Christine Rhyner

Christine's blogs

Blessing Through Adoption Pain
Friday, May 16, 2014 by Christine

Stepping off the plane, we were greeted by our Vietnamese adoption facilitator with a stomach churning, “You are here too soon.” This, after months of unexpected delays to our travel plans.

Maybe it was the jet lag, or, the facilitator’s sharp tone. But none of the four of us expecting to be quickly united with our baby sons said a word.

Days in Ho Chi Minh City ticked by. Unbeknownst to us, Vietnam was about to close its doors to American adoptions. There were problems with the system we weren’t made privy to, but we sensed it. Some babies ready to be adopted weren’t actually adoptable. Others, including one little girl in our son’s orphanage was practically forced upon us for a “discount.”

It seemed each day we received the promise of a trip to the orphanage for the following day. Early the next morning, while still in bed, the phone would inevitably ring. Our facilitator would tell us our trip would not happen. One morning, filled with anticipation and frustration over endless waiting to see and actually receive our babies we found a note slipped under our hotel door. The facilitator had scrawled a message to us that she had flown to Hanoi to assist with other adoptions, utterly abandoning us for days.

While we waited in this foreign land we weren’t sure who to trust. Our emails and phone conversations were being monitored because what we said and wrote was repeated back to us by this facilitator. One day when a conversation over all the waiting became quite heated between the other “expectant” father of we two couples and the director of our agency, and our adoptions were threatened with cancellation, I broke down in tears. The facilitator, who apparently had eyes all over the city, phoned me the next morning to tell me that “Vietnamese women do not cry,” and that my display of emotion was unacceptable.

Yet, during all the agonizing waiting I refused to believe that we would leave that country with our arms and hearts empty. Even after nearly a month, when we finally boarded a van with our babies, stripped of their orphanage clothing left behind for the other babies, and re-dressed in actual diapers and new outfits—and our departure was suddenly held up and told might not happen—I prayed fervently and believed God was with us and for us.

The waiting, I now see, afforded me opportunity. Had we not been in Vietnam so long we never would have become so richly acquainted with its people and culture.

We climbed mountains and visited elaborate temples. We rather enjoyed the local cuisine. We went to museums and open air markets where we haggled over the prices of goods to take home as memorabilia for our child. We rode in rickshaws and conversed as best we could with the people, who we found to be warm and friendly. We traveled to the Cambodian border where we took in its lush, green beauty. We drove for hours in our van for visits to our sons watching women dry shrimp on the side of the road, while naked toddlers dodged traffic and swam in stagnant pools of water left by the flooding of the Mekong Delta. We made friends with other adoptive couples, eager to hold and love on their babies while we waited for our own. We visited the China Sea where we snapped photos of our toes in the water. We saw countless anomalies in the bodies of those who carried with them the generational effects of Agent Orange, so we were told. School children would squat on the sidewalks for hours chatting while mere babies would approach us for money, an adult down the road keeping a watchful eye. While our next adoption trip to China would be a much faster blur from the inside of hotel rooms, we really experienced Vietnam.

We prayed and believed. Never had I encountered such a test of faith. Never before had I experienced such a tangled set of emotions that included fear and longing, elation and despair, wonder and revulsion. Yet emotions come and go. They aren’t facts. And the fact was God was going to give me a son. That, I refused to stop believing.

Had it not been for the wait, I would not have come to know Vietnam the way I did or be able to share all these memories with my son. Nor would I have grown in my faith. In my opinion, a test of faith begets more faith. Our adoption journey to Vietnam has now become an incredibly precious experience to me by how God used it to help me trust Him more, to ultimately bring one of the greatest joys into my life and show me a land that is deeply etched into my mind. Out of the pain and the fear He brought great blessing.

Share This Blog:


Previous Posts

Christian Writers Conference Next Month!
Christine

7/13/2024

How Climate Change Extremism Sells Abortion (Part 2 of 2)
Christine

7/9/2024

How Climate Change Extremism Sells Abortion (Part 1 of 2)
Christine

6/25/2024

Whatever Their World View, No, The Kids Are Not Alright, Part 4 of 4
Christine

5/21/2024

Whatever Their World View, No, The Kids Are Not Alright, Part 3 of 4
Christine

5/8/2024

Whatever Their World View, No, The Kids Are Not Alright, Part 2 of 4
Christine

4/28/2024

Whatever Their World View, No, The Kids Are Not Alright, Part 1 of 4
Christine

4/18/2024

Day of Mourning, Day of Shame
Christine

1/22/2022

God's Presence With Wings
Christine

6/18/2021

The Church Needs to Unify in the Battle For Right to Life
Christine

6/10/2021

Our Sixty-Year Decline
Christine

6/1/2021

H.R. 1 Would Be A Bigger Test For The Church Than Covid Shutdowns {Part 2 of 2}
Christine

5/20/2021

H.R. 1 Would Be A Bigger Test For The Church Than Covid Shutdowns {Part 1 of 2}
Christine

5/12/2021

Dangers of Love Growing Cold
Christine

5/3/2021

Democrats' Despicable, Advantageous Use of the Elderly
Christine

4/23/2021

America, Land of Condemnation (Part Three)
Christine

4/15/2021

America, Land of Condemnation (Part Two)
Christine

4/6/2021

America, Land of Condemnation (Part One)
Christine

3/24/2021

Government's Desperate Need for Humility
Christine

3/11/2021

Is the Church Changing?
Christine

1/19/2020

What Are Our Values Anymore?
Christine

11/22/2019

The Final Frontier (Part Two)
Christine

9/4/2019

The Final Frontier (Part One)
Christine

7/29/2019

Soulmate
Christine

4/30/2019

The Colors of a Writer
Christine

12/29/2018

What's Not to Get About the Writing Life?
Christine

4/18/2018

Learning to Sing the Song of Winter
Christine

12/10/2017

Perspectives & the Second Half of the 10 Commandments of Conflict
Christine

8/25/2017

Perspectives & 5 of the 10 Commandments of Conflict
Christine

5/2/2017

Run Writer Run! Make Music with Your Words
Christine

2/15/2017

Mom, the Fishstetrician
Christine

10/14/2016

The CONSTITUTION For President
Christine

6/5/2016

The Radicalization of Hillary and the Democrat Party (PART 2 OF 2)
Christine

4/16/2016

The Radicalization of Hillary and the Democrat Party (PART 1 OF 2)
Christine

4/15/2016

Why Ted Cruz NOW?
Christine

3/19/2016

Why is the GOP Committing Suicide?
Christine

3/14/2016

Dear Chicago
Christine

3/12/2016

Does God Give Us More Than We Can Handle?
Christine

2/29/2016

That Unanswered GOP Debate Question
Christine

1/9/2016

America's Lifeline
Christine

12/31/2015

Fractured Nation (2 of 2)
Christine

11/14/2015

Fractured Nation (1 of 2)
Christine

11/11/2015

What is Orphan Sunday?
Christine

11/8/2015

November's Gratitude and Longing
Christine

11/4/2015

Losing a Child is Like...
Christine

9/12/2015

Finding God in a Tenement
Christine

9/3/2015

Doing School in the 21st Century
Christine

8/22/2015

Superstition vs. Planned Parenthood
Christine

8/19/2015

Addicted to Giving Birth?
Christine

4/21/2015

Why We Should Have "The Talk" Before Marriage
Christine

3/20/2015

Adoptive Parents "Hypersensitive" & "Selfish?"
Christine

3/12/2015

What's So Wrong With Calling It "Gotcha Day!"
Christine

2/26/2015

How God Connected the Dots
Christine

2/7/2015

Exposure of Transracially Adopted Kids to Their Races a Bad Thing?
Christine

2/2/2015

Out With The Old
Christine

1/12/2015

Those Who Scoff at International Adoption
Christine

8/16/2014

Setting Aside Birth Story Facts for Truth
Christine

7/31/2014

Sneak Peak, "How much did you pay for her?"
Christine

6/11/2014

Blessing Through Adoption Pain
Christine

5/16/2014

Eight Ways Publishing Your Book is Like an Adoption Journey
Christine

2/23/2014

Neglected Ministries?
Christine

2/17/2014

It's a Boy
Christine

2/8/2014

Thoughts of Her
Christine

2/1/2014

To My Son
Christine

1/30/2014

Rational Thinking?
Christine

1/25/2014

Minority Against Minority
Christine

1/12/2014

Happy New Year!
Christine

12/30/2013

Happy Thanksgiving
Christine

11/25/2013

You ARE my mother?
Christine

11/10/2013

The Transracially Adopted Children's Bill of Rights and Some Thoughts
Christine

11/3/2013

Infertility Is...
Christine

10/19/2013

Will He Speak English?
Christine

10/11/2013

Kitty-Sam
Christine

10/5/2013

What's in a Name?
Vhristine

9/30/2013

An Adoptive Mom's Message to Those in the Healthcare and Education Professions
Christine

9/25/2013

Being Tested
Christine

9/11/2013

When We Are Weary
Christine

9/1/2013

Trailblazers
Chrisrine

8/24/2013

A Fresh Start
Christine

8/22/2013

God Works Behind the Scenes
Christine

8/13/2013

Why Adoption Requires Forgiveness
Christine

7/28/2013

Dust Bunnies and Poo
Christine

7/19/2013

Reality Check
Christine

7/13/2013

Forgiveness is Work
Christine

7/9/2013

An Answer to Prayer, Part Three
Christine

7/3/2013

An Answer to Prayer, Part Two
Christine

6/27/2013

An Answer to Prayer, Part One
Christine

6/22/2013

Are They Really Brother and Sister?
Christine

6/16/2013

Infertility's Not Fair
Christine

6/13/2013

Has He Ever Eaten a Dog?
Christine

6/11/2013

Sometimes We Fail
Christine

6/9/2013