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.
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