 13 or so. With that door closed, our eyes turned to the other country that we had become involved in, Liberia.

 I was fairly used to things in life being straight-forward. You learned the steps of how to do something, progressed through them, and accomplished it. I had gotten my driver’s license this way, opened a business, bought a house. We have laws and rules and you just have to read through them and figure out your path. Adoption taught me that this is not always the case. We started setting foot into international waters where our “rules” were their “guidelines.” There was no longer a clear path, and I was so grateful for our adoption agency to help us navigate because without it I don’t know how we would have sorted it all out. I was baffled at each hold up because it all seemed so simple to me. You give the person the paper, they sign it, you move on. You complete the steps they require, and then they approve you. But that’s not how it works in Liberia. So many of the workers there at that time were given little or no pay, so bribes or “fees” were the only way they supported their own families. This led to a murky, back-and-forth dance of trying to negotiate to bring my daughter home. While pregnancy was definitely difficult, it came with the blessing of having a clear end date, or due date. With adoption, we had no idea how long it would take. We watched friends of ours who had been believing they would bring their daughter home every month for a year. It was so hard on both of them! I didn’t want my daughter to have to go through that, so when I got to meet her, truly thinking I would be bringing her home with me, I didn’t even tell her that. I just got to know her and spent time with her. Good thing too because the tomorrows added up and the paperwork didn’t go through in time for her to be released to me before I left the country.

 I came home and endured the longest three months of my life as I waited and waited for paperwork that was sitting on some stranger’s desk. My true frustration at this point was that the hold up was on the American side now. I had seen how things worked in Liberia and had a little more empathy for that situation, but in America there seemed no good reason why a piece of paper that just needed a rubber stamp would sit on someone’s desk for SIX WEEKS! There was no phone number I could call. No website I could search for an update. Just a vague address on the other side of the state, but I had resolved that if I hadn’t heard from them by the end of the week I’d be driving there and sitting on the steps of whatever building I found until someone gave me news about my daughter! I had had to leave her in a war-torn country in an orphanage that had run out of food for days at a time multiple times over the last years, where everything she was given was taken from her and while I hadn’t witnessed it, I knew she was being abused. It KILLED me. Little did I know I was also suffering from Acute Lyme Disease that summer with high temperatures and wracking body pain. The doctors dismissed it as depression though with all I was dealing with...

 The wait stretched on and on. At the end of the summer, I decided I needed to get away for a weekend and reset my heart and mind in preparation for my daughter’s homecoming. I spent a weekend at a Bed and Breakfast going over my journals and praying over the situation. I came home refreshed and ready for what was next, but my husband felt the need to do the same. He took off, for Victoria, BC, and processed in his own way. By God’s grace, shortly after he returned, we got news that it was almost time to go! There was a flurry of activity, gathering needed items, buying tickets, ensuring needed vaccines were in order, and he was off! I waited on pins and needles at home with our three boys, as I’m sure my husband had before me, to see if he would, indeed, be allowed to bring her home, as I had not. But this time, it actually came true! My daughter came home to us!

So we must not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not give up.  Galatians 6:9

Here's the Thing: Today’s verse is precious to me for so many reasons. I’ve actually had it posted on my kitchen wall for years and years. Waiting can be hard. Trying to do good in the waiting, not seeing the results, not knowing what will come from it or when, is really hard! But I’m here to tell you, it is so worth it! My daughter is one of the most amazing people on the planet, and I am so blessed to be her Mom and have her as a part of our family. It was gut-wrenchingly horrifically difficult, but I’d do it again in a second for her!