Speaking with Chris and Brooke Mills a few weeks ago about their adoption journey amid the COVID-19 pandemic and global conflict (see story here) brought back a lot of memories.
In early September 2001, my husband, Owen, and I were in their shoes. A few months into the adoption process, we were eagerly anticipating a call from our agency to tell us we had been matched with a child. Every morning we woke up thinking, “This could be the day!”
That hope changed to dread the morning of Sept. 11 as news of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. spread.
Owen and I wondered if instead of a placement, we would get a call telling us the process was on hold until global events settled down a bit.
To our great surprise and joy, when the call came we learned we had been matched with a 6-month-old boy.
Less than two months after the 9/11 attacks, we were on the first of many planes that would take us from Atlanta to New York to Russia to Kazakhstan and eventually back home as new parents.
‘A mission and a purpose’
International travel does not come without risks, and in those post-9/11 days, security was extremely tight. But we had a mission and a purpose — to bring the little boy we had hoped for, had prayed for, had loved from afar even before we knew his name, into our family.
That’s where the Mills family and so many other families are right now.
They are at various stages of the international adoption process, but the children they wait for already have a place in their hearts.
These expectant mothers and fathers have been vetted by their adoption agencies, undergoing rigorous background checks, home studies and interviews. They have been fingerprinted and vaccinated.
They have invested financially, emotionally and spiritually in a child they’ve never met, but who they already love more than words can express.
Let’s not forget them as they wait.
Ways to encourage
Is there a family in your circle who is adopting? What can you do to encourage them this week?
Here are some suggestions: Ask them about their children and the adoption process. Allow them to share their hearts and prayer needs. Send an encouraging note. Take a meal. Offer to sit with their children while they complete paperwork or attend adoption-related meetings or maybe just take a night to relax.
Let’s also remember these precious children.
Lifeline Children’s Services, a Birmingham-based ministry that serves vulnerable children globally through orphan care, foster care and adoption, estimates that 10,000 children become orphans daily — losing one or both of their parents to disease, natural disaster, stigma or poverty.
By some estimates, the number of orphans has increased exponentially due to COVID-19-associated deaths.
In the U.S. alone, where some 400,000 children are already in foster care, a study in The Journal of Pediatrics suggests more than 140,000 children under age 18 have lost a parent or secondary caregiver due to the pandemic.
Those alarming statistics should make us take notice of the children in our churches and communities grieving those who provided daily doses of love, security and care.
Ways to help
Churches or other organizations may be helping these families, but as neighbors, friends and Christ-followers, what immediate needs of these families can we meet?
A meal or a gift card for necessities or a treat could be a simple reminder that their loss is not forgotten.
For more ways to get involved in orphan care or support for hurting children and families, go to the websites of Lifeline (lifelinechild.org) or Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries (alabamachild.org).
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