Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [47]
“Don’t even think about it!” I told my softy of a husband. “If we are even going to consider another adoption, she better know how to play guitar, because she is going on the road with you!”
We laughed a few seconds, but somehow I knew this was going to come back up.
The rest of the week in China, wherever Steven went with Luis Palau, he was thinking about Maria. At first he tried to plan how he could help the Heddens adopt her. China had a law that said you couldn’t adopt two children at once, but Steven kept trying to think of a way to help them give Maria a forever home along with Natalie.
He was perplexed. We weren’t adopting again. But down deep, all he could think about was how much he wanted us to adopt Maria. He didn’t know why. It made no sense. It was like an instant, permanent connection in his heart.
The following Saturday was the day before Easter, and Steven was able to go to Maria’s foster home. He played music for the kids and carried Maria around all day long while the kids had a big Easter egg hunt.
The next day, Steven arrived at the same church where he had met Maria a week earlier. The Heddens met him in the hallway, carrying Maria in a beautiful pink Easter dress. After the service they said their goodbyes and took a few pictures in the parking lot before Steven left for the airport to come home. One of those pictures would become of monumental importance in the coming days.
“Can you believe this?” he asked me on the phone. “I’ve fallen in love with this little girl!”
I had sent him to China with strict orders not to fall in love with any more little Chinese girls in need of a family. But as I thought and prayed about my husband’s new little love, God took hold of my heart and changed it. By the time Steven traveled the twenty-some hours home from China, I was in full adoption mode. As far as I was concerned, we were going to China to get Maria as soon as we could. I’d completed all the adoption paperwork, and it was sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for his signature.
But by now Steven had shifted gears and tried to tone down his excitement about Maria. He had argued with himself about it all the way home on the flight from China. He had come to the conclusion that we didn’t have any business adopting again.
When he told me this, I just shrugged. As far as I was concerned, it was a done deal.
A few days later, I got a call from Steven while he was at the recording studio. He had checked his emails, and Amy Hedden had emailed a picture taken in the church parking lot in China as he was kissing Maria goodbye. When Steven saw that picture, it hit him: this wasn’t a photo of a man kissing the forehead of a little orphan. It was a picture of a daddy kissing his daughter.
“I know what we’re supposed to do about Maria,” he excitedly told me on the phone. “Let’s go get her!”
It was like God had planned it from the beginning.
Maria was a special needs orphan. The doctors in China had said that she was born with a hole in her heart, and she was diagnosed with ASD, atrial septal defect. This is a common congenital heart defect. Over time it can lead to irregular heartbeats, hypertension, stroke, or enlargement of the right side of the heart.
Oddly enough – God knew what was coming even though we didn’t – when I had prepared for Stevey Joy’s adoption, I had gotten two of every official paper that I needed. It was one of those random, “just in case” kind of things. So I already had all of the documents that it normally takes quite a while to get hold of.
Maria hadn’t yet been listed on a special needs adoption list. Special needs children are put on different lists for different agencies. At the time, if you met an orphan you would love to adopt, you would search around on various agencies’ lists, and if no one else had yet been matched with him or her, you could ask to be matched.
I’m sure the process is different now, but anyway, we waited . . . and eventually Maria was placed on a special needs list and we were able to be matched with her through a Kentucky adoption agency. After