Emmanuel, God With Us

If you like, keep reading to see what God has been doing with our adoption as well as what He's been up to at McDonalds...

Four thoughts led Seth and I to adoption.

Thought #1: Either God is real or He isn’t. Either God is faithful or He isn’t.

Thought #2: Ok, God. You can have… this. And you can have… this. But my family? No, no. I’m sorry God, you cannot have that because that is all mine. You see, my family is healthy and happy and beautiful and if I give it to You, well, God, it’s possible that You might, you know, mess it up.  Hmmmm.

Thought #3: Back to Thought #1. 

Thought #4: Fine. Fine, God! We will listen to the ways that we feel pulled to creatively respond to the love that You gave first… even when it seems scary as hell.

These thoughts were simple. 

But simple is different than easy. 

First, there was the paperwork-- I am not an i crosser or a t dotter (see what I did there?). I throw a lot of details to chance assuming that things will work out for me, and the breezy attitude that makes me a decent mom to a large family is the same attitude that murders a dossier. Murders it. 

Second, adoption ethics were a lot to get our heads around-- all we wanted was an unwanted child and something so simple was much more convoluted than we ever thought it could be. 

And then there was Family— now that we had one of our own and it made our world spin, we felt passionately about keeping them together and wasn’t adoption, like, the exact opposite of that? 

As we prayed about our adoption and our clear call from the Lord to share what we saw as our greatest gift, our home, we submitted paperwork to Haiti. 

And waited. 

And waited some more. 

But while we waited, we felt a pull to pull our adoption paperwork out of Haiti… which was terribly inconvenient because we spent two years, a lot of dollars, and plenty of passion getting it there. 

Our wheels spun while we waited for a reasonable answer that settled our souls. 

Finally, it was Emmanuel, God with us, who settled our souls. 

Emmanuel happened to be a two year old boy from China with Downs syndrome left on a hotel door step. Seeing his picture and the way his prankish grin looked like a Sullivan baby’s prankish grin made our hearts feel unguarded, like we could fly as close to the sun as we darn well pleased. Emmanuel felt right. 

But. 

What would adopting a baby with Downs syndrome mean? Would we be lifelong parents? Would heart surgeries and other health issues rule our lives? Would our biological children resent us for the burden? Would our baby die before us and rip all of our hearts out? 

Either God is real or He isn’t. Either God is faithful or He isn’t. 

In an effort to not compartmentalize our faith, we have wrestled and rested on knowing that Emmanuel might not be easy, but it will certainly be beautiful. We will open our home and our hearts and go where He leads us, as close to the sun as He darn well pleases. 

I was having a particularly rough week trying to bring Emmanuel home because two of our forms were returned and had to be re-submitted. The details of all that this requires are terribly boring but let’s put it this way: When the lovely lady at the Secretary of State’s office sees me, she literally greets me with, “Ah, you again.” 

The other thing bringing me down was the thought of Emmanuel’s grief.

Emmanuel has been with a foster family for a year and a half and taking him from them makes me weep. I think about taking Wren from our family and how her heart would break, her little heart, that can’t quite articulate it all, and how it would silently break, from the inside, no explosives, and I thought about that and all of the sudden, adoption felt like the most backwards thing of all because everyone knows that a life takes longer to reassemble than it does to blow apart. And I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all worth it. 

In short, last week, I was wondering if we were making a mistake. Was this even wise?  On our last day of Christmas break after all of our festivities had slowed to a crawl, I took the kids to McDonalds to kill time before school started. Real quick: this neighborhood McDonalds that we go to has its share of characters. (Airports and my neighborhood McDonalds= best people watching there is.) My kids and I leave with a story every single time. Not only do they get to play and eat mystery meat, and I get to write a little while they get stuck in three story high tiny compartments that I don’t fit into, but also, every single time, we leave with a new way to talk about Jesus. This day was no different. 

There was a grandma there with her granddaughter and she engaged us with the common conversation starter, “Are they all yours?” When I answered yes, she asked if there were any twins involved. Sylas, understanding the subtext of these questions-- you really have your hands full-- chimed in that, “There’s actually another one on the way!” Before she had time to examine my post Christmas-I’ve-been-celebrating-for-three-months-straight-and-resolutions-haven’t-kicked-in-yet-belly I quickly explained that we were adopting from China. 

Her face lit up with genuine excitement and we continued to exchange stories. 

She was a widow at a young age and raised six children. Her husband was in the Navy. One of her kids was going through a hard time. Her oldest child was 18 when her youngest was born. We laughed about the chaos of a full house and compared notes about having children spread far apart versus one right after the other. We went through the data points of our lives revealing our hearts little by little, experiencing each other nearer and nearer. 

Something led me to confess that it wasn’t a busy house that overwhelmed me. Five children, I thought, would probably be ok. But instead it was the uncertainty of adopting a child with special needs. Our son, our son on the way, has Downs syndrome, I told her. 

When I said the words “Downs syndrome”, this friendly stranger slapped her hands on the table. Her mouth dropped open. Her hands went right to the side of her face. She burst into laughter. She clapped her hands. She leapt from her chair and then feeling uncertain about the hug I could tell she wanted to give me, she twirled in a circle instead. 

“Reeeeeeally????” she squealed. “Reeeeeallly?!! “Really, “ I laughed.  After her twirl, she contained herself a bit and called me to come sit down closer to her. She looked me hard in the eyes. If we weren’t strangers I’m certain she would have placed her hands on my shoulders and then she said this:  “Listen here. My daughter has Downs. And I need you to listen to me because it’s important that you know that you have just agreed to the best ride of your life by opening your home to this precious child. Do you hear me? Never, never, not even if I lived one hundred more years, could I ever attempt, could I ever come close to teaching my girl what she has taught me. Your house has never known such joy. I’m sure your children are delightful. I’m sure they are. But listen to me, I can’t believe that the day she was born, the day that I found out that she had Downs, I cried my eyes out. I can’t believe that she is the one I wept over. It makes me die laughing to this day! I need you to know this: This world, it’s backwards, do you know that? We insist on perfection. We reject what we think is broken. And I just need to tell you that sometimes we recognize God and sometimes we don’t. Do you know what I mean? Do you hear what I’m saying? Sometimes His disciples recognized Him. And sometimes they just didn’t. You have nothing to be afraid of. God is with you. Emmanuel, God is with you.”

I cried and hugged her and took her picture because I like to keep track of the people who have helped bring Emmanuel home. We talked about ten more minutes and then, as if mending my mood, repairing my week, strengthening my resolve weren’t enough, she wrote me a check. She wrote me a check. A big one. 

Sometimes we recognize God and sometimes we don’t. 

Can I tell you something? 

I didn’t want to talk to her. It was actually Sylas who invited her into our life. I would have smiled politely and told her there were no twins involved with small bit of pride and left it at that. Because the truth was that I didn’t want to be at McDonalds with my kids. I was killing time until school started. I was grumpy. I was grumpy because it’s sticky in there and I can’t eat anything except beets for the next two weeks because I’ve eaten cupcakes for the last twelve weeks and it pisses me off to smell everyone’s French fries. 

I was grumpy. 

But sometimes we recognize Him and sometimes we don’t. 

Similarly, I know that it is possible to know yourself without ever really overcoming yourself. 

And overcoming myself is held in my ability to recognize the Lord and how He’s moving and where He’s leading and who He’s using and who He isn’t.

And sin, or even something simpler than sin, a locked or sealed existence, is not powerful enough to hold back the work of God, but it sure can make you miss it.

My New Years Resolution, friends, is to overcome myself because I want to see everything. I want to recognize Him every single time. 

​Emmanuel, God with us.