How did I get here? (Part 1)

How did I get here?  I’ve been asking myself that question a lot recently…usually when I am shuffling stacks of papers and responding to an inbox full of emails about hosting, home studies and fundraising ideas. 

This time last year, I could not have imagined that we would be undertaking the adoption of three children from Eastern Europe.  We were in one of those sweet spots of life when the seas are fairly calm and the skies are mostly sunny.  I have lived long enough to know that those times are brief, so I was breathing deep and enjoying the peace.  I expected that change was on the horizon, but I could never have predicted that it would look like this.

In the spring of 2017, when our friends shared that they were planning to host a sibling group from Eastern Europe, I knew their hearts were in the right place, but I honestly had a lot of questions about the concept of “orphan hosting.”  Our family has done foster care, both long term and short term, so the idea of having kids from hard places in our home wasn’t an issue for me.  What concerned me was the impact that bringing orphans into American families for a summer and then sending them back would have on them.  I am by no means an expert on cross-cultural experiences, but through my daughters’ international mission work, I have learned that many things we do as Americans with the best of intentions can have negative and even tragic unintended consequences when we don’t understand the culture we are trying to help.  I worried that these children would be given false hope of finding a family and would return to their home country more broken and hurt than before.  So while adoption and orphan care were issues that I cared deeply about, orphan hosting was not something that I would have ever sought to be involved in. 

Perhaps one of these days I will learn that when I think I have things all figured out, God will lovingly, but not necessarily gently, put me in my place and remind me that I’m not in charge.

Fast forward to the spring of 2018, and our same friends are advocating to find a host family for this sibling group for the coming summer.  Dan and I have a lot of conversations that go like this:

Dan: Did you see where Glenna posted about those kids needing a host family for the summer?

Me:  I saw it, but didn’t really read it.

Dan:  I keep thinking about them.

Me: um…that’s nice.

This is very backwards from the norm in our marriage.  Usually I’m the one pleading with Dan that we are supposed to do something *unconventional* that God has laid on my heart and he is looking at me like I’m crazy.

Finally, after several weeks of this exchange, Dan persuaded me to visit the website of the hosting organization and all of the assumptions I had about orphan hosting were proved wrong. 

I was in trouble and I knew it.

The statistics for kids who age out of their orphanages in Ukr*ine are heartbreaking. Within two years of leaving the orphanage:

    Only 27% will find work

    15% will commit suicide

    40% will be homeless

    30% will become addicted to drugs

    60% of the girls will become prostitutes

    70% of the boys will turn to crime and eventually will be incarcerated

The last two statistics drop to 20% when a child has been hosted.

 The experience of living with a family and the bonds that form, even in a few weeks are enough to change lives.  Having people who love you, check in with you, and pray for you, even from an ocean away can give a child enough encouragement, confidence and hope to believe in and work for a good future for themselves. 

That alone was enough to move me from ”no” to “perhaps.”  But there was something else that had been quietly nagging at my mind and heart, and now it was wailing like a siren.

I remembered these children.

The two summers ago when they were in our area briefly, I had the occasion to meet them twice. The first time was at our friends’ home, when I took a bag of Constance’s clothes over for N.  Most of the clothes Glenna had ready for the kids were too big, and we had more than enough girls clothes to share.  The following day I saw them at the pool, which is odd because I NEVER take my kids to the pool.  That’s what older siblings are for. But there I was, sitting in the snack bar ignoring my book and watching these lovely children interact with each other.  Both of these encounters were fleeting, yet they affected me profoundly.  I was surprised by how often they would come to mind, and I am still able to recall many details about those moments.  I remembered their faces. I remembered N’s big grin and bright blue eyes and how she had her arms wrapped around Glenna the entire time I was standing in their driveway with the bag of clothes.  I remembered the older two boys, handsome but unsmiling. And I remembered the youngest boy, tiny and shy, with an impish little grin. 

When I was so skeptical about hosting, I felt sorry for these children, but I never imagined that there would be anything I could do for them beyond sharing my daughter’s clothes.  But now I was wondering if God really intended us to do more?  I started praying.  I reached out to the host families from the previous summer to learn as much as I could about their experiences with these kids.  I sent email after email to the very patient volunteer coordinator at New Horizons with questions about hosting.  My “perhaps” became a “yes” and we applied to host for the summer.  I was nervous and I knew it would be hard, but you can do anything for six weeks, right?