Sara Hagerty
About a Father: When a Man Loves a Woman
He came home from a morning prayer meeting and said, “I think we need to go now.”
My heart dropped into my stomach and it was as if I lost nine years’ work in nine seconds. Back again to newlywed – nearly heart-dead from crafting schemes to win him to my ways. All so that I wouldn’t have to trust.
“Now?” I said. Although my four-page trip prep checklist was nearly completed, we still had no sign of a court date. And the Ugandan courts closed July 15th for the summer recess. If we went now, we chanced staying months in-country and breathing in all the emotional and financial expenditures that come from raising a family of four (or six) in temporary living quarters.
So I grilled him.
Why now? Where did this thought come from? Is this direction from God or just a boyhood craving for adventure?
Woman reverted back to girl, as if my wedding dress were freshly boxed. I looked at him as an opponent, seeking to rob my security more than the proven ally he was.
Nothing about adoption is safe. We sign papers and write checks and make mental timelines as if any part of this process is secure, and then are shocked when the battle waged in the heavenlies over these children’s lives intersects the natural and becomes our reality.
The fields of the fatherless are war-stained.
So when Nate made his suggestion to do the unconventional, and put my family of four on a plane with such uncertainty at its destination, I forgot what I signed up for. He’s crazy, I thought, as if even choosing to “disrupt” our steady-lives with the entry of two more – out of the birth order and past the years where pain can hide behind memory loss – was not crazy, even by my own standards.
So we got on our faces. Me, asking for confirmation. Him, balancing the certainty of what he thought we were to do and his wife’s faint heart.
Hours sitting in this pending decision revealed truth.
This had little to do with the outcome and everything to do with the weak walls I’d erected around my heart.
Here we go again.
The age-old story of our marriage came back to the same fault line. Trust. I had spent half a decade building a case around why the boy who came into my life at twenty-two, now man, was still unworthy of my greatest heart’s expression. I spent the other half- decade warding off supporting arguments for that case, often unsuccessfully.
Defense was never His intended position for my marriage.
So He gave me opportunities to advance. To take real ground. To see the strength in the man I was given, in the same way He sees the beauty in this weak-hearted woman who was his bride. To call me out of stale patterns of thinking and into the enchantment that is marriage — offered for every marriage, not just the perfected one.
Because really, every issue in my marriage can find its source in a brokenness between me and my heavenly Father.
Six days and ten bags later, we left. Our lawyer said “don’t come”*, our agency advised strongly against it* and my insecure heart chose to follow the lead of the man He had given me. I’m pretty sure I had missed many dress rehearsal opportunities to practice trust, but something inside of me said it’s not too late.
The stakes were high but the wee hours of the night revealed a little girl’s heart who longed to unclench her fists and fall deep into the safety of my Daddy.
I was created to trust.
And my Father didn’t make a mistake when He gave me a man so other that He would challenge my most guarded methods of self-preservation.
In the five weeks which proceeded from our last minute jump on a plane, I saw arguably more of the holy hand of God than in all of my life up until that point. Mountains fell into the sea and the waters were parted before us. He made us Israel and our children the descendents of history-made.
We returned a family.
We stepped off the international flight which bridged the ocean between my children’s birth-country and their new home, battle-scarred and ragged, yet made to be glorious displays of His splendor.
All because Nate said yes when the Lord said go.
All because He gave me a man who would patiently lead me off the precipice of my fears in order that I might have an encounter with trust.
All because He mercifully dismantles the walls we put up between us and Him …. and is unrelenting about the display of His glory in us.
*Please don’t do this at home! Or, better put, please only under Parental supervision get on a plane and travel halfway around the world despite your lawyer’s wishes. We so appreciated the wise advice from our agency and their support along the way. In following the Lord’s lead to go to Uganda, we weighed their caution heavily. Our story is not a principle, nor a radical move for the sake of being radical — it was a knees-shaking-while-we-board-that-plane response to what we believed to be God’s prompting. We walked a painstaking process of listening to God, and respecting the authorities He put in place through this process. While on the surface it may look like we were bull-dog Americans, we went with the desire to respect the systems through which He is working adoptions and with the willingness to stay long-term if that was His plan.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married 10 years. They brought home their two children from Ethiopia in 2010 and two more from Uganda in 2011. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. And, they are excited to be journeying to the East Coast in February 2013 to share their hearts with others, serving as keynote speakers at The Sparrow Fund’s first adoptive couples’ retreat. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
Daddy’s Girl
“Daddy, Mommy is just like me and Hope,” she shot out from the backseat. “She’s an orphan.”
The fact that my daughter, now with our family for over 2 months, still saw herself as an orphan and that she somehow made a delineation between our most recent two and the earlier two we had adopted, was lost on me at that moment. Her words were like a puncture wound.
Two years ago tomorrow, my father went home.
And what I’m learning about grief is that it comes at the times I least expect it. The summer-streaked sky bears witness to a surprise thunder crack and I’m swept with sadness. My dad loved thunderstorms and he taught me to love what he loved. There’s a rare thunderstorm that doesn’t leave me thinking of my father.
And these words from my daughter about where my father’s death has left me with another wave. I bit my lip and my eyes flooded with tears as Nate quickly responded “Sweetheart, you and Hope are not orphans anymore.”
But what about me?
You’re never old enough to witness the death of a parent and feel like it’s normal. Though my father had been ill for some time, his death was an amputation. How can I learn to walk without this leg?
Today I made my Wednesday retreat to the prayer room with this anniversary — such an arbitrary date I’m supposed to feel something around yet a real and tangible reminder of what I’ve lost — in mind. I didn’t pray about it or bring it to His attention, but the remainder marks that hang in our backdrops are God’s territory.
I read this: For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).
I have this haunting question: what about them? And it surfaces every few weeks, as I’m reminded of all the children who fill the orphanage floors and city streets, without parents waiting for them. Between now and when there is tangible relief, what hope is there?
The answer is the same for them as it is for anyone else, young or old, living with an amputation.
God fills in the gaps. Young and old, we have access to the Father.
And if I was ever tempted to deny God’s goodness to even the sickest child, living on death’s doorstep without a parent in the wings, I just need to remember the early signs of Him each one of my children brought into our home.
Within a day or two of being home, I found Eden and Caleb huddled on our steps, prostrate. “Pray,” they told me in Amharic [Salut]. I hadn’t yet had words to tell them of Him, but the One who went before me did. And part of their life was talking to Him.
“Jesu balungi!” Hope sung through the corridor of our guest home in Uganda. Jesus is beautiful. Something I say often, but she learned from Another.
“Jesus …come…” came muffled through the door, overheard by her foster mom. Minutes earlier, Lily’s ears had been introduced to the story of Him. She twirled around and rushed to her room to talk to this Man — made Father for the first time for her.
God’s goodness didn’t start when they entered our home, or even when we first pursued them. He is still Healer, even when the broken places haven’t yet been tangibly mended. He is the perfect Daddy of the fatherless.
Death has no sting.
My story is small compared to that of the woman who left a comment on my blog, months ago, saying she lived her childhood fatherless. Her whole childhood. The Father’s heart breaks for this. It breaks for her. And for me. It breaks.
And then He tenderly promises access.
Healing’s well.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year and just recently brought home two more from Uganda! They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
Encore: God Doesn’t Need Me
Eden
Published on September 26, 2010 on We Are Grafted In…
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This is our daughter, just after she arrived at the orphanage. Taken by a doctor who wanted to show us the extent of her malnourishment.
Yes, the orphan crisis is one of the few things that keeps me up at night. Children not only abandoned to AIDS, poverty, and war but then subject to exploitation at the hands of traffickers in their own hometowns . . . and in my hometown. The lump in my throat comes not at the vast numbers of children orphaned throughout the world but at the mental image of one single child. Cracked lips, hair matted from sweat, dirt caked fingernails, and bloodshot eyes from yet another night of poor sleep on the street.
Millions of little cross-bearers fill our earth without someone to help carry their load. I have yet to hear a story of an orphan enfolded into a home that didn’t reek of pain. The weight of my own personal pain has seemed unbearable at times, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what some of these 6 and 7 year-old orphans have faced. Alone. Their tolerance for pain stretched thin and at an age where I didn’t have one “ouchie” go unkissed.
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Eden’s ballet class is tomorrow. She dances around the room in a flurry of African hip-jerks and pirouette attempts. In her leotard and tights, the only thing that distinguishes her from her classmates (also learning to harness their energy into beauty) is her size. I sometimes forget that her petite frame didn’t come because God intended her to be pint-sized but because, as an infant, she spent her days laying alone next to the field where her father worked. No breast to feed this little ballerina.
As I futilely try to wrap my mind around how I see one of the world’s greatest crises—a child plodding through life parentless—there is one conclusion, however, that I keep coming back to.
God doesn’t need me.
I have to admit there are times when I’ve approached this crisis (and even our own adoption as an answer) with a virulent pride, albeit subtle. On the surface, it comes in the form of seeing myself orchestrating a rescue mission. But, a few layers deep reveals a fissure in my understanding of God. He did not create this crisis—but that does not mean He is powerless to fix it. And, when the catalyst for my actions is the belief that God needs me to respond, He is relegated to a copilot. I become the healer; He becomes my helper as I heal.
The end result of this line of thinking or an intimate peak into the things God cares about can look the same: zealous passion for the things on God’s heart. But, the source of that passion is everything.
As we move forward with our next adoption, I wrestle with pride about how I am responding to (what I perceive to be) one of the world’s greatest crises. And, when I’m there, I am usually furiously chasing paperwork and breathing down my social worker’s neck to see if we could possibly speed things up and get these children home sooner.
And, at times, I rest my head on His chest, like I used to do with my dad when I was a child, and I hear His heartbeat for these little ones. And, I ache with the pain that He allows me to feel from His heart. And, when I’m there . . . I am usually furiously chasing paperwork and breathing down my social worker’s neck to see if we could possibly speed things up and get these children home sooner.
I believe God cares more about the source of my passion than the reach of its output. My invitation to participate is less about meeting a need than it is about walking more deeply with the Father. And, this hard-won truth has come after years of zealous pride in my “work.”
I know now that there are two rescue missions going on in this adoption. He’s rescuing my heart, even more still. He’s giving me a window into how He feels about orphans. His heartbeat. His plan. And He’s tenderly letting me in on His work, in the same way I allow my little Caleb to help me cook. He’s drawing me in deeper into Himself by using me in the life of a child He could so easily save without me.
And He’s putting the lonely—two of them, in this case—in a family. Even under our roof and in our arms, they will still need Jesus. Clean water, soft skin, and big comfy beds are what He lets me provide, among other things. But, the power to save rests not in my hands.
He likes it when we respond to His heart, and the world is brought more deeply in line with His kingdom when we do so. It’s just that, actually, God doesn’t need me.
He chooses to invite me.
Eden before her first ballet class, 17 months later
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year and just recently brought home two more from Uganda! They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
Meet Lily & Hope
Because of the sensitive nature of our adoptions, I have not been able to share details of what has yet been one of the greatest rescue stories of our lives. A story that is now becoming our pilgrimage.
But, today, justice and mercy kissed, and we saw the strong arm of the fatherless on behalf of our no-longer-fatherless.
Today, in Lily’s words, “the judge said yes.”
As the weeks unfold, I can’t wait to tell the story. Their stories. My story. His story.
In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak at the two latest ones who have stolen our hearts. Please praise God with us for moving through the impossible to make them Hagertys. We are crazy about them.
If you are unable to watch the video above, click on this link to watch it online.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. Led by God, they started the adoption process again–for two more from Uganda. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
Her New Story Begins
Our family grew by one yesterday.
We accepted our first, of two, referrals. The Hagerty crest has been imprinted in another country, on another little heart.
And as I create my mental baby book, replaying the details of this past week’s events over and over again in my mind, the small insignificants are what make her story significant. He’s left His mark. Everywhere.
We first heard word of her just days after I emailed my coordinator to say “although we’re leaning towards four and under, please let us know if any child outside of this age range comes across your desk.”
Like a woman found pregnant just months after she delivered her last child, I readily field the skeptical responses. Aren’t they more likely to have … permanent damage? Doesn’t it take a long time to restore one who has spent that many years out from under your roof? Older children, older orphans, raise eyebrows. Including my own. I have no judgment for these responses, because they once were fears I slept with, and too much analyzing and not enough leaning into Him leaves me entertaining them again.
Humanity is fear’s breeding ground. We accept fear as our daily drink and pattern our lives around it. And something the Father has highlighted to me these past few weeks and months is this fear. In me. Rather than doing what I’ve always done and avoid all circumstances that might offer opportunity to play with fear’s fire, He has said a simple: walk through it. Hot coals, an obstacle in my path, are His corridor for this time in our lives.
The anything-but-flippant email to our coordinator upping our age range was our RSVP.
And she came back with this: “I have a five year old girl for you to consider.”
She prepared us for waiting weeks to receive the official referral, but I knew it would be less. In every way, this second adoption has been accelerated — for what reason I’m not yet sure.
One week later, my brisk-Colorado morning prayers echoed in the loft of our friend’s mountain home. Like a boomerang, they came from Him and I breathed them back. Today, Lord. Will you let it be today?
His yes came just hours later.
I scurried through the self check-out line with detergent and ketchup in-hand, staples that hadn’t earlier made my list. As I reached for my receipt, my phone revealed the sacred number that every adoptive parent memorizes when waiting for a referral — but because we were so early in the process, I didn’t yet recognize it.
“Sara, I have some news for you,” she said.
I stumbled into the car full of friend and children passing the time by singing, and swallowed deep. This is it.
My water broke and the waiting I have worn like an old, comfy bathrobe over my family-building years was exchanged for contractions. It’s time to fight for her homecoming.
Our last trip to this friend’s mountain-home brought with it the news that our first adoption would be at a standstill. Three years later, He came with the restoration that says “I will wash over every-single-broken place.“
We sat on the referral for days, unheard-of in most adoption circles, but my insecure heart needed the surety that this field-of-fear — adopting outside the birth-order and older than we’d anticipated, on top of some extraneous details of her story — was His to win. My already-reminded heart needed more reminding.
And the Remind-er patiently reminded me.
With the mountains at our back and Kansas tumble-weed blowing across the great plains, we made our final decision. This five-year old would be our five-year old. Eden would be, as she calls it, a virtual “twinnie.”
I picked up the phone to call our coordinator and as the receptionist wired me through to her line, out of the big-sky blue, barren of all but windmills, rose a hand-painted cry on a small billboard: “Adoption, Not Abortion.” One farmer’s declaration was God’s signpost for me.
Another detail, just in time, reminding us that He has written life onto our DNA and that, when we asked Him a year or so ago what we were about as a family, one of His responses was Life. At any age. Anytime.
The walk over hot coals is full of reminders. Full of daddy hand-holding and whimsical kisses that say trade your fear for Love, there’s a win on the other side of this.
I’m not sure which will be the bigger salvage here: her life or my fear-threatened heart.
So now we wait for our second referral. And when that comes, we pack our bags and go global.
In the meantime, please pray for our daughter on the other side of the world. And the name we’ve given her?
Hope.
Please pray for Hope, that’d He’d whisper to her heart that we are coming.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. They recently started the adoption process for two more from Uganda. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
I Was Made to Adopt
…or should I say, adoption was made for me.
I have three calendars — one on my mac, one wall-sized calendar in my laundry room, and a third I carry with me most all times. I (manually) sync them every week. They are color coded. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my heart sometimes picks up its speed at the thought of walking the aisles of Target to pick out new ones.
I love order and feel no shame about it. God made me this way.
But as with any God-given bent, it has a seamy underbelly. And mine is the subtle perception that creeps into my thinking that just because I have a plan on paper, I can expect its speedy execution. And even deeper than this is a subconscious belief that a life of ease is my highest aim.
With just a little over a year under my belt after bringing our children home, it’s almost as if dust has collected on the parts of my heart and mind that so intimately knew the opposition which our adoption brought. Adoption is close to the heart of God. Orphans have His eye. And the enemy opposes what God esteems.
Yet somehow, in the initial paper-chase, I’ve begun to believe that the real work of adoption is progressing as I zip through my task list. Physician’s visit, fingerprinting appointment, online training – check. They are coming home soon!
But it’s the hair-pin, unexpected turns that remind me that the real work of getting these children home has nothing to do with a notary or a recommendation letter or even the check I write. This is why adoption was made for me.
God gives permission to circumstantial detours to train us how to rely on His Spirit. He has set-up a divine school of prayer — of connecting to His heart — tailored for each one of us. (This is why I think that man-made “principles”– applied outside of God’s inspiration and timing–have the potential to erode our hearts; His Spirit works uniquely in each one of us.)
Mine so happens to be in bringing forth children. If you’ve read my blog long enough, you know I’m in the remedial program. It’s taking me a long time to complete this particular course.
There is a great confluence of forces working in our adoption. A collision of a God-ordained rescue mission, the enemy’s schemes to thwart it, type-A-birthed plans, and childlike dreams … well, that’s my life. He has given me hope for the very thing He ordained — putting the lonely in families — and at the same time He allows twists and turns that just about break me. All under His kind direction. All covered in His love.
Even more than teaching me to hear His voice or to implement a prayer strategy from Him, God is aligning my spirit with His Spirit. His breath in me is my only option for survival. And when I inhale His words, His thoughts, my exhale becomes His wisdom and His relentless pursuit of these children. Waiting and delay is the very thing that’s ignited this process of becoming one with God.
I haven’t worked at it, it’s happened to me.
Some of the greatest works of God in my life were ones borne out of my complete incompetence during times when words in prayer ran dry while tears abounded. My ugliest moments have given way to His glory. My failures His playground. My bitter, His sweet. But the cry which comes out of that time is oftentimes the holiest.
While I don’t want to expect hold-ups in this adoption, I’m prepared that I’ve entered what appears to be enemy territory. Fatherlessness. It’s a wasteland of pain for children. My muscle-memory tells me to kick it into high gear and rush to get all the paperwork done “just so”, ’cause that’s what little calendar-keepers like me do. But God has given me pause.
And instead I’m choosing to let it all happen with the understanding that that the prayer coming forth out of His perfect storm (the drought of my flesh, the darts of the enemy, and God’s rescue mission) is far more powerful to bring these children home than any perfectly executed paper chase.
The great thing about doing this again — or, really, of getting to retrace any of life’s steps — is that I can always ask for more. In 8 months or 2 years, when they are home in my arms, I want to know Him in a deeper way. I want to have prayed more focused prayers. I want to have walked more precisely in His wisdom. I want to have a greater sense of partnership with Him.
I want to be changed.
Even more than I want my calendars in sync, if you can believe it.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. They recently started the adoption process for two more from Uganda. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
But God
So much of what’s communicated about the world of adoption can feel so fatalistic.
Both the outside observer and the mom who is in the thick of it can share the same bleak perspective. One perceives trouble and the other lives it, daily. Anecdotes about the neighbor’s son who, post-adoption, traumatized his siblings, share equal weight with a mother’s desperate prayer requests for her child, whose countenance has iced-over since they brought her home.
Rewind 10 years and any sort of bump in the pathway to the “normal” life intimidated me.
My secret goal was to maintain an equilibrium in every way. A good marriage, steady friendships, growing impact on the world, faithful-but-not-interrupted walk with God. None of these, in and of themselves, are wrong, of course. But, they couldn’t exist alongside my prayers for a unique intimacy with God.
He let me share, however little, in His sufferings.
Little did I know that what was in front of me would prepare me to administer healing to my daughter and walk alongside my son in his grief. My hiccups found me a Father, and they are teaching me to be a mother.
Though I met with Jesus in the back-alley of life and found true safety outside of my “normal” life, I still carried those same expectations for normalcy over my children, who came to me through an anything-but-normal means. Residual fear of straying from the norm carried through to our first months and even year of absorbing Eden and Caleb into our fold.
“Happy children” was my goal.
The problem, unfortunately, being that I also prayed even before the first time I laid eyes on them, that they would know Him as Daddy. I’ve asked, almost daily, that they would know in their innermost being how high, wide, deep and long is His love.
While happy is surely the fruit of a child who knows their Father loves them, there are years where that truth may have been called into question, for my little former-orphans. And, they cannot be erased.
And, grief has surfaced in our home.
The pain behind her eyes is unavoidable at times. Her grasps for the promise of security exposed behind weak attempts to disguise them. Is our love as temporal as the one she first knew? If the womb’s bond was broken by poverty, who can she trust?
The foundational fissures of a child, once abandoned, cannot be easily caulked. Even the early years are subject to a forever imprint.
But God.
Yes, but God.
The same words I heard years ago about all those areas of “normal” being stretched thin, are the words I hear now. I found a flicker of light in the night, then, that set my whole heart on a different course. One breath of His changed everything.
I was not made to simply endure, forever living by the scars I’d incurred along the way. I was made to conquer. To win. And the prize was the internal shifting of my heart that would never be taken away from me. I would never be the same again.
My walk through the valley of the shadow of death marked my twenties and early thirties. My daughter found it at three and four.
But, her scars will be her testimony. And, the imprint, a remainder mark of the sweet kiss of Jesus.
I feel the ripples of loss in my home. When fear fills her eyes and insecurity leaks out, I inhale the abandonment too. She clasps her hands around my neck with a hold that craves promise, while expecting that one day this, too, will end. Her joy and zeal, overshadowed as of late, by tentativeness.
By itself, it is bleak. It is fatalistic. There is reason to accept our children will be forever broken.
“But God” echoes from my insides. I want to shout it in my home and let the hope of those words linger like a candle’s fragrance in winter over our responses to this vessel not-yet-fully-healed.
She gets to find Him. Early. The darkness ignored by many but undeniable to her, begs a light. My little girl will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.
And because I’d faulted in my marriage, my friendships, my impact, my ambitions, her road to Him is actually exciting for me. I know not just what is on the other side, but the Man she gets to meet along the way.
And His grip around her tiny fingers offers her early admittance to safety.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. They recently started the adoption process for two more from Uganda. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
Her Inheritance
“And I want Mommy to have a baby in her belly,” I overheard her say as I was walking up the stairs this morning. I stopped in the hallway outside her room just long enough to hear “but sometimes it takes a long long time for babies to come. You have to pray and pray and pray. And wait.”
My daughter delivered a five year-old summary of her mommy’s life.
Nate had been talking with them about Zechariah and Elizabeth. And, to Eden, Elizabeth was another one of those women – like Sarah and Mary … or her mommy – whose story reminded her that pregnancy must come at the hands of a miraculous God.
I’d never told her I want to be pregnant.
She wasn’t my “second choice”, and I didn’t trust her young mind to later process my desire alongside of her own story with a healthy perspective. She was too young to catch wind of her Mommy’s pain.
The first time I remember her mentioning it was after a playgroup where all the women, but two of us, were pregnant. Children built towers, played instruments and read books around their mothers who shared life-stories. Naturally the topic of pregnancy came up. And my little one, who has not yet lost the hyper-vigilance that is a survival mechanism for many orphans, absorbed every word.
Later, in her prayers, she asked God to “send a baby to her mommy’s belly.”
It initially hurt my heart.
I’ve been preparing to field questions and observations about how our family is different for years. I just didn’t expect the first of them to be about my personal scarlet letter. I anticipated that she’d one day feel the pang of our skins’ different colors and her unique entrance into our family, but I didn’t suspect she’d have this other difference on her radar.
While the things that make our family different don’t seem to be a struggle for her now, they may one day become more than observations. I could call it maternal instinct that makes me want to protect her from every potential hurt, every pain. But my heavenly Father’s instincts were different.
His protection came not from avoiding that which would cause pain, but for offering His companionship as I walked through it. The valley of the shadow of death is land claimed by the Father. It is a holy place.
For me. And for my daughter.
At five, she has lived years I want to erase, but that God will redeem. And then, as one grafted in to this family, she has inherited new opportunities for pain.
But the ground I’ve taken in my life and heart, as it relates to processing my lack, doesn’t need to be won over, again, by her.
Her inheritance comes (from God) through me. She is my legacy. What I win in my lifetime — in terms of a hopeful perspective on all He has allowed and joy in the midst of “setback” — she gets to live out.
Her words to Nate this morning were not pain-filled. Sure, something in her – I’m not quite sure even why – wants her mommy to be like the other mommy’s with babies in their bellies. She longs, in the way a five year-old has capacity to. But what she has come to know as commonplace Christianity has taken me years to receive:
You don’t always get what you want, but in the face of delay, you pray and pray and pray. And wait. Sometimes for a long, long time.
And in the meantime you worship the One who holds beauty.
My highest aim as a parent is not to try and protect my children from all that might befall them, but to, instead, seek the healing touch of Jesus in every area of my own life, knowing that they will inherit what I leave behind. The “unfinished” will be theirs to finish or to pass along. And those ashes subjected to beauty, will remain their crown.
At five, Eden doesn’t wonder if God will still be who she believes Him to be if, next month, Mommy isn’t pregnant. “God is good, He is so so good to me,” she sings as her bare feet dangle from the potty.
Bracing myself against the hits I fear might come from the Father is a distant memory. After many years of having my soil tilled and turned, the ground is supple to receive the God of Hope.
And because of His great mercy in my life, to save me from my fearfully expectant heart, my daughter receives new land on which to plant.
My freedom won is her inheritance to build upon.
The fullness of God I pray almost daily for in my own life, isn’t just my platform for the next age. It’s hers too.
And her daughter’s.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. They recently started the adoption process for two more from Uganda. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
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With Thankfulness: How Can I Ever Thank You?
It was a bitter cold Sunday in December where my heart wore the weather. At the time, we were attending a church busting at the seams with prolific twenty-somethings. Most all the women my age (or younger) were either pregnant, nursing, or carrying their almost-walking 1-year-old in an ergo. They came on Sundays to be reminded of a faithful God, but I entered those doors each week with the stinging reminder that my request of that faithful God hadn’t yet received a response.
This particular Sunday, Nate was out of town. I was doing announcements for church so I had no excuse to pull the covers up over my head and forfeit my weekly encounter with envy. Little did I know that this was the day that would produce a forever perspective change.
As we sang the worship songs, my eyes filled with tears. Our adoption had just recently hit yet another roadblock, and the end was no where near in sight. The road to family seemed blocked at every junction. The words of these worship songs felt void against the backdrop of pain in my life. Like most pain yet-untouched by God, my paper pregnancy, apparently also barren, had fostered a growing ferment on my heart. My hurt was expanding beyond just the issues of child-bearing. The vision for my life was impacted. I started to see many things through the lens of being overlooked by God.
I closed my eyes to keep from looking around me at the others whom I assumed (in my naiveté) could more easily proclaim the truths of God in song because they had what I wanted. And, I saw this vision in my mind’s eye: the word family written on a piece of paper, nailed to the cross. And the Lord whispered to my spirit: If you never have a family, will you still love me?
I walked out of church that day numb. I had no answer to the question asked of me. Me, the one who had boasted of a willingness to be martyred for the sake of Jesus couldn’t readily say “yes” to a God asking me for allegiance in the face of my biggest fear.
The crazy thing about it all is that I never wanted to be a mom. I wasn’t the little girl who played house and dreamed about being a mommy. In my late teens/early twenties, I didn’t even want to get married. Marriage and children, to me at that point, were far from desirable to my driven heart. I saw them as obstacles to a devoted life, not the instruments they truly are. God broke in and gave me the desire to have children. He spoke to me about both biological children and adoption, well before I even deemed myself ready. Desire for a big family came from Him.
So His question, to me, had less to do with the content – my having a family – and more to do with His nature. Why would He put this desire deep in my core only to ask me to relinquish it? Why invite me to travel a road with a dead end?
It took me 3 days to respond.
I knew the right answer, but I couldn’t go there. I spent hours picturing a life like the one God was asking me to consider – void of family but full of Him. Could I love a God who took away the very thing He gave me? Could I trust the leadership of a Man when the mystery He offered wasn’t magical but perplexing? And, more than trust, could I further engage with the very one on whose watch I was wounded?
Somehow, out of this darkness of consideration that seemed so bleak, came a response that I didn’t expect. It was so unlike me that I knew the Holy Spirit had a set a new resolve in me that my flesh could not have produced. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes, I could love Him. Yes, I could trust His leadership. Yes, I could even find delight and joy and contentment living out the underside of mystery – perplexity. Yes, I could dance in the valley and take up residence in the desert. It was like His Spirit broke in and revealed to me the vast oceans of beauty and fulfillment and true depth available in just God. In Him alone. So much so that His promises birthed on earth paled in comparison to just Him. A drink of the Father’s love makes even the largest of a person’s vision or impact or dreams seem so small. The actual touch of His hand on our lives brings layers of healing that no “answer to prayer” can facilitate.
Looking back, I have no idea how that response could have come out of my bitter heart, but the breaking in of God’s love was the initial step on my road to healing. The first signs of healing in my infertile heart paved a way for the kind of ground God wanted to take in my life.
Almost 7 months later to the day, we became a family.
When I held Eden’s little body against mine for the first time and brushed my fingers across Caleb’s face, it felt as if all of my faculties were activated. Gratefulness was an understatement. The God who gives and takes away was faithful to me at the prospect of my forever barrenness so much so that His answer to my prayer was only an extraneous reminder of His goodness.
I didn’t need children to be convinced of His goodness.
And then, He gave me children to remind me of His goodness.
This will be our second thanksgiving with two extra seats at the table. And, God willing, we’ll add two more for next Thanksgiving. In 2 short years, the Hagertys will have gone from a family of two to a family of six. My dream — God’s dream infused in me — was resurrected. But, even more than being grateful for all that has come through our adoptions . . . the chance to be a family, the opportunity to impact four little hearts, the growing heart for orphans, the connection to Ethiopia and then Uganda, and the next 18 years of joy under our roof . . . I am grateful for the Father’s visitation.
A heart that has had a real encounter with the Father’s love (even if just one) cannot help but be thankful. A day, or week, where the focus is thankfulness is not enough to the one whose depravity has received the healing touch of the Father’s hand. I want to know this Man — this giver of love in its purest form — so much so that gratitude is not something I need to work at but something I cannot contain.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. They recently started the adoption process for two more from Uganda. They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
“One day there was a little girl and a little boy in Ethiopia…”
Playing in the background of our home most days is the web stream from the prayer room at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. IHOP (prayer, not pancakes) has singers and musicians who participate in prayer and worship “sets” all day long, everyday. Picture a room that seats about 800 and a “band” of about 10 or 12 singing scripture and prayers. And their music is broadcast, via the internet webstream, to homes like ours all over the world.
Sounds boring … or just weird? It’s neither.
Ever have a vacation that actually served its purpose and you felt deeply rested and refreshed? Afterward, when you catch a glimpse of a photo in a magazine of that vacation spot or hear a song you first heard while there, you feel that same wave of refreshing over you? That’s IHOP for me. Some of my sweetest moments of escape with the Lord happened in that room where I was washed with the words of scripture coming from the songbirds upfront.
At IHOP, most of the 2-hour prayer sets are dedicated to worship or prayer for a certain cause. On any given day, you can join in praying for orphans, victims of sex trafficking, the poor, etc.
Eden and Caleb are very familiar with this prayer room. Because its such a staple in our home, it has become a staple in their imaginative playground. When they’re not talking on the phone (a wooden block), making pizza for Friday-night-pizza-night (the lid to a wooden children’s pot), or going for a run with their ipod (a blood-pressure cuff from their doctor kit), they are “praying in the prayer room.”
A while back, Nate was reading on the couch, and he heard this from the other room:
Eden [dressed, I'm sure, in her scrubs, Redskins' jersey, angel wings and sweat band -- because dress-up clothes are a *must* around here], holding a pretend microphone as she directed Caleb in the “prayer room”:
“One day there was a little girl and a little boy in Ethiopia. They didn’t have a mommy and daddy. But God knew they were beautiful. So, God sent a bigger man and woman to Ethiopia to be their mommy and daddy.
We want to thank you God.”
You might think those are words we’ve said to her. They were not. We have certainly prayed and thanked God with them for bringing them into our home, but we haven’t coached them to pray the reverse. Somehow, her 4-year-old mind was able to not only observe her predicament but turn it into a prayer of thanksgiving.
I sometimes just want to pinch myself. Is this real? I am crazy about them. The gift God has given us through adoption is one whose magnitude I’ve only just begun to assess. But, to think that her predeveloped mind might also be walking around this monument with some measure of gratitude seems implausible.
The prayer I pray almost daily for Eden is out of Ephesians 3:14-21. I often get stuck here: “that she would be filled with all the fullness of God.“
My little girl is emoting what her mind should be too young to comprehend.
He is responding to my prayer.
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Sara Hagerty
Sara and her husband, Nate, have been married for nine years and brought home their two children from Ethiopia last year. They recently started the adoption process for two more from Uganda! They have a heart for prayer and to see people touched by the love of Jesus. What started as a blog chronicling the ups and downs of adoption has become a passion for Sara. You can read more of her musings on orphans, walking with God through pain and perplexity . . . and spinach juice at Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet.
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