Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [29]
they will know is a crib or one small room with work
that comes along with it. Not everyone in this world
can help these children but not to brag, we are financially
equipped & I know deep down in your heart you
would love a baby but you say you’re scared of the challenge.
Look you have 4 people under the same roof as
you that would be a help to you. I know we’re gone
for 7 hrs. in the day but we are home for 6 hrs. Before
we have to go to bed. Please pray about adopting.
Note written by Emily Chapman, age eleven, 1997
Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.
Isaiah 43:5
Our daughter Emily has always been a very compassionate person.
In 1997, when Emily and her friend Carrie Coley were about eleven years old, my friend Terri Coley and I took our girls on a mother-daughter trip to Haiti with Compassion International. Emily was deeply touched by the poverty and needs of children and families who had nothing. And once she got home and did some research, she engaged on an all-out adoption campaign. This wasn’t just adoption in theory, as in us helping other people adopt, which I was happy to do. This was up close and personal: Emily wanted us to adopt a little sister from another country, like the orphans she’d seen in Haiti.
After Will was born, I had had my tubes tied. As far as I was concerned, we were done. Steven would say in concert, “We have Eenie, Meenie, and Minie, and we hope to have no Mo!” I was so thankful for our three children, and I just wanted to get our life in order and keep it that way. Adoption was for other people, mentally healthy people, more flexible people.
But as far as Emily Chapman was concerned, it was God’s will that her mother’s orderly plans be disrupted. Again. Emily would write letters to Steven and me, laying out all the reasons we should adopt. At the bottom she would sign her own name and leave two lines for “witnesses.” And there would be the scribbly scrabbly signatures of Caleb and Will Chapman, official witnesses, ages eight and nine.
When her birthday rolled around, Emily’s list was short and sweet:
1. Baby
2. Four wheeler
3. Concordance
This tells you a lot about Emily’s personality.
For his part, Steven didn’t need much convincing. He loved the idea of us adopting. He thought it was a beautiful theological picture of how God adopts us as His children. He also thought that since we had been so blessed, it was a way to share our blessings. And since we were in the public eye, it might also inspire other families to open their homes to adopt orphans.
The only little detail Steven was worried about was my, uh, mental stability.
I had my hands full already, and I, too, wondered if I could psychologically handle the stress and the demands of a new baby in our busy family.
Meanwhile, Miss Persistent had bought a book on international adoption with her birthday money, and while I drove our minivan to soccer practice and errands, Emily would sit in the back and read out loud to me.
“Mom!” she’d say. “Did you know it only costs this or that to adopt a child from here or there?” She was relentless.
Then Emily went with Steven while he sang at a fundraising event for Bethany Christian Services, a Christian adoption agency. “Mom!” she said when she came home. “Did you know that Bethany is trying to build up their China program? They’re discounting Chinese adoptions right now!”
Because Emily was so adamant in her adoption PR campaign, I’d done a little reading on my own.
“You know,” I told Steven, “when I think about adoption, I always picture a little girl from Asia. And I always think I’d name her Hannah, since that means ‘gift of God’s grace.’
“But there are a couple of problems,” I went on. “I read that you can’t have more than two biological children at home if you adopt from China, and we already have three. And I’ve read about attachment issues and how hard it sometimes is for older children to really attach to their adoptive families. The children