Jack,
My boy.
Five years. That’s how long you waited for a family.
Ten years. That’s how long we waited for a second child.
I remember when you first came to live with us, and you didn’t know that we planned to adopt you yet. You thought we were just another foster family, you thought that you were a burden to us. We had to tell you so many times before you believed us, that you were fulfilling a place in our lives as much as we were fulfilling a place in yours.
We had chosen you out of everybody else.
We wanted you…
This was the beginning of the speech I read to my new son last week. On Adoption Day. The day he finally legally became ours. When he became a Whitson.
He was sitting in the “throne” I made for him. The Whitson Clan Initiation Throne to be precise, which is actually just an old media console I bought at Goodwill and then proceeded to paint and glue lots of things onto. (With my dad’s help I reaffixed the shelves to make arms and pulled out a drawer and converted it into a footstool). I love how the gold W looks like a crown! He’s clinging, as usual, to the baby of the family, Maximus.
Just before we brought it out of the storage room for the ceremony, he was ordering “the commoners” before him to bow down and do random menial tasks like pick up scattered playing cards and sing for his pleasure.
Here I am pointing out the mis-matched socks of His Royal Highness.
During The Whitson Clan Initiation Ceremony, we all lined up and read to him prepared speeches while he mainly hid his face in his hands, laughing and shedding the occasional tear.
But as the adoption day drew near I felt the desire to share the complete story, filled with all it’s bizarre miracles, about how Jack came to our family.
January 2008. Jesse and I marry. My son Jadon is six years old. I tell Jesse I have always wanted to adopt older children from the foster care system. But as we begin training and we understand the reality of what we are considering, we realize we are not ready, it is not time. We believe God has told us of something we will do one day, and we store it in a compartment in the backs of our hearts and let it go to sleep until God wakes it up again.
We pray and wait, raising our one child and building a life together, healing and growing and preparing. To our great sadness, I never am able to conceive another child.
Though we waited with no angst or impatience, we still had no idea that God would not say it’s time until nearly a decade later.
July 2016. Jesse, Jadon and I arrive in Colorado in our camper. Jadon is just turning fifteen.
My husband does auto hail repair so we have lived all over the country in our camper for the past nine years at this point, anywhere from a few to several months out of the year. We have our house in Minnesota too, to arrive and depart from. And Minnesota is where we call home.
After a nice summer in the Springs, I take Jadon home to start his ninth grade year at his private Christian school in Bloomington. Jesse stays in the Springs to keep working. But the separation, though usually quite comfortable and routine for both of us, is hard this time. We feel a shift in the season. The traveling and separation is coming to an end.
Which means leaving Minnesota and settling in a state where he will not have to travel for work. The only state where it hails all the time that we like as much as Minnesota.
Colorado!
January 2017. We pack up our beloved three story 1880’s Victorian in Minneapolis and move into a cute historic rental house in Old Colorado City, the first settled part of the Springs, which reminds us a bit of home in Uptown Minneapolis. Jadon starts public school for the first time since he was in fourth grade. It is by far the biggest school he has ever been to, with 1500 kids. Since he was eleven years old, he was homeschooled or attended his private school of 230 kids. After our private tour of the huge empty school building, he begs me to home school him again, but I know that season is over too. I know he needs to start peeling away from me, becoming more independent, meeting friends.
He latches onto the choir-geek culture immediately, joins the choir and starts thriving instantly, has a great group of friends within weeks. His social life begins to thrive more than it ever has and I see him become really happy. He loves his choir teacher so much he begins contemplating becoming a choir teacher himself.
February 2017. I start having the pangs again. For another child. They have come and gone for nine years. Mostly gone. But coming up every few to several months. As I pray, God very quickly tells me, a powerful knowing deep within my inner self: your child is HERE. That is why I have brought you here. Your child is HERE. In Colorado.
Suddenly I understand. This is why I never felt strongly toward adopting in Minnesota. Any children we were meant to have were never there. They have been here all along.
I tell my husband. It is time to talk to a social worker about foster adoption. It is finally time. My soul begins the labor pains, moving us toward this child, just like any other birth. But a birth of the soul more than the body. I begin crying randomly every day, it is so powerful it brings me to my knees in great heaving sobs of prayer, I can feel the labor in my soul. I can feel it is bringing my child to me. I can feel my child so close.
April, 2017. It’s time to move to Parker, Colorado. A town about an hour away, a southern suburb of Denver. Really? We just got settled here. Jadon is thriving in his school. Please don’t make me move him again! Please God! … But you know I will do anything you ask. Just tell me we are hearing right! We don’t want to make a mistake! Jadon is so happy… So happy…
Standing in church Sunday morning. Crying during worship. My head bowed low, Please God, do I have to move him again? Please tell me. He is so happy. My heart is breaking. But tell me, God. Tell me and I will do it.
And then the worship leader begins to speak, during a break in the verses. God is telling some of you to take a step right now, he is telling you to move, but you are afraid… You are worried about what it will cost someone you love… but there is nothing to be afraid of… he will take care of the one you love, they will not be hurt… as she continues I am clinging to my boy, so much taller than me now, and I am sobbing. But the answer is clear.
We are supposed to move to Parker.
May 2017. Parker, Colorado. A brand new two bedroom apartment. I am in love with my new apartment. With it’s ash wood floors and its corner living room surrounded by huge windows and its balcony overlooking acres of wild grassy fields and the Cherry Creek Trail. The town is smaller than the Springs. And it is very clean. A middle/upper-middle class town, with perfect roads and oodles of new construction. Incredible schools and parks everywhere you turn. Sprouts and Natural Grocer’s right around the corner.
I love Parker.
This is it. We are meant to stay in Colorado. Now that we are sure, we put our Victorian on the market in Minneapolis. And it is gone in a flash. Taking our old life with it.
August 2017. Time for Jadon to start his new school. I fumble with all my guilt and try to reshape it into something like hope and confidence. He has a visible slump in his stature. He says he is not happy but he is not miserable either. He is used to us moving him around. He tells me don’t worry mom, I’ll be okay. Even still, I can’t stop apologizing.
It takes a bit longer, but soon he is happy. Dating a few girls casually, joining the choir. Peace settles in from somewhere other-worldly. My adaptable boy. Thank you God for giving me such an adaptable boy. Soon… I’m happy mom. I really am happy here. He makes regular trips back to the Springs to visit his new best friend, Twain.
Suddenly the pains start again, harder and more intense. The groaning in my soul. The labor pains. We are even closer to our child now. I can feel it so deeply in the non-tangible parts of me, the parts that are not made of flesh and bone. The labor pains are increasing greatly. As if I am entering transition. He is close to us! I tell my husband. He is even closer now! And now I know… It’s a boy. And he is a teenager, just younger than Jadon. I can almost see him. And he is so close. We have to act NOW. Like any mother whose child is in need, I feel the surge in my gut.
He NEEDS us.
I begin crying again every day as I feel the close proximity of this thing we have waited a decade for. This person that has been gestating in my spirit-womb for nearly ten years.
It is finally time to meet him.
We hire an adoption agency and begin the home study. We move out of the apartment and into a rental house nearby with extra bedrooms. And we prepare for the arrival of our son.
he is so near.
he is so so near.
I can feel him
just
around
the
corner
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