Part IIJenGwo's Adoption(9th in the series)

Before our son, I hadn't thought an "accidental" adoption was possible...but our son's adoption was certainly unplanned and a surprise...and Ted's call to us precipitated a crisis for us.

By the time Ted called us, he and his wife had both felt certain in their conviction that God had told them we were to be Doug's family. The only problem, was God hadn't told US! Ted's call was a shock to us. Grant was already in "kid overload" and didn't feel emotionally or financially prepared for a third child. For my part, I knew we would never have had any of our children if we had waited until we could "afford" to have them, so one more didn't seem like a leap of faith to me, at all. But that isn't to say I didn't have reservations of my own. Grant's fears were practical, based in the nuts and bolts of every day survival. My fears were less tangible in nature. Fears of the unknowns presented by an older child who had special needs and baggage of his own and had already lived so many years outside of our realm of influence and control. I feared how his needs would impact our family. Everything seemed so balanced. The girls got along with each other beautifully...our life was going smoothly... I agonized over what impact another child would have on our family's balance. Adoption is so PURPOSEFUL. If you have a child with special needs born to you, it isn't your fault if that child's needs cost the family deeply...but, if you ADOPT a child with special needs, it is very much your fault if those needs then negatively impact your other children. I'm not saying this is true, but it is what I FELT...it is what haunted me.

At that point in time, Ted had not yet met Doug. He was convinced that Doug didn't really have any "special needs" even though he possessed a state-issued special needs card. From what Ted had been told by the missionary that had asked him to take Doug in, he was confident that all Doug needed was love and firm discipline. Even then, though, I think I knew in my heart that Doug had significant special needs. I can't remember ever thinking otherwise. What I remember most of the six days that followed Ted's call was the weight of that decision bearing down on both Grant and I.

Grant had never said he wanted a son...and, since we had chosen to adopt from China, it pretty much had been an unspoken, foregone conclusion that our children would all be girls...but, now, here was someone holding out a son to us and telling us, "He's yours!". Part of me yearned to say "yes". Part of me wanted a SON...wanted Grant to have a son. Part of me worried about the unknowns. In the end, we both just wound up on our knees, totally not knowing what answer to give Ted. We prayed and prayed...and we fasted...and God whispered into our hearts that JenGwo WAS our son.

Six days after Ted's late night call had come, telling us about this five year old boy, we called Ted and told him we would like to adopt JenGwo.

Doug's adoption was so different than either of the girls'. From Ted's first call to us until our son was flying home to us (already legally ours, an adoption by proxy finalized before we had even laid eyes upon him) took only eight months. I'm glad it didn't take any longer. It was a very hard eight months. After Doug arrived at the Children's Home, it became immediately evident that he needed more than just "love and discipline". Doug was quite a handful at the Children's Home. Each report we received seemed grimmer than the one before. We had begun the adoption process in mid-November. Doug arrived at the Children's Home around Thanksgiving. From the time he arrived, we received only negative reports. Each communication seemed to hold worse information than the one before. My lowest point was just before Christmas. We had received a cheerful, newsy Christmas letter from the Home. There was a good deal of personal handwritten comments in it as well. I began reading the letter aloud to Grant and the kids the moment I opened it. I had read aloud all the typed portion and moved on to a lengthy handwritten section when I suddenly ran on to some horrific suppositions regarding our child. I remember stopping in mid-sentence, the wind knocked out of me, while I hurriedly skipped down a few lines in the paragraph hoping that Darcy would not pick up on the fact that I had just edited the reading of that letter on the fly. The staff was still in the process of getting to know JenGwo. I think they felt a responsibility to alert us to any potential problems there might be...to the point that we were notified of even just fears of what might possibly be...later to be told that hadn't turned out to be the case after all. What Grant remembers most about that time of waiting was feeling like a yo-yo as information flowed in to us, unfiltered. I don't think the staff comprehended how devastating vague suppositions can be to waiting parents. That Christmas letter was the beginning of our personal decision not to share any further potentially negative information with family or friends. Emotionally Grant and I just shut down into survival mode. Sometimes you cannot logic through things, because logic would stop you from doing what you need to do. You just have to hold on to what God has whispered in your heart and stop your ears to all fears shouting inside your head...block out your own fears and shut out the fears of those who care.

Our social worker, who had been a part of our lives for nearly a decade, seeing us through both Darcy and Rayna's adoption, and who cared about our family deeply, strongly advised us against proceeding with Doug's adoption. She recognized disconcerting red flags in the information we had at hand. She warned us that he could possibly be a danger to our daughters. And, she was right. Based on the information we had, we were taking a terrible risk. Fortunately, the most troubling of that information turned out to be erroneous and found-less...but she had no way of knowing that at the time, nor did we. By that time, it felt like so many people had begun trying to talk us out of it. Even our pastor, who we were very close to, told us he thought we were making a mistake. So, we quit sharing with our friends, our pastor, and even our social worker new information we received. We just kept the negative information to ourselves. It was already hard enough pushing past our own fears without having to feel like we had to defend our decision to friends who simply had our best interests at heart.


(The photo above was the only photo we had of Doug in those days that we agonized in our decision whether to begin the adoption or not. This photo had been taken several years earlier, one week after his third birthday. Looking at this photo now, touches my heart so deeply. One little boy standing so alone...smiling! That's my son. And wearing antlers...even in costume, back then! He has always been one to accessorize!)