Our Adoption Story — Part V. The Unadoption

For my 34th birthday, The Lady and I went out for sushi and discussed what I would do if she died. Given the previous 7 months, and what lay ahead, nothing about that felt strange.

Only 4 months after bringing home The Queen from Ethiopia, our son’s birthmother called us. She was pregnant again, and her circumstances had not improved since the previous year. But she had one hope: that this little girl could grow up with her biological half-brother. She told us this was the only thought stopping her from having an abortion.

Adopting again was not in our plans for that year. We were still adjusting to life with two toddlers, and had yet to discover the root cause of our daughter’s extensive developmental delays. We had no space: our finished basement was rented out, leaving us with 2 bedrooms and 1 1/2 bathrooms. Having spent all of our savings on our adoptions, we had nothing left to start a new process and no idea where the funds would come from. And as we floated the possibility with friends and family, we were met with incredulity and doubts about our sanity.

The Lady was on the phone almost daily with Birthmother, counseling her through a series of crises. Yet we both felt torn between her needs, and our own limited capacity. We couldn’t shake the sense that God was asking us to do the impossible.

One Sunday that spring, as Fr. Kevin preached a sermon aptly titled, “God’s Call: When You Don’t Have What It Takes,” I began reflecting on all the perfectly valid excuses that Biblical characters submitted upon receiving an assignment from God. The Lord wouldn’t take any of their excuses, and I knew then that He would not accept mine either. Apprehensive as we still were, The Lady and I both had tacit knowledge that we were called to adopt this child.

In the span of a few months, the impossible became possible. Our basement tenants bought their own house; despite our recent adoptions and the configuration of our house, an agency agreed to do our home study; I got an unexpected raise. We told Birthmother we would adopt her daughter, Kelsey.

Soon thereafter, I arrived home from work to find an unaddressed envelope full of cash stuffed into our mailbox, hand-labeled, “To help you bring home baby #3.” Adoptive families in our suburb threw us a fundraiser, and people we barely knew (plus a few friends) gave generously. Others — including a family leaving for the mission field — donated items for a yard sale that The Lady organized; one woman picked out a $10 item and then wrote a check for $1010. Large anonymous donations were repeatedly given through our church. For the first time since graduating high school, I asked to borrow money from my parents.

The Lady felt as if she were vicariously participating in Birthmother’s pregnancy, even visiting her in Texas to provide assistance. But the birthfather became more violent, and upon hearing of the adoption plan began threatening our family. It was increasingly apparent to everyone — except Birthmother — that she was going to keep this baby, and that adopting her could place us all in danger. Those closest to us become more concerned; visiting family in Kansas, I had a heated argument with my own father. Fearing that they were abdicating their fiduciary duty to us, our social worker and adoption lawyers held a conference call with The Lady and insisted that we stop the process.

Tearfully, she told them we couldn’t quit. This woman had given us our son, and now she needed us. We weren’t going to abandon her until she told us it was over. God had called us to walk the road of compassion: “to suffer with” her. We had given her our word. And maybe, deep down in my soul, I was still a Kansas farmer who believes that the measure of a man is whether he keeps his word.

Shortly after that sushi date, The Lady flew to Texas for the scheduled C-section and the conclusion of what we were then calling, in an attempt to inject some dark humor into the situation, “The Unadoption.” We had a fight before she left, one of the few in our marriage, because I feared she wasn’t taking sufficient precautions for her own safety. Sure enough, the birthfather tracked them down and waited for them in the hospital, armed and filled with rage; they fled Galveston, leaving everything in their hotel, and hid out west of Houston until receiving confirmation that he had left the city. After a few tense days, The Lady returned to Chicago, knowing that we had done all we could do and had gotten Birthmother to safety. I was never so relieved to see my wife alive, as when I picked her up from O’Hare that day.

One week later, Birthmother gave birth to Kelsey. Alone. As of this writing, she only sees her daughter occasionally; Kelsey’s special needs appear unaddressed and her living situation is unstable.

But she is ALIVE. Thanks to the generosity of so many, a woman was enabled to choose life for her daughter and didn’t have to walk through a crisis pregnancy alone. That — not protesting with signs, or voting for particular candidates, or blockading clinics — is what it truly means to be “pro-life.” When it came to saving an actual girl from an actual abortion, a surprising number of those who were most passionate about overturning Roe v. Wade didn’t seem to think that Kelsey was worth saving — or, at the least, that it should be someone else’s responsibility. It wasn’t until that year, that I took measure of the gap between empty rhetoric and genuine action. To declare that Kelsey’s life is valuable is not an abstract philosophical statement, but a summary of what we did.

After concluding our failed adoption, I added all the expenses incurred and all the gifts we received. Despite our initial bewilderment at how we would pay multiple bills that dwarfed the size of our checking account, nearly 82% of the funds we needed were donated in one form or another. Furthermore, the gap between what we received and what we spent was precisely equivalent to the cost of the home study. Every single dollar spent to support Birthmother or adopt Kelsey was covered by gifts.

Days after Kelsey’s birth, we learned that India had reopened for foreign adoptions, and sent in our application. We used that completed home study — the only portion of “The Unadoption” for which we paid with our own funds — to bring home our Indian daughters.