Charles' Adoption Journey

12/24/2000

   My father died on September 19^th 1996.  As I looked up at the clock, it read 1:42pm and we were in UCLA’s cancer center.  I recall lying by his bedside the night before he passed.  I was experiencing the death of a loved one for the first time in my life.  Witnessing death up close is horrible, watching someone die of cancer seems worse and watching someone you love losing their battle against it is even worse.   My father died of liver cancer that day.  

   It all started one morning when we had to rush him off to the hospital, because huge amounts blood was detected in his stool.  Days later in the hospital, he lost his sight and then lost all movement.  Drugged out on Morphine and staring aimlessly, the only functions he possessed that night was his ability to breathe – I’ll never forget the labor in every breath –, to feel – I can still see the pain writhing in his face –, to comprehend – I still remember the tears running down his face that night.

In intervals of broken sleep, I would awake disoriented and in disbelief.  I'd  scream without making a sound as the reality would set in.  He’s actually going to die and for the first time in my life, he’s not going to be there to lean on.  I asked God that night.  "Why are you allowing him to suffer like this?  What more do you want from him?"  Suffering seemed all that was left. I asked God, "If it’s for me, what do you want me to know?" 

A pause and in that still moment, I sat quietly and listened to the sounds of people dying all around the cancer ward.  Some went about it quietly and others wept.  Most seemed to go through it alone.  I wondered, what thoughts must have been going through their minds at this moment? Where were these people when it came to eternal matters? 

It’s said that during the last moments in your life you see images of your life flash before you.  I know what some of those images would be for me: the images of spirited family dinners, my sisters and me jumping around in the back seat of our Ford LTD, opening Christmas presents, sitting quietly next to my Dad in the Golf cart and feeling the wind blow in my face, whispering in the quiet with my lover, hearing my baby sweetly call out Ah-Pa, watching my girls sleep, before I leave for work.  As I approach 40, I start to reflect more and more about these things. 

I still remember the day before my father lost his ability to speak, he was blind but lucid and he wanted to talk to each of us, one by one.  I remember when it came Hedy’s turn.  Before she even got to his bedside, she started to break down and cry.  Six years into our marriage – the thought of not having delivered a namesake was more than she could bear.  He tried to comfort and assure her that everything would turn out ok.  But somehow, this only made it seem worse.  I stood in the corner of the room and I wept, because I could feel her pain.  Cause you see, Hedy and I were diagnosed with unexplainable infertility.  We went through what seemed like an endless battery of treatments: IVF, artificial insemination, ICSE, eastern medicine & acupuncture. All to no avail.  Fertility treatments are incredibly stressful, not only for the body, but also for the soul.  Hormone injections twice a day, producing 10 times the number of eggs that a body naturally produces, and nausea.  And all this cannot compare to the incredible burden of sensing loved ones watching, hoping, praying and waiting.   Compound this with the agonizing wait, followed by that fateful call from the doctor to hear the results.  The failure, the disappointment and the thought of breaking the news and of having to do it all over again.  You could say that I was an observer, but we were in this together.  You share the grief when you have to watch the one you love go through so much pain; but the guilt comes from knowing that she’s doing this for you.

  Reflecting back, Hedy and I truly believed that this had been God’s plan for our lives from the beginning.  We couldn’t understand why God would not want children in our lives.  We loved children and He’d blessed us with a strong Christian marriage and more than our fair share of prosperity.  We prayed fervently for God to grant our request.  The prayers and treatments proved unsuccessful, so we kept wondering what must have been in God’s plan?

Rick Warren writes in his book “The Purpose Driven Church”, that God is doing incredible things in the World today, he writes that people should stop praying, “Lord, bless what I’m doing” and start praying, “Lord, help me to do what you are blessing.”  Hedy and I started to pray in this way and that’s when we became open to the idea of adoption.  We went in believing that if God had wanted us to adopt, he would light a longer pathway, bless every step and reveal His plan for us.  That’s when it all started.  We'd reached an inflection point in our lives and the course of our lives had been altered forever.  The adoption journey has been everything and more than what we could have ever imagined.  We questioned whether we could ever love a child that was not of our blood, but we came to realize that although blood ties are strong, the bonds forged by God are much stronger.  From the moment I first held Emma, I knew that she was meant for us.  No match could have been more perfect than her for us. 

Now we experience the joy of Christmas every day with Emma.  That face and the expression when she sees us, fills our hearts with joy.  Every morning as we sneak into her room and see her standing in her crib.  Her face, pressed up against the bars, bursting into a tremendous smile as she anticipates being lifted and hugged.  If there was ever a picture of joy in the dictionary, it would look like Emma.  If you didn’t understand the word, you would certainly understand the picture.  She is evidence of God’s incredible handiwork, testimony to God’s faithfulness and evidence of the power of prayer.  We named her Emma because it will be a constant reminder to us of her namesake Emmanuel, which means “God with us”.  We’re a family now and we are all joined at the heart.

Drift back to those wonderful moments and then imagine the most horrifying of thoughts, a situation where your child is taken away from you and he/she is alone in the world with no one to hug them and only the bare necessities to survive.  He/she would have little hope for a bright future.  Imagine the grief you would feel for them and then realize that this is the life of an orphaned child.  God has far greater capacity to love than you or I.  Imagine His grief and pain in knowing that 10’s of thousands of children are abandoned every year.  Through our adoption journey, God has revealed incredible things.  We began by understanding the reality of an orphans life.  Our experience was with the Korean orphanage system.  Today, one out of every two children put into the orphanage system, will stay orphaned.  10,000 children are introduced every year.  Just imagine 90 infants sleeping three to a crib with overflow infants sleeping on the floors.  Just imagine them crying with no one to pick them up outside their scheduled intervals.   Just imagine if these were your children suffering.  By the standards of this world, Korean orphanages are probably the most efficient and humanely run operations in the world.  But by God’s standards, this is unacceptable.  These children are being robbed of their childhood.  They are receiving far less than what God had intended for them.  They are missing out on the tenderness and affection of a loving family & community.

This is why we feel so passionately about the Newsong Adoption Ministry.  The adoption ministry is about connecting abandoned children with loving parents.   It is about helping you think through some of challenging questions we all go through. It is about holding your hands through the adoption process.  It is about welcoming you into the adoption community and supporting you once your adopted child arrives.  If you are struggling with infertility and your heart has been stirred by this message, we urge you to consider adoption.  If you have children and have thought about the idea of opening your home to more children, we urge you to consider adoption.  If you are a human, there is nothing more humane.  If you are Christian, there is nothing that is more Christ-like.  For it says in Matthew 25: 35,36,40:

 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

"The King will reply, `I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

The last memory I had of my father was when the angels came down from heaven and took him home.  I recall gathering around him as we read the 23^rd Psalms.  We all cried.  We then began to pray, and during this prayer we asked God to take him home.  As soon as the words left our mouths, my father’s spirit left us.  I can still remember the magnificent light reflecting from his face.  The pain and struggle turned to serenity, and the tears turned into an incredible expression of joy.  September 19^th 1996 was the day my father died.  He died a very rich man because he understood that when you leave this earth, you leave behind all the things you own, but you take with you all the things you give away. 

September 19, 1996 was the day I lost my father, but it was also the day I brushed the presence of God.  At that moment, everything seemed perfectly clear.  As a result of that experience, I came to realize that eternal things matter most.  The question Hedy and I come back to is, where are we investing our talents?  Is it on the temporal things in this life or on the things that have eternal consequences?  We have a dream that one day, we return to the place where every child has a home because the faithful of God have said, Here am I Lord, use me.