Where do Babies Come From?

Mr. Wonderful and I had been married for two weeks when we went to the State Fair and gazed at a table of black and white pictures of babies in Korea.  We had never spoken of adoption before but in a two minute time frame, we made up our minds.  We wanted to adopt a baby.  

The baby would be a girl, we felt that if there were to be prejudice, it might be easier to have a darling little pink princess.  Who could look into those black eyes and not love her?  We watched a  movie with William Holden called The World of Susie Wong.  We knew we would love the little girl with black hair and almond eyes before we ever saw her.

We moved back to the Upper Midwest from Oregon because the adoption agency here didn't require that we be married for five years to qualify.  We both worked two jobs for a year and we prayed for the birth mother who we knew would now be expecting.   We had a home study with the social worker taking notes about our families, our future goals, our opinions on parenting a child who didn't look like us.  We wrote the answers to essay questions, 35 pages worth of answers about why we wanted to parent a baby from Korea.  And then we waited.  And waited and waited some more until one day, there was a call.  

The term 'up for adoption' comes from the late 1800s when orphaned children were put on the trains in New York and headed across the country.  The trains would stop in small towns where the children would literally stand up on the train platform and families would come and  pick a child from the lineup.

Our daughter was delivered by a 747 Northwest Airlines stork.  We took her into our arms and hearts and called her angel baby because she had been in Angel Babies Hospital in Seoul before coming to us.  She grew up, got married and now has babies of her own.  Today we celebrated the third birthday of her own little black eyed baby girl.    I call grandparenting 'the bonus round', anything I didn't have the time or the money for the first time, I have a second chance for now.  

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;

I will bring your children from the east

and gather you from the west.

I will say to the north, 'Give them up!'

and to the south, 'Do not hold them back!'

Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth...

Isaiah 43: 5-6