Sobering Dr.’s visit…

Ron and I had an appointment with a Pediatrician today to ask a few questions about John before our Nov. trip to China and also to get a prescription for skin rashes that children can have from living in an orphanage. 

After talking with us, the doctor e-mailed us his notes from our appointment. He writes: “My main concern is his (John’s) poor weight, and we discussed briefly effects of malnutrition and the context of institutionalization with behavior and learning issues”.  This is not the first time that we have heard that malnutrition can affect brain functioning.  But for some reason today, it sunk in for both of us.  We are sad for John…we wish he had been here with us these last 22 months of his life…we wish that his “failure to thrive” problems would be over when his adoption is completed. 

As I turned to my journal, I was comforted by a previous devotional time spent on Ps. 27: 14, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”  In the book, “A Shelter in the Storm”, Paul Tripp writes about these verses with a perspective that I find helpful.  “Self-sovereignty is the dream of every sinner.  It’s hard for us to trust ourselves to the wisdom, power, and control of another.  We want to write our own dreams, we want to be the central character of the story.  But the spiritual reality of the universe is that we are not authors of our own story.  Our story is a part of a larger story that is written by the Lord.  In this story, we are never on center stage.  That is a position occupied by the Lord alone.” 

We trust that whatever story John’s life is intended to fulfill, that God is using the orphanage and even his “poor weight” to be a part of it. 

Sept. 18th - a letter written to John

John, we received your darling picture today and a brief update on your growth.  I cannot explain what it does to my heart to see new pictures of you.  I keep asking myself…how can I love a boy so much whom I have never actually been with in person?  John, I was not given the privilege of having you formed daily in my womb.   Your birth mother gave you physical life.   However, I can testify that over these 10 months that we have had you in our lives, our love for you has grown.   We long to feel your breathing on our neck, we long to see your eyes glisten with happiness, we long to hear your unique voice make sounds.  I am convinced that we could not love you more even if you did have our DNA. 

   

So, where does this love come from, this love we have for you?  It comes from God.  1 John 4:7 says: “Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God”. 

John, we don’t know what God has planned for you.  We know that everyone’s life is filled with both joy and sorrow; with dreams gloriously fulfilled and also with devastating disappointments.   One thing that we pray you will keep in the core of your being is that YOU ARE LOVED!   You don’t have to be a “good boy” or successful to earn our love.  You already have it and we still have not even met.  

  

The love that comes from God does not fail…even when we fail you, God’s love never fails. 

A new photo of John...22 months

Why don’t the babies cry in the orphanage?

Helping an adopted child develop his or her identity takes intentionality.  In piecing together John’s history, we have been reading reputable sources on the typical experiences of growing up in an orphanage.  This excerpt from an article is sobering yet helpful. 

“In general, what might a child’s life have been in an orphanage? Even the best institutions

have the following:

• uneducated or minimally trained caregivers

• rotating caregivers on shifts

• abrupt transfers to different orphanages or sections of an orphanage

• loss of peers as those children are adopted or transferred

• limited language interaction with adults

• regimented daily activities: eating, sleeping, toileting at the same time each day (not based on the child’s individual needs)

• lack of spontaneous activities

• absence of personal possessions

• limited activities to develop motor skills–no use of markers, pencils, equipment

• exposure to toxins, including lead”

(from an article called: How Can You Combat the Effects of an Orphanage by Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS)

One of our goals as John’s parents will be to establish a permanency in his heart and mind that as parents we are here to meet his needs – that he can depend on us to come to him as he learns to express his needs.   In most orphanages, the children do not cry – even when they have a need that only the hired caregiver can meet.  They don’t cry because they have learned that when they did cry, no one came.  Thus they are programmed to not trust.    We may be the only parents on the block that will be happy when our child cries!   

Orphanage update on "Shi Jie" (John) - April, 2010

4/13/10 Update from Orphanage

He was age 1 year & 4 months when these pictures were taken and the medical assessment was conducted.

Medical/Development:

His current health is good

He can crawl, stand holding onto handrail.

He can not express himself verbally.

Personality:

They call him Shi Jie.

He is active and outgoing.

General:

His sleeping and diet schedule:                   

7:00 am breakfast

11:30 am lunch

5:00 pm dinner

8:00 pm go to sleep

He eats congee, noodle, milk, apple juice.  He likes biscuits and bread.

He is cared in LOCR
(This is a special room that allows the children to get more attentive care - we read on a web site that only children under age 1 are in the Lilly Orphan Care Room - and John would have been 1 1/2 when this update was written...therefore we are not sure whether he is in this room or not.  Our US adoption agency was not able to find this out for us).

He received package from the family  
(This means that he is getting the monthly packages that Ron and I send to him at the orphanage).
 
Weight: 13.5 lbs.
Height:  24 in. 
He has two teeth!

Abandonment

            Knowing John’s story is an educated guess – I will admit that.  However, there are cultural clues that help us piece together what most likely happened.  There are a number of significant differences between the US and China that come into play.

1.       China has a “one child policy”.  In order to control the population, China enacted a government sanction on the size of a family.  Since 1979 every married couple was allowed to have only one child.  There are very hefty financial penalties placed on the family with more than one child and limits are set on education, etc. if the policy is not adhered to.  Recently, there has been a relaxation of the one child policy…adoptions are even starting to occur in China.
2.    In addition, China has no government “social security plan”.  Instead for generations, the grown children take on the responsibility for their parents and grandparents.  Therefore the pressure to have a child succeed is very great.  Literally the family livelihood depends on how successful your one child will be.   In the past, the culture assumed that a male heir would be able to provide for the needs of the family better than a female child.  Therefore, a plethora of baby girls were “abandoned” and then placed in orphanages.
3.     In China, it is illegal for a parent to place their child into an orphanage.  The child must be “abandoned”.
4.      Most Chinese do not have medical insurance policies. 

Therefore birthing a medical special needs child creates a crisis for a typical Chinese couple.   Questions must be considered that are not usually part of our western mindset.   

Most children in China– boys or girls – who have a cleft lip and palate, are abandoned when they are 1 day old.  This does not mean that the parents did not love that child, but that they felt that, considering the above facts, they could not trust their future to a child with physical deformities that they did not have a means to correct. 

However, John’s parents must have struggled with this decision since he was not abandoned for 30 days.  He was more than likely their first born child – a beautiful boy…yet his physical problems would have caused a challenge.  During those 30 days, perhaps they looked into having his cleft fixed; perhaps they even prayed for healing.   Very likely, his mother tried to feed him with her breast and he was losing weight as a child with a cleft palate cannot suck.   

Living with these realities, it would have been logical to think that having John raised in an orphanage that has cared for many other babies with the same medical problem would actually save his very life.   So they abandoned their 30 day old son.  Heartbreaking… I can’t even think about it without tearing up.  What sorrow and grief they must have felt walking away from their first-born son.   And who knows how long John cried out for them before he was found by strangers and placed in the orphanage.  Being abandoned by the very people who were meant to meet your needs is a crushing blow to the heart - no matter what circumstances or culture norms surround it.  Heartbreaking...