On January 23rd, 2018, we met Will for the first time.
On January 24th, 2018, Will, Hubby and I signed the official papers and he became our son.
On January 25th, 2018, he turned 14, the age at which he would have forever lost his chance for a family and lived the rest of his life in the "second orphanage".
On January 24th, 2021, we started Will's 17th birthday celebrations a bit early. We couldn't resist taking these two out to dinner seeing as though in a few days, they will both be 17 years old...
that is until February 12th when Caleb turns 18!!
Yikes!
We spent the evening talking about girlfriends and futures and time we could not get back and as I sit here tonight contemplating Will's "could have been"...
I am eternally grateful for what is now, his "could be".
During dinner he asked me what my dream job had been when I was a little girl. The question is a simple one, but for Will it is one full of hope and an understanding of what a future is.
It has finally settled in and taken up residence in his heart and the hope is reflected in his ease.
I don't always understand but I have learned to always trust.
On January 25th, 2021, Will turned 17 and he has the rest of his life ahead of him, a life that I am so grateful to now be a part of.
I will never forget that first day, the day that we met our 4th son.
He was nervous but ready. He gently took my hand and trusted. He placed his trust in those he could not see and could not understand.
Yes, his life is better and yes, he now has a hope and a future but on the night of Will's 17th birthday, we know we are the ones with such a gift!
Will has a wisdom that comes from hard, which could have hardened him but the Lord protected his heart and that gentleness with which he took my hand has followed him home and we are blessed.
There is a difference in his pictures then and now...
just as there is a difference in OUR pictures then and now.
This conversation and the post that flowed from it, happened one year ago, yet we live out the aftermath of this and so many other hurts, every day.
ONE YEAR AGO...
Lucy: "I was in a rehabilitation hospital and my nanny beat me with a shoe."
Will: "You only got one beating? I got many beatings."
Lucy: "No, I got many beatings too."
This was the conversation yesterday in the car as we headed out to shop for Christmas gifts for friends.
Sometimes in the ordinary of our lives, the reality of their past lives hover above, just out of reach, until...
until a memory comes or a conversation happens and we are thrust back into a world so foreign to most of us that it just can't be real.
Surely my children were never beaten, surely they never went to bed hungry or afraid, surely they were never abused or made fun of, just because they were different or just because they were orphans.
But they were...
Surely my children were never abandoned, left alone where their cries went unanswered, only to be taken to a place where their cries continued to go unanswered.
But it happened...
I know some of my posts are hard and uncomfortable to read but my kids' lives were hard and uncomfortable and I guess I am desperate for you to know because I am desperate for the other ones who are just like my children and just like your children, to be rescued from their realities, to be rescued from the beatings and the abuse and the mocking and the scorn.
For those of you who have met my children, have met Lucy and Will, can you imagine them there?
For those of you who have not met my children, have not met Lucy and Will, can you imagine your children there?
And yet, there are millions who still wait and millions who will never be rescued, will never know a loving touch or what kindness feels like or how precious they are.
As I advocate for waiting children who need to come home, please look at them, really look at them and picture what their lives would be like if someone like you called them son or daughter.
This isn't how it is supposed to be. What has meaning? What is important?
In a heartbreaking moment, I am flung out of superficial and back into real...
Last year, in China, we celebrated with Will and for the first time in his 14 years...
he had a birthday cake.
He wasn't quite sure what it all meant but this year...
This year, he understood the cake and the candles and the singing and... the gifts...
especially the gifts...
*grin*
So, we invited a few very special friends over and we celebrated Will.
There is no way we can make up for the last 14 years of our son's life but with the help of the One who knows Will's past, present and future, we can help him to learn and grow and trust in a forever kind of love.
So as we wish Will a Happy 15th Birthday and a Happy One Year Home Day, here are just a few things that we have learned about our son.
Will loves to laugh and as his grasp of English has grown, so has his sense of humor!
Will learned to navigate our home very quickly and loves to help. He helps to feed the dogs, unload the dishwasher and take out the trash.
Will loves our pets and just like every other kiddo (and adult) in this house, takes great comfort from their presence.
Will may be 15 but he thinks playgrounds are totally "lit" (my daughters are "gringing" as they read this - haha) and has mastered the monkey bars!
Will has inspired many friendships at school with his ability to overcome and have joy in the midst of it all and has been enveloped with so much warmth and compassion.
Will never dreamed he would be able to go to high school...
Will tolerates soccer...
but loves Karate and my treadmill.
Will has an amazing ability to hear and replicate pieces of music and according to his Band teacher, has a very finely tuned ear. He is now playing the trumpet and will audition for the All County Jr. Band in the next few weeks!
Will worries about me and how much I am eating - I am a vegetarian and he is so not!
Will loves to swim and go to the beach but showers are debatable!
Will quickly learned the joys of JuJu's house and exactly where the candy basket is stashed!
Will loves to play the WII and has learned how to set it all up, find the game he wants and play.
Will yearns to be independent, works hard to learn where things are and how to accomplish tasks but resists the cane.
Will loves to cook - and eat!
Will is learning Braille rapidly and loves to read his sentences to me like, "My room is not messy. The girls room is so messy!" Truth! We laughed and laughed!
Will is also learning English so well that the translator hardly ever makes an appearance these days. His latest favorite expression...
"Girls, chill out!"
Yeah buddy, I feel your pain!
*grin*
Will loves SPICY food and I do mean SPICY!
And despite the lack and the neglect and the harshness he has experienced, Will has a kind and compassionate heart and we pray that he is beginning to understand the truth behind the feelings and what it all means.
How could we have known...
If we had known would we have resisted the incredulous plan laid out before us?
Would we have rejected the hard, the uncomfortable, the trials?
Twenty three years ago as we committed ourselves to one another, we were blissfully unaware of what awaited us.
While I had my suspicions that I would be living the "Tool Time" life with Tim (more power) Taylor and my three sons...
I was oblivious to all that the Lord had for us.
How could we have known that after three rowdy boys, the Lord would bless us with a baby girl?
How could we have known that as we lived our lives of blissful ignorance, there were four other precious ones who waited for us?
How could we have known their suffering and their lack? You think you know but you don't, not really, not until you have lived out the consequences of their suffering and their lack and the deeply embedded scars that exhaust you both.
How could we have known how their journeys would change ours?
Twenty three years ago we could have never envisioned this life He had for us. It is so contrary to what the world grooms us to be.
We could not have known but the Lord did and as He gently drew us near, our hearts and our plans began to to look less and less like they did as we stood before the alter of our selves. As He revealed, He equipped and as He equipped, He transformed our lives.
No, twenty three years ago we could not have known that we would have 8 children, that we would travel to China 3 times, that we would leave a part of our hearts there and that at the ages of 55 and 50, we would bring home our 14 year old, visually impaired son whose complete trust in us manifests how we are to trust God, even though we cannot see and cannot always understand.
Happy 15th Birthday Will.
We are so thankful that you are now a beloved son and a brother and a grandson and a nephew and a cousin. Thank you Lord for opening our eyes and our hearts.
What if we had ignored that still small voice telling us to go...
What if the business of our lives had drowned out the beauty of His promise...
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
and the clarity of His directive...
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
This fallen world leaves a residue that is difficult to wash clean, a sludge that clouds what is pure and faultless.
What if we had believed the lies...
We spent many years guided by those lies, the lies that pollute our hearts so much that we cannot see...
we cannot see their faces....
we don't want to see their faces...
because once our eyes have been opened...
we have no excuse...
once our eyes have been opened...
it may wreck us, wreck our "perfect" lives and wreck our blissfully ignorant hearts.
It has been a year since Will came home and the "what if's" haunt me...
What if...
Two little words that carry so much consequence.
What if I don't do the laundry?
Well, no one would have clean clothes.
What if I don't go to the grocery store?
Well, we would have to eat the can of clam chowder that has been sitting in our pantry for a few years now!
There are so many "what if's" in our lives but the "what if'" in an orphan's life can mean life or death and that gets lost on me most days as we struggle to maintain "normal" in a world that tells us we are so not...
but when it is quiet, the "what if's", my children's "what if's", settle in and I get lost in the reality that they faced without me and the "normal" we would be lost in without them.
Because we would be lost, still believing that we were "good" enough, still loving and living superficially and never going deeper than what was comfortable.
Have you ever seen the hurt in the eyes of one of your biological children, one who has not known true suffering, as she hears her brother and sister casually share about their past beatings?
What if her heart had never been given the chance to grow outside of her own comfort?
What if our conversations had never gone past our selves...
What if...
I think most people can grasp the dire consequence for an orphan who never comes home, but what is more inconvenient to acknowledge is the "what if" for the family, that forever family who never brings that orphan home, that forever family who averts their eyes and their hearts...
because looking into the eyes of a hurting child wrecks you, wrecks your comfort, wrecks your normal and most families don't want to be wrecked.
What if...
Our children's "what if" carried tragic earthly consequences but our family's "what if" may have likely carried tragic eternal consequences.
What if we begin to recognize that Jesus didn't die on the cross so we could live in comfort, take yearly vacations and cocoon our families from the broken-ness in this world.
That was the question waiting for me on Google translate.
Em was helping to translate for Will as I drove them all to karate. Her face fell as she showed me Will's translated question, her eyes locked with mine as we both soaked in the hope behind this question and fought back tears as the immense-ness of the reality of the moment sunk in .
We haven't had to use the translator in a while but this question, he wanted to get right. He was excited to ask it and as he sat in the backseat anticipating my reply, I gathered myself yet again and dug deep for a voice that didn't tremble, a voice that held hope but hope that was intertwined with his reality.
He was waiting and he was listening but so were Em and Lucy and Maggie. My girls, his sweet sisters, knew, but as my answer hung heavy in the moment, the four of us somehow wished that answer could be different.
How hard it is to watch a heart break, to witness hope diminish. It would be so easy to get stuck here but the Lord steps in. He teaches me so much in the midst of the heartbreak and the hopelessness. He redeems all of it, every single heart break, every single drop of hope lost...
These kids y'all, how the Lord has used them to mold and shape me, to work on my selfish heart, to understand what it means to love like Jesus and what it means to BE loved BY Jesus.
While our culture concerns itself over picking just the right schools or which caterer to use for the Christmas party or finding just the right fabric for the drapes in the den or the Acura over the BMW or finding the perfect, matching smocked outfits for the school picture or granite counter tops vs quartz or whether to vacation in Hawaii or Disney this year or maybe we should buy all organic foods...
Meanwhile...
There are millions of children who will never go to school, much less the "right" school.
There are millions of children who will never have a Christmas, much less a catered Christmas party.
There are millions of children who will never have a home to hang drapes in.
There are millions of children who will never even own a car.
There are millions of children who will never have their own clothes, much less perfect smocked outfits.
There are millions of children who would love to be able to live in a real home, regardless of the counter tops, granite or otherwise.
There are millions of children who don't even know what a vacation is.
There are millions of children who are wondering if they will eat today and don't care if it is organic or not. They are STARVING!
I am honestly not trying to condemn or to point fingers or to guilt anyone into anything but our kids, these gifts from God, have served as a wake up call for our family and while we are still very guilty of stressing over worldly things, we are a little more able to see the things that are truly important.
We don't always get it right but we try a little harder now. Our kids have shown us what true perseverance and trust looks like and we will never look at the world, or our lives, the same again...
At least I hope we don't because the hard that we have stepped into has awakened us from our "American Dream" and has revealed a world in which there is pain but it is from this pain that great joy is born.
Will will likely never see our faces...
and Lucy will probably never walk with ease...
and Maggie will possibly always battle her body...
and Lizzie will never be able to change her beginnings...
and while all of these realities are hard, they have allowed us to feel, I mean really feel, a down to the depths of our souls kind of feel and oh the conversations we have had and the prayers we have prayed and the transformations that have followed.
Yep, that question, that one simple but shattering question was difficult to answer...
but I did...
and I am certain the answer was difficult to hear...
but he did...
and we both survived and took one more step closer to each other and to Him.
