From Grief to Joy (A continuation to the story, The Box on the Shelf)

El simkhat gili —God, My Exceeding Joy

Psalm 43:4—Then I will go to the altar of God, to God (El), my joy (Simchatch Gili) and my delight. I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.

I stared at the picture with such joy in my heart.

My husband had snapped a quick photograph from behind of me, my six-year-old son, and two young Colombian children overlooking a small pond of turtles. I treasured that picture as the first and only one taken of me and my three children together. I held it close as we passionately pursued adopting those two precious Colombian siblings shortly after they returned to Colombia. They had been in the United States for five weeks, living with a host family, giving them a chance to find a forever family of their own. I couldn’t wait to officially call them my son and my daughter.

A little over a year later, that picture haunted me.

After a long, tedious process to adopt them, everything fell apart. Rather than bringing them home and adding more family pictures to our photo album, I had to cease all communication with them and leave the relationship I’d built with both of them just hanging. I never got to say goodbye or explain why I stopped calling them every week.

Despite all of our preparations, no one prepared me to grieve a failed adoption.

Two and a half years after we met them, Viviana moved to Europe with her new adoptive family, while Juan David remained alone, back and forth between the orphanage and a local family committed to helping him. Another two and a half years passed after that until we finally succeeded to adopt Juan David and bring him home with us. Yet a hole remained in all of our hearts, wondering why God did not allow us to adopt them both together as planned. Why did He let us love his sister so dearly only to lose her, and why did Juan David have to live the rest of life wondering about her, since no one had heard a word from her since her adoption.

I’d asked God for something, anything, even just a simple picture to know how she’d grown and changed over the years, to know she was okay. I still prayed for her nearly every day, now eight years after I’d met her.

No words can describe the deep gratitude I felt when I looked down at my ipad to see an e-mail from their birth country with two photographs attached to it.

There she was, the little girl I thought I’d never see again. A picture and a letter for her older brother, my son, Juan David. But no return e-mail address to reply to. Only a slightly open door to send yet another e-mail back through her birth country, hoping they’d get it to her promptly.

God had very specifically answered my prayer. I quickly (and tearfully) forwarded the e-mail to Juan David, typing, “It’s a miracle!”

My son responded to the e-mail that very evening with a very short, simple letter, wondering how long it might take to reach his sister or if it would ever even get to her. How many people might read it in the meantime? How many channels would this one e-mail go through? How many levels had been set up to protect his sisters’ family’s privacy? We very nervously proceeded, joyful yet anxious about where this might take us.

A month or two crept by before another letter came through. Yet this one didn’t come from their birth country. It came straight from her. Communication without the middle man. I felt joy creep in my heart, seeing something miraculous take place through this piece of technology sitting on my lap. 

Yet my son still held back, knowing his sister’s new mother and family likely screened everything they might say to one another. Perhaps they just wanted to know about him, but they would not allow them to rebuild the relationship they once had before she moved away, now nearly six years ago.

How had she changed? Where might this lead? Did she still love him or even want a relationship with him? He maintained his distance, keeping that wall up around his heart, demanding that things proceed slowly. Rebuilding a relationship the healthy way could take a long time. It was all I could do to convince him to at least send a picture from his birthday.

He refused to send it, but he let me craft an e-mail from him and attach the picture of him sipping his favorite fruit juice, a fruit they grew up with in their native country.

Though he wanted to take his time, we quickly found that she wanted that contact with him more than we ever expected. That one picture led her to send another picture of herself, and soon they connected via social media. From there, the relationship progressed so quickly that we could barely keep up. Soon we helped her reconnect with yet another brother, also living on another continent, and they all three formed a social media group where they began to communicate daily, sometimes several times a day. They finally had that sibling bond with instant access to one another that they had all longed for since the day she moved away.

“Can we do a video call? I want to see you!” You could almost hear the longing in her voice as she typed the words. Within a few hours, we opened up the computer and talked with her face to face. They showed each other their rooms and the pictures they’d both kept of one another. They shared milestones and special moments that they’d missed in the other one’s life. They smiled and laughed constantly as they reconnected over the next hour.

Oh, to hear her voice fill my son’s room, a room once decorated and prepared for her. It melted my heart. I thought I’d never hear that sweet voice again.

Less than a year later, I stood in Madrid, Spain, with both my son and his sister by my side, overlooking a pond filled with hundreds of turtles.

Nine years after we’d taken that first picture of us all together. When I saw the turtles in the pond, I felt God gently tap my shoulder and whisper to me, “A turtle may seem slow, but I am not slow in keeping my promise.”

He didn’t ever let me claim her as my daughter, but He did not take her away from me forever, either. Two ponds of turtles on two different continents now stand as bookends to my story, reminding me of God’s faithfulness. Though as times it seems slow, He is always steadily working out His ultimate plan. Oh, how I’d missed that little girl over the last nine years.

Ten days later, I lay awake in that precious girl’s bedroom where I’d slept during our visit, as I waited those last few hours for my alarm clock to go off. I hadn’t slept a wink that night, nor did I want to. I felt God’s intimate love just wash all over me when I realized the gift of those last ten days spent with her, her mother, her aunt, and her grandparents. 

They called us family. They embraced us and treated us like honored guests at their table and in their home. Even me, the one who loved her first.

Images danced in my head that night as I replayed our trips to the park, our meals together every night, our walks around the city, along with the hugs, kisses, and all the times she held my hand as we walked down the street. She used one hand to hold mine, and the other to hold her mom’s.

I thanked God for the clear opportunity to share with her adoptive mother about my side of her daughter’s story. Not only do I get to continue loving and be loved by that sweet girl, I also gained a new friend, my partner in this task of raising two siblings on two different continents. We are two moms with more in common than we ever knew.

I welcomed the slow tick of those last few hours as I lay awake, basking in the presence of a God who loved me so intimately to give me such a priceless, intimate gift. I felt nothing but joy, and I most definitely did not want to sleep through a wink of it.

God fulfilled one my greatest longings over those ten days, and in doing so, I experienced Him in a new way as El simkhat gili, my exceeding joy. I will never look at a turtle the same again.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Psalm 126:3

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Psalm 126:5

Stories of Roaring Faith

I am really looking forward to this book launching this coming weekend. Our adoption story is one of the stories they selected to feature in this book, among many other stories of God's faithfulness through hard circumstances. 

I originally wrote the story in two parts, but a third part remains untold apart from this blog. Stay tuned for Part 3, a story I wrote to add to my series on the Names of God, also the third (continuing) part to the story written in this book. 

Congratulations are in order

In keeping with the long-haul theme, I believe there's someone who deserves a big congratulations for his commitment to vocational ministry for the long-haul. These congratulations are a little late, but they are for my dad, who officially retired at the end of July after 46 years as a Pastor.

My dad, Karl Kloppmann, graduated from Grace Seminary in 1971 and later got his Doctorate of Ministry in Pastoral Studies (by correspondence) from Dallas Theological Seminary in 2001.

He began his ministry as the pastor of Village Bible Church in Lansing, Illinois in 1971. Five years later, on July 4th, 1976, he moved to Ephrata, Pennsylvania (where I was born!) to assume his role as the new pastor of Grace Fellowship Church.

He stayed there for sixteen years until the end of 1992, when God led him to First Baptist Church of Warsaw, Indiana (where I married Mike!). At the end of the year 2000, he moved to St. Louis to pastor Brentwood Bible Church, where he served for the last 17 years.

He has written numerous articles for The Gospel Herald and Sunday School Times and also wrote a book titled A Men's Ministry for a Small Church.  In addition to leading a church and writing, he taught as an adjunct professor off and on for Brook's Bible College in St. Louis.

https://www.amazon.com/Mens-Ministry-Small-Church/dp/1594672407

After suffering from a brain injury sustained in a car accident on June 2nd of this year (precisely in the middle of my son, Juan's graduation ceremony), he felt the need to officially retire from his reponsibilities as a pastor so God can bring about a new pastor to guide his church into a new facility in a new location. Brentwood Bible Church will soon move to a different part of St. Louis and will assume the name New Beginning's Bible Church.

My dad has gone through extensive therapy for the last two months to recover and heal from his accident and has made excellent progress, although it has definitely changed his life in more ways than he ever imagined. He continues with some therapy while he is now working through the details to eventually relocate again in order to be closer to family.

Last year, Mike and I made the boys choose between going to camp or a mission trip to LA. When they chose the mission trip, we took off during the week that David would have gone to camp to go on a family vacation to see as much family as possible in one trip. We purposely made it a point to spend a Sunday in St. Louis so Juan David could visit his grandpa's church and watch him preach for the first time. I'm so glad we made that part of our trip so Juan David didn't miss out on that opportunity to hear my dad preach.

Congratulations, Dad. Thanks for being an example of what it means to commit to the long-haul, even when it's not an easy road. You knew your purpose and your calling, and you stuck to it.

In it for the long haul

I'm a long-haul kind of person. We're a long-haul kind of family. We like to put down our roots and settle in.

Every year brings change, sometimes significant, sometimes subtle. We've been in the same little house for ten years now, but we add some kind of change to it every year (paint color, new flooring, landscaping, decorative touches, etc.)

This year will be my fifteenth year at my school, though I've taught three different grades and age groups. Teachers and administration come and go, but there are a few of us that have stuck around and put our roots down. The relationships and trust you can build with the families when you stick around is pretty amazing.

David has stuck with the same soccer team since about fourth or fifth grade, and he's grown up and made memories with several of the same kids from church since he was in early elementary school.

Mike has had two different jobs while here, and he maintains a close relationship with his coworkers of his first job.

When things get tough, we've learned to stick it out and not bail at the first sign of difficulty. We're long-haul kind of people. We are committed. And I hope we've taught David that commitment means contentment. Contentment with where God placed us and a belief that He placed us there for a reason.

When we jumped into the adoption process, we knew it would be for the long haul. We didn't know it meant a long haul of pain, heartache, and loss. When the adoption failed the first time, I remember so many caring people telling me they could help us find another avenue to adopt a child. But I'd already commited my heart to Juan David and Laura, and I believed with all of my heart that God led them to us for a purpose. I had to see the story through. Julian had already entered the picture, anyway, so I knew God had to be up to something. Even when it looked like we'd lost everything, we stayed grounded and followed the dark path ahead.

This week as we got Juan David moved in to DBU and walked away, leaving him there to start this next chapter of his life, I couldn't help but feel nothing but a deep gratitude for that long-haul commitment. Surprisingly, I didn't shed a single tear as I hugged him and walked away. I felt such joy in watching how God continues to play out his story. Especially when I started to walk away and happened to overhear his very next conversation with one of the upperclassmen helping out that day, a fellow Colombian.

Only God.

In his dorm room

 A pic with one of his roommates (the other one hadn't arrived yet)

 The bed he chose and quickly made up

 Getting ready to leave

 Out in the foyer area of his dorm

 Outside his dorm

 His new Colombian connection

What if we'd thrown up our hands in surrender and said, "No. It's too much." 

What if I'd never pursued that relationship with Julian?

What if I'd stopped praying for Laura and forced myself to move on and forget about her?

What if we never tried again to adopt Juan David, too scared and still angry from the first attempt?

 Two texts I've gotten from him late at night this week. :)

Without a long-haul commitment, these pictures would not exist today.

Will he make it in college? Only God knows. We're just going to take it a semester at a time. But he's there, and I'm grateful because I know God led him there. 

Classes start Monday. Keep him in your prayers!

One final day

God gave us four years with him. We fought for him for five years and then had him for four.

Four long years learning how to connect with someone you didn't raise.

Four short years in modeling correct thinking and behaving as much as possible, hoping he picked it up.

Four short years in keeping him active, involved, and moving forward academically, socially, and spiritually.

Four short years catching him up, bringing him up to speed, filling in gaps and holes from a childhood you missed out on.

Four long years wondering, searching for his sister to fill in a gaping hole in his heart.

Four long years trying to figure him out and find ways to get him to open up and to bond with you.

And just like that, we're on our final day at home together before he moves into college to start this next chapter of his life.

He's nervous and excited. I'm thrilled and anxious.

For me, this last year has been very frustrating to watch him face his senior year so arrogantly, knowing just how naively he looked at the future ahead of him. Yet at the same time, it's been the year that I've bonded with him the most deeply. I have to continually remind myself that his arrogance is just a mask to cover the fear and insecurity inside. Just like the first year he came. He just doesn't know how much he doesn't know. Rather than asking for help or direction, he'll instead act like he knows everything and can do no wrong. But then you'll catch him in a moment of weakness, and he'll admit that he's incredibly nervous.

That's where we are now. The walls are right back up, and the arrogant attitude of, "Leave me alone. I've got this under control." is back. Ugh.

Two roommates await him tomorrow and he hasn't even met them other than through a group text they've had going on for about two weeks. He's nervous about his English, about sharing a room again, about not being able to keep up with the workload (though he'll never in a million years admit that), and he's a little freaked out about all the unknowns in this stage of life.

I'm nervous about how my role will forever change with this move. Nineteen or not, he's still been living 100% under our roof and our rules. He still keeps his phone in our bedroom at night. He still attends church on a regular basis, which he happens to enjoy, so I'm thankful for that. He still can only spend money when he has permission or drive places with permission. He still has to check in with me or his dad constantly. He still spends a lot of time with me, especially this summer after spending three weeks traveling together and after watching his school friends and groups pretty much dissipate as everyone went in separate directions after graduation.

Now he's taking that first step toward independence, whether he's ready or not. That part is exciting for us because we know he'll never start to apply what we've taught and modeled for him without the opportunity to live away from us. We are also excited for him to begin to build those lifelong friendships within the four walls of his dorm. We're thrilled for him to get to be in community again, the extrovert that he is, especially after forcing him to live among three rather introverted people for the last four years. We're thankful for all the opportunities he's going to have in front of him.

We're nervous that the English will be too much, that he doesn't have good enough study habits to keep up, or that he won't be able to handle the freedom. We're anxious that his maturity level won't even come close to matching that of his new peers due to the gaps still very present in his life due to his upbringing. We're a bit concerned about finances, getting him through this year's tuition and room and board, as well as finding a balance to still allow him some freedom (and us freedom) to continue living and having fun.

Ready or not, tomorrow morning our lives will change, and I can't even begin to express how thankful I am that he will be spending this first year at DBU (Dallas Baptist University). Close to home, yet still away from home. If he needs something, we're less than an hour away. But if he doesn't, we can have that separation that we all desperately need at this stage in life.

Back to the three of us at home, and David has not held back in letting us know how much he is looking forward to having us all to himself again. He's been such a good sport through this whole adoption, despite the fact that we adopted out of birth order and made him the youngest rather than the oldest. This next year will be so good for him.

So today, besides going over the checklist several times, we're headed out for a last-minute coffee date with one of his ESL teachers (the one whose recommendation letters got him three scholarships!) and then out for dinner as a family at the restaurant of his choice. Perhaps a quick trip to the store to stock him up with a few snacks, as well.

Here goes!

Speechless

Lots of reflection going on here. So much that I find myself speechless in a sense.

Sometimes God shows up so big that you're afraid to even attempt to put it into words for fear of "cheapening" the whole experience because no words will do it justice.

I still have a hard time even fathoming the fact that I am on the other side of this story, that our sweet and precious Laura is back in our lives, that we no longer have to wonder about her life. We're part of it. It's such an incredible miracle that I struggle to even talk about.

My photo books came in the mail today from our Guatemala trip and our trip to Spain. Oh, the story that they tell.

I got out the first three photo books of our journey and sat in awe of the story that we've lived out. The pain and agony of that first adoption process/failure cannot be denied. Even today as I reread that old blog, I fight the tears. But I clung to a simple phrase: Joy cometh! And this summer, it truly came.

Today's mail!

Our full adoption journey

 Our first trip to Colombia--A failed attempt to adopt Juan David and Laura that led us straight to Julian, 2011

 Our second trip to Colombia--Back to Julian, a Reunion with Juan David, 2012

 Our third trip to Colombia, to bring Juan David home, 2013

 Our trip to Spain, to reunite with Laura, 2017

It's been quite the unexpected journey over the last decade, starting with a miscarriage in the spring of 2007, leading us to an adoption conference that fall and the hopes of adopting a little girl from El Salvador.

Now here we are, ten years later, with a completely different story. 

And as I look at these pictures, in all the books, I am speechless. And more than grateful. 

A few pics of Juan in action

I finally got a few more pics of Juan from our trip to Guatemala. He sure was an incredible asset to our team as a whole and to his team that he worked with on a daily basis. Exactly where he needed to be.

While there, Juan happened to mention in conversation that he's been on both sides of the equation. This time as the servant, but at a previous time in his life, as one of the children being served. So later in the week, while making the video for next year's Journey (High School camp) video, they did a personal interview first with me and then with Juan about our story. :) Don't know if he or I will ever see the video, but I know David will when he goes to camp next year. :)