Why we celebrate National Adoption Month
This November, my wife DeaNa and I have a new reason to celebrate adoption — our new grandson, Aiden.
Already being grandparents to two grandsons from our son Clint and his wife Rachel, we have been overjoyed to spend time with their kids and watch them grow. When our other son Jared and his wife Krystal shared that they felt called to open their home to a child in need and adopt, we were excited from the start. What we didn’t expect was for the process to be so challenging.
Jared and Krystal came to visit DeaNa and me over Christmas in 2012, and while we were walking through a hallway at church, a bulletin board with the names and photos of children awaiting adoption caught their eye. Recently married, they had begun to consider starting a family, but adoption wasn’t something that had even crossed their minds. After much prayer and research, they started the process of trying to adopt an eight-year-old little girl named Alina from a Russian orphanage.
After eight long months, they had submitted all of the appropriate paperwork, saved the considerable sum of money required to complete an international adoption, and were excitedly scheduling their first visit to the orphanage on their journey to becoming parents, already feeling very connected to Alina. Unfortunately, world politics intervened and Russia closed its doors to American families looking to adopt Russian orphans. We never met Alina, but she was the first of three failed adoptions that hit our family hard.
Shortly after that, Jared and Krystal applied to host Anastasiya, another little girl from Ukraine. After being overjoyed to be approved, they prepared a room for the six-year-old, purchasing clothes and all the things they thought she would want. As they loaded up the car to drive to Atlanta to pick her up, they received another shattering phone call: she had been adopted by an Italian family shortly before boarding the plane to America. After a second failed adoption, they returned home downtrodden and with little hope of ever successfully adopting a child.
God works in mysterious ways, however, and they received a call from the same agency just three days later asking if they would be willing to open their home for the summer to another little girl from Ukraine, Veronika. After a roller coaster of emotion and reams of paperwork without ever even getting to meet Alina or Anastasiya, they were so excited to finally get to pick Veronika up and bring her home to the room that was all ready for their child.
Veronika was a joy, and she was the first child that was able to live in their home and that DeaNa and I actually got to meet and know. She was a perfect fit for our family, and Jared and Krystal quickly began the adoption paperwork to make her a Ribble permanently. Unfortunately, she was required to return to Ukraine to wait out the year-long adoption process. I can only imagine what it feels like to put a child you already love as your own on a plane back to an orphanage, but I know that was an incredibly difficult day for Jared and Krystal. While she was gone, they moved forward in the adoption process, and she was able to come visit for another month over Christmas while we waited for the paperwork to go through.
There is something amazing in being able to celebrate a Christmas with a child who has never before experienced it with a happy family, and Veronika truly became one of us that month — she was in our Christmas card that year, and we were all eager for her adoption to be completed. Again, Jared and Krystal were legally required to send their little girl back to an orphanage in Ukraine to await the completion of the adoption process.
Finally, the time came for Jared and Krystal to go to Ukraine and bring home their daughter for good. What they found at the orphanage was unthinkable — Veronika was withdrawn, seemed to be drugged, and was very afraid of people. An “uncle” came and took Veronika away the day before Jared and Krystal would have brought her home, and my son and daughter-in-law were powerless to stop it. Losing an already beloved part of our family in that manner was one of the most difficult things we have had to deal with. The fear that she was being abused and the Ukranian government was allowing it to happen made matters so much worse. We aggressively fought for answers through every available channel, and have found out little other than that she is likely in Siberia with a relative. I still pray for her every day.
It took some time for Jared and Krystal to really be able to consider another attempt at adoption after so much loss, and I think the whole family needed to be able to process what had happened. Amazingly, the social worker that had supported our son and daughter-in-law through the entire adoption process contacted them this past October with wonderful news — they had been matched with a three-year-old little boy in Grenada who needed a family. Still reeling from the failed attempts to adopt in the past, they scheduled a trip to meet him in November and immediately fell in love.
Aiden’s adoption proceeded smoothly, and he was able to Skype with his new mom and dad every day as they worked through the adoption process. After being able to spend time getting to know him, we learned what a joy and blessing he would be for our family and began counting down the days until we could finally bring him home.
In the end, Aiden became a U.S. citizen and officially a Ribble on July 4, 2015. We could not be happier to have him in our family. He is a bright little rascal that keeps his parents on their toes and DeaNa and I smiling. We are grateful that their adoption story was finally a success after almost three years of trying, and look forward to many years of spoiling Aiden and our other grandsons.
We are very happy to celebrate National Adoption Month. I hope our family’s story will give you hope if you are working through the adoption process, and if you haven’t considered it, give you insight into the wonderful things that can result when you open your home to a child in need. Every child deserves a loving family.
