It's hard to believe that today we celebrate two years since Melanie officially became an Allen. The blending of a family is a simultaneously wondrous and overwhelming thing. I can hardly remember a time when we were without our Melanie. I will never forget the fear and anxiety we experienced during our six-month foster period. No matter how unfounded our fears, I imagined every single day, multiple times a day, that someone would come and take her from us for some oversight or neglect on our part. The hearing on December 13th, 2013 put an end to all that incredible anxiety. Even though "gotcha" day was the day it was all made official in our hearts, there was something of finality and relief in receiving paperwork with our last name coupled to her birth name, hearing her name officially spoken as others will know it for the rest of her unmarried life and hearing that gavel fall as if the sound of it reverberated into the very courts of Heaven.
A whole lot has happened in two years! However, I decided to re-post what I wrote back then. The type-A perfectionist inside would re-write this entire post and every other post since I began this little chronicle years ago. But I don't dare tamper with the original feeling that produced the string of words you are about to read. Thanks for sharing in this anniversary with us.
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Today we lit the joy candle in our home and at the church we have attended at intervals for almost five years. It is Advent season. Listening to Pastor Max today, I could not help but recount other Advent seasons, sitting, soaking in the deep, tender timbre of a humble, yet imperfect man who clearly holds the favor of God.
At Advent each year, we recount the lineage of Jesus. His genealogy, like ours, is full of fatally-flawed people. Deceivers, harlots, murderers and adulterers-- they are all distinguished by their relationship to the God-man. At Advent, we recall God's provision toward mankind through the ages. We repeat the stories so that we will not forget how we've been loved and carried and brought to this place. And we repeat our own stories so that we will not forget the Relationship that redeems us and points us to Eternity.
Six years ago, I sat alone in the same auditorium. A song that I love was sung by a combination of adult and children's choirs. "All Is Well." Jason and I had just lived the devastation of a terminated ectopic pregnancy. I have never been able to keep from my mind the truth in that matter. Our child was aborted to spare my life. That reality is still a difficult one for me to live. On that tour, Jason traveled for work more than he was at home, and so, just a month or so after that procedure and the death of a hope we'd cherished for some time, I sat alone, again, and wept bitterly in church. Pastor Max's voice seemed to mock my pain that day. It was not his intention to hurt a grieving mother as he spoke to us about hope. It was hope Sunday, the beginning of Advent. While the strains of that haunting song rang in my head, I grudgingly asked God to help me believe Him again.
Fear kept us from trying again until, several years later, we received a pep talk from a beloved doctor in North Carolina. Shortly after that, we learned that we were pregnant with Jonathan. There were many reasons behind our choice in Jonathan's name, but the one that took precedence for me was its meaning. Jonathan was truly "God's gift" to us.
My name has always been a little source of consternation for me. Why would my parents give me a name that meant "deceiver"? Jacqueline is the French feminine derivative of Jacob. If you don't know the story, Jacob deceived his father and stole the birthright from his twin brother, Esau. So, in choosing a name for our children, the meaning holds greatest importance for me. It turns out, my parents really did pretty well, when you consider the story in its entirety. More on that later.
At Jonathan's first birthday, we moved back to Texas and returned to Oak Hills Church. Shortly after our return, we both felt a call on our hearts to begin the process to adopt a child. That first Christmas, Oak Hills offered a service for grieving parents to honor children who had been lost to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and stillbirth. That service gave us closure and strength. In that same month, Melanie was removed from her birth family. That spring we began attending classes through Pathways, a foster-to-adopt agency contracted by the State of Texas. Little did we know, the rights of our future daughter's birth parents were already well on their way to being terminated.
The next Christmas, we received a call. A little girl, an emergency placement, came to our home. She was 15 months old, and BEAUTIFUL! We loved her instantly. She spent Christmas with us, and less than a month after she came, she went to live with her grandparents. The day I took her to them, I went for a long jog to clear my head. On that jog, I received a phone call from our agency about a little girl named Melanie. She had a feeding tube, recurrent RSV and pneumonia; the result of a hypoplastic lung and diaphragmatic hernia. She was five months older than our previous placement, yet she was the size of a 9 month old. I am still ashamed to admit this, but at the time, my grief over the little girl we had just returned trumped everything else. I spoke with Jason on the phone, and we said no to Melanie. She was removed from her foster placement and taken to a group home for medically-fragile children. Four months later, we received a call again asking us to reconsider Melanie. We hesitantly agreed.
When we met Melanie in late May, we definitely wanted to bring her home, but she looked so unwell. She was emaciated. She was fearful. We were fearful. We did not feel equipped to care for her needs. We had Jonathan to consider.
As we fostered Melanie through the end of summer and into fall, we realized the fragility and extreme tenacity of this tiny girl. With all the medical issues our girl had at birth, how did she survive? Her mother did not know how to care for her and did not bring her to her well-baby appointments. She suffered severe infection as a tiny baby. What was she exposed to in those seven months? What did she see and hear in her biological home and in her first foster placement? How did she feel as she was transported to yet another home in January, becoming one of eighteen medically-fragile children? And despite all that, Melanie has the happiest disposition of any child I have ever known.
With a little over six months behind us, the day before Mel's adoption dawned. Jonathan, Melanie and I snuggled on the love seat and read the story of Ruth together. It was Melanie's turn to hang the ornament symbolizing Ruth's story on our tree. Ruth was a foreigner in Israel. She left her homeland to return to Israel with Naomi (her mother-in-law). "Wherever you go I will go, and where you live, I will live: your people shall be my people, and your God my God." ~Ruth 1:16 How fitting that particular story was for Melanie, and for all of us that day. I often wonder if, one day, Melanie will return to her family and share her story. I pray every day that God will give us what we need to help make her story a good one.
Now here we are, full on into another Advent season. On Tuesday and Thursday of last week, I learned that I have two diseases that cause infertility. I have suffered the symptoms of those since before I knew Jason. Although we have always viewed our Jonathan as a miracle, we know now how huge, how medically improbable, the gift of Jonathan really is in our lives. God is faithful. He has provided. He has always been more than worthy of our belief and our trust. We light the joy candle each day this week with an increasingly healthy and beautiful little girl named Melanie Anne, and a precious little boy who has my light eyes and fair hair and Jason's mischievous grin and quick wit. This is the joy-week-- the first full week with Melanie Anne enjoying all the rights and privileges of a beloved child born to our family.
Anne means "favored one" or "full of grace". She will need a lot of grace to deal with Jacqueline "the deceiver". We are all fatally flawed. We all share in the same curse. Yet we are all invited to the same adoption hearing, to be given all the rights of the only begotten Son and to become as beloved as He. I feel God's favor on our lives just as Jacob must have felt God's favor when he was entrusted with God's new covenant for his family, the Israelites. God chose to remake him, redeem him and to use him to lead his family into new life. God even chose to give him a new name. The deceiver became the favored one. The first thing I will ask Him when I stand at the edge of Eternity -- "Lord, what is my new name?"-- for He has truly favored me. ~Merry Christmas!
