What made you want to adopt a 15 year old??
I always wonder what people see when they look at my little family of 3 (fur children not included). My husband Andrew wears salmon colored khakis, plays golf, and is a doctor. I’m not too far off…. I love a plaid headband, fair aisle sweaters, and although I hate to admit it getting my roots done is literally the highlight of my month. On the surface, we couldn’t look more like two wasps flittering through life in our color coordinated existence. When people find out we adopted they probably assume I’m infertile (I’m not) and that we have a baby. They definitely don’t expect us to say we have a 15-year-old daughter from India that we adopted 2 months ago. “What made you want to adopt a 15-year-old?!!” is the typical question we get, and our typical answer is “We didn’t!”. We didn’t pick our child and if you think about it you didn’t pick yours either.
We both decided early on in our relationship we wanted our family to include adoption. As we matured that desire started to feel more urgent than having a child biologically. I didn’t understand it at all. I thought we were both crazy. The oddest part is that Andrew was more into adoption than I was which is really unusual. After 10 years of prayer we went from maybe we’ll have children biologically but we definitely want to adopt TO knowing without a doubt we were supposed to adopt. Now we just needed God to make it clear where he or she was located?
At the beginning of the adoption process it felt like we were picking a child out of a catalog. How old? What sex? How disabled? How intelligent? What country? We sat at a local restaurant and completed a checklist a mile and a half long. We marked 4 years old or younger, open to either sex, and as minimal special needs as possible. What is that saying? We make plans and God laughs. He was probably choking on his bread basket while we sat there that night.
To be fair though (even though it didn’t appear that way on paper) Andrew and I had always had open hearts when it came to the child God chose for us to parent. However, at different points along the way we had MANY adoptive parents tell us the younger the better. In their defense, I get it! The younger the child you adopt the less likely they’ve experienced abuse, learning the language/culture is easier, and they’ll grow up with the love and care of a family. Who wouldn’t want that for their child? Less trauma and attachment issues? Sign me up! We were both smart enough to know that we knew nothing about adoption and the challenges ahead of us, so we decided to listen to the experts and do as we were told. Deep down though I knew in my heart it wasn’t up to us to decide.
6 months into the adoption process we hadn’t been matched with a child. We weren’t worried about it, and honestly I didn’t even think about it too much. We had just moved to a new town, our home was in remodel mode, and for the first time in our marriage we weren’t living month to month. It was freeing and really fun! I was by myself when I got the email introducing us to Richa. I was in Canada watching my brother’s band perform, and my mind was far away from adoption. Our adoption counselor knew the little girl in the attached document was not at all what we were looking for, but she said she had to send us her information if only to silence the little voice in her head telling her to send us this little girl. I opened the attachment, saw Richa’s picture, read her biography, fell to my knees, and cried. I was overcome with emotion. Alone in this room far from home (and Andrew) I asked God what in the world he was thinking, and that Andrew would never go for this. As usual He ignored me.
As He knew he would be Andrew was on board. I couldn’t believe it. We decided to pursue Richa, and for the next 2 ½ years I wavered between feeling confident she was our child to feeling terrified she was our child. Over the next 3 years I rarely slept through the night. My mind raced and I wondered how we would parent this little girl. How would we deal with the language barrier? How will we find the right school? What could we do to lessen her grief of losing the only home she’s ever known? How can we make her world less Caucasian? Where the heck are we going to find anyone that speaks Telugu? Was this a horrible mistake? Why can’t I just be normal and want a baby like every other woman on the planet??! What’s wrong with me?! Every night I would spin the wheel of what ifs until I fell asleep. It was exhausting and probably would have been deterring if God wasn’t providing reassurance around every corner.
Every need I thought our daughter might possibly have when she arrived home, He met before we even traveled. A year into the adoption process we learned of Hanger Clinic, a leading provider of prosthetic care in our country, that was located in Cape Girardeau! 6 months before her adoption I met a woman in town (also from India) that has a prosthetic on the same exact leg as Richa. She’s also beautiful, lovely, and someone you dream for your daughter to look up to. 3 months before her adoption Andrew met 2 new doctors/families in town that both spoke Telugu and were originally from Hyderabad. 2 months before her adoption a young man started attending our church that was also from Hyderabad and spoke Telugu. It was obvious that God was creating an unbelievable landing pad for our daughter, and my heart was continuously comforted with the knowledge that he would provide for her in any way we couldn’t.
Our daughter turned out to be born in Hyderabad India from another woman's womb. She was born with a deformed leg that causing her to be immobile until the age of 11. At that time, her leg was amputated at the knee and she learned to walk with a prosthetic to give her more mobility. I didn't pick her disability just like I didn't pick her eye color, her personality, or her age. They were all gifts.