Real Family
by Jennifer Armerding
"All of a sudden this family was born, Oh, Happy Adoption Day!" (John McCutcheon, 1993)
When struggling with what to write for this article in just a few words, a motherly friend from the UK challenged me, "If you had it to do over again, would you do it?" "YES!" was my emphatic reply. "Ok. Why? Write to another young adult out there who has the idea of adopting children with special needs in their heart." Here goes:
July 29th, 1998. Malcolm Sherman and Dana Charles became my legal sons. They were my sons at heart long before that. In the early nineties I ran a daycare in my home. One day wee Malcolm rolled in in a bright blue stroller accompanied by his birth mother. He was tiny and scared of this new environment. He needed assistance to do anything. Anything. He doesn't hold his own head up. He doesn't talk, at least not the way others do. He has almost no control of his hands. By and by he ended up living with me all the time. I was head over heals in love with this baby boy, and still am.
Those of you who are familiar with Henri Nouwen's book, Adam: God's Beloved, (1997), will be able to create a picture of Malcolm in your minds. He is a child, and has a unique personality, but if the world doesn't look too closely he probably looks identical to another person/vegetable. Nouwen says, "Whoever speaks about Adam as a vegetable or animal-like creature misses the sacred mystery that Adam is fully capable of receiving and giving love."
Dana is as different from Malcolm as can be, but label wise he also has cerebral palsy. He is engaging and talkative and fiercely independent. He walks with shiny blue crutches and notices things with his shining black eyes. If you would care to discuss Harry Potter, Aslan, Bilbo Baggins, or anything in Walt Disney's repertoire he is your man.
Since becoming a foster mother for Malcolm, many more children in need have come and gone from our home and our lives. Dana came a year to the week after Malcolm officially arrived. I was able to adopt both on the same brilliant, warm day with my family and dear friends around us. Would it be trite to say that I don't feel I deserve the blessings that the boys are in my life?
So, what do I want to say? Things can be hard. People can be downright challenging. Parenting can be more than I can cope with some days. It is so easy to question why God stuck these poor kids with me, a single mother who doesn't give them the range of experiences with which I was lucky enough to grow up. No father's input. But no, that isn't true. They have a Father. God. I remind myself to trust that He put them here and He will provide whatever their little hearts need as they grow into men.
God hasn't put any of us in the identical position, so please don't feel that His call on your life is the same as mine, or better or worse. I have struggled personally very much in the past couple years, and in particular the past six months.
A sentence in Philip Yancey's 2001 book, Soul Survivor, leapt out at me as a summary of my life, but slightly altered. He writes, " If I had to define my own theme, it would be that of a person who absorbed some of the worst the church has to offer, yet still landed in the loving arms of God."
My conclusion is that MY theme is that of a person who, in her struggle to define what it means to be REAL, to be a woman, to be a mother, and to be a Christian, has fallen more than she has walked, yet still lands DAILY in the loving arms of God."
p.s. Dana and I felt it was important for people to know that we were reading Shel Silverstein's book, A Light in the Attic, in the photo.
