The Wal-Mart Baby: Chapter 1

Shortly after the birth of our 3rd child, Jubilee, while we were still sleep deprived and post postpartum-ly depressed, Sean and I mutually decided that our family was complete and Sean immediately went under the knife and got the dream vasectomy he had been wanting for some time. As Jubilee grew, the abandoned adoption plan still lingered in my mind. I was still feeling hurt from our past experience and it seemed that everywhere we went, we kept hearing of successful adoption stories. I felt mildly frustrated and jealous. Here we wanted to open our home, and there were children just sitting in foster homes waiting for parents, and yet we get denied? How is that even ethical? We began to imagine how sweet it would be to have 2 girls and 2 boys. 

So around the summer of 2008 we decided to put the past behind us and apply again, this time directly with the County of San Bernardino. All the things we had heard about county adoptions painted a grim picture but we resigned ourselves to wait a long time if it meant getting a baby girl. 

The process begins by becoming approved as foster parents first, and then you are put on a list and you wait for an adoptable child to come along which matches your request. We started the long process of background checks, live scanning, TB testing, home inspections, reference checks, personal history, medical history, and the list went on. We began our mandatory parenting classes, going every Saturday, all day long for several months. When we completed the final parenting class we were then allowed to begin the final step of approval, the home study! We were so excited! After many months of paperwork, we had one last step to becoming approved at last! 

This was April of 2009 and we felt so certain that God was going to bless us with a child, that we began to pray everyday for our future baby. We did some estimations that if we waited on a list for 2 or 3 years for a baby or young toddler, then our baby was probably being conceived right around April of 2009. So we prayed for this unknown child which we were certain God was going to bring to us eventually. We prayed for God to keep our baby safe and healthy.

The day before our long awaited home study interview and final home inspection, we received a phone call from CPS saying they were going to come to our home to speak with us about a serious problem they revealed in our file. The 2 women who came out were the directors of the approval process in their respective areas. They were very serious and from the looks on their faces, they were not happy with us. 

The women got right to the point. 

Our home was denied because CPS had seen a wooden paddle hanging on the wall in our kitchen. 

It was actually a wooden spoon.
With a face drawn on the spoon part.
And he was named Mr. Spoon.
And he made everyone laugh and rarely had he ever come in contact with anyone's bottom but he was hanging there in full view, and CPS was not amused. 

We had always looked to Christian psychologist, Dr. James Dobson for our parenting advise, and Dr. Dobson recommended only using a paddle if you spank your kids and never use your hand. That way the child would never fear that they would be hit by a parent out of the blue, and the parent could never react out of anger. Parents would be required to go get the paddle and it would be the tool for correction, not the parent. This made perfect sense to us and we tried to explain this reasoning to the ladies from CPS but they had a strong disgust for Christianity that was clearly evident and offensive to us. The told us that spanking was abusive and they said that they doubted we would ever be allowed to adopt because spanking was our "religious belief" and not a product of ignorance that a simple parenting class could remedy. They believed that we were unfit to ever adopt a child because we were Christians. So CPS recommend that we take a few years to attend as many Love and Logic classes as possible and if we could prove to CPS that we no longer believed in spanking, and we modified some other areas of our life, and we got rid of Mr. Spoon, then we could reapply in nothing less than 2 years time. They even went so far as to leave us with the warning that if we did not quit using the spoon then we could possibly loose out own children. I began crying when they were here because I was so upset and offended at the way the system worked, we were being discriminated against because of our beliefs and there was nothing we could do about it.

In the months that followed, I became very angry and cynical. My anger was targeted mainly at contemporary, "celebrity" Christians, like Steven Curtis Chapman, who had adopted a billion kids just because he had money and connections, and he would constantly spread the message to other Christians to adopt, and it was making me furious.  
Easy for him to say!
Hadn't we done everything we could to adopt? Maybe if Mr. Chapman had been honest with his social worker then he wouldn't have been so successful in his home study either.  If we weren't allowed to adopt because of our faith, then how were so many other so-called Christian's adopting when we all believe the same way? Something was wrong with the whole picture and the bitterness in me grew.

Then one day, in August of 2009, as I was driving to work, my Sirius radio lost reception and a Christian talk radio came through on the air waves.
The topic was (guess what?) Adoption. The host was interviewing a woooonderful, Christian (sure) couple who had sooooo generously opened their home to 5 (or was it 19?) Russian orphans (at $85K each!?) and they were launching their latest fundraiser (drug cartel?) to bring home another orphan, (19 orphans and no Mr. Spoon? who are they kidding...) 

It was this moment that I completely lost it. 

I began to sob and I began yelling upwards, "Why!!!??? Why can they adopt multiples and we can't adopt even 1?? What did I do wrong!!!!?? What am I currently doing wrong??? What is wrong with us!!? God you TOLD us to care for the orphans, and you have put a burden on my heart to adopt but You won't let it happen!!! WHY, WHY, WHY....." and it was in the middle of my breakdown that I heard an audible voice say to me, "I KNOW." 

That was it. 

I know. 

God knew. He told me he knew. He spoke to me in the middle of my frustration and I stopped crying. I had such an amazing, instant feeling of peace inside me. I no longer hated Steven Curtis Chapman. I was even happy for the Russian drug dealers on the radio. Everything in that moment changed and I was able to rest in the knowledge that God knew. And to me that meant, I am aware of the problem and I will fix it. Stop looking at everyone else, I know what you want, I am God and I am handling your situation.