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Road To Adoption
What Led Us To Adopt – Again!
an Article by Ginny Wells
[Note: This article was originally written as an e-mail to friends and relatives in the fall of 2002, and describes the events, activities and circumstances that led a 51-year-old husband and his 48-year-old wife to expand their family with a second adoption. This piece was written before the Chinese government had referred 15-mo.-old Sheng Guan Ling for our consideration in 2003. As of today, 1 Dec 2007, she is our happy, healthy 5 ½ year old daughter, Krista Li-Ming Wells.]
"It has been an enormous lesson in faith to ... see us enter into this incredible mystery of what does it mean to embrace a child who didn't have a family and now we are her family. Now we are a part of her and she's part of us -that's what God has done with us -- and that's what the Gospel is."
-- Steven Curtis Chapman, recording artist, adoptive father of Shaohannah of China
"Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed."
On Memorial Day Weekend, we attended an adoption reunion at the Cleveland Zoo for those who had adopted through the European Adoption Consultants (EAC) agency. There were 2,000 of us strong, and at one point, we were organized to form a parade. Each child received a flag from their country of birth, and a sign -- the name of the city of the orphanage where the child once lived. Children were everywhere... clinging to their adoptive mother's or father's hand... and with the other hand proudly and gleefully waving a flag of their heritage, e.g. -- Vietnam, Cambodia, Romania, Guatemala, China, Russia ... Waxing philosophical, I first thought how beautifully symbolic this was of adoption, holding on to one's roots at one hand and, simultaneously, holding on to the people who are giving the child wings.
But then, EAC began to play on loudspeakers that classic Neil Diamond song, "America"....
[Click here for complete, printable pdf. article]
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