Interview with Adoptive Mom, Katherine - Part 1

Hello friends! I am very excited to bring you another adoption interview.

Katherine is an amazing woman with an amazing family whom I've had the recent privilege of getting to know. Katherine - thank you so much for your honesty and openness. I pray many will be blessed by your words!

I had a lot of questions so I'm breaking it up into two parts. I will post the last half tomorrow!

Some of the questions you asked awhile back are addressed in this interview as well. To catch up on the past 2 "Interviews with a Birth mom," click here and here or click on click here for the entire Adoption series.

How did you come to the decision to adopt?

The Lord planted the seed for adoption in my heart at the age of 12 when I read the book ‘The Family Nobody Wanted’ by Helen Doss. My husband only wanted two children so when our third child was born we were done.

However, as we grew in our faith we learn that children are a blessing and we had stopped that flow. So adoption was the option the Lord put on our hearts to grow our family with many more ‘blessings’.

In many relationships there is a “dragger” and a “draggee” in regards to adoption. Was this true in your relationship? Please explain.

Yes, I was the dragger. The burden on my heart was to have more children. So I prayed and waited and brought it up in conversation from time to time.

After many years my husband agreed to add to our family through adoption. However, neither he nor I expected what the Lord was going to do.

Did you have any biological children prior to adopting? Were you ever concerned that you would not be able to love an adopted child as much?

Yes, we have two sons and a daughter by birth. And no, the thought of not loving the children the Lord gave us through adoption never occurred to us.

The burden to adopt was to intense. And we thought of them as ‘forlorn orphans’ who would embrace us as parents. The surprise was that some of the children would never love or embrace us.

How old is your adopted child(ren) today? Where was he/she born? How old where they when you brought them home?

Four of our daughters came through the Baby Fold (DCFS IL). The first was 2 ½ years old and is now 11.

Then three weeks later three sisters were place in our home at 3, 8, and 11 years old; now they are 12, 17, and almost 20.

Four years later four Russian siblings became our three sons and daughter at the ages of 12, 10, and the twins 9; now they are 17, 15, and 14.

One and a half years later our two sons and daughter arrive from the Philippines at the ages of 11, 9, and 7; now 15, 13, and 11.

Was bonding immediate between you and your adoptive child? Please explain.

Yes and no. We, parents and children alike, knew that we belonged together and were committed to being a family.

But we were still strangers so it took time to knit our hearts in true trust and affection. However the hugs and kisses as well as discipline started right away on our part to establish that bond more quickly.

Was the financial aspect of adoption a concern? Please briefly explain how God provided for you.

Yes! That is why we went through DCFS the first time, no cost. However, when the Lord called us to go to Russia we were overwhelmed with the reality that we had no money. So we prayed and trusted.

It was than that a friend told us about Lifesong for Orphans. We met with the staff and what happened next was nothing but a miracle. They gave us a matching grant and through the gifts of family and friends the entire $43,000 adoption fees/expenses was raise.

That happened not once but twice.

Eighteen months later in exactly the same way the $23,000 Filipino adoption was completely covered. If God wants it done He will take care of it!!

Though adoption is an amazing blessing, it is not easy. Would you share some of the challenges your family faced during or after your adoption was final?

All four of our adoption processes had challenges - from birth-mother (who was slow to give up parental rights though she could not win in court) to social workers (who did not want us to bless our children with names, use biblical disciple, or homeschool) to dossier documents (slowed down our receiving a court date in Russia sooner) to paperwork (INS and DCFS stopped processes the Filipinos due to licensing mess up. It was fixed by the Philippines.)

Once the children were home he first challenge was communication. Though the Russians and Filipinos had to learn English from scratch, our American daughters also had a extremely limited vocabulary and were unable to understand us most of the time when we spoke or read to them.

It was a struggle but after a year or so from their entering our family all eleven children had advance vocabularies and some were becoming masters at using puns.

The next challenge was winning their hearts. Literally once any one of our children accepted Christ they turned and gave us their heart too. Their love and acceptance of us as parents is worth every trouble we ever had with their adoption process or their raunchy behavior and attitude.

However those of our children who still have not a heart for Christ or for us as parents, we teach and train and love in faith that the Lord is please with our efforts though the child rebels against us.