PeekabooNWA

The Painting: An Adoption Story

Posted on 31. Oct, 2009 by admin in Personal Stories

File this one away in “never saw that coming, but, in retrospect, we see it so clearly now.” It is ironic that I spend my days at the office as an optometrist doing my best to provide my patients with 20/20 vision; yet, I can be so nearsighted myself when it comes to seeing the big picture that is life. I heard Steven Curtis Chapman state it so well back in April. He said that you can never step far enough away from the canvas to be able to see the entire picture that God is painting of your life, and just when you think you see it all, you take one more step back and see something else that you missed a moment before.

The picture was being painted in the Fall of 2007, we just didn’t realize it yet. We were still waiting to adopt our little girl from China — a wait that had lasted well over a year. While Holly and I were at a concert in Ft. Smith, we were introduced to the plight of children in Zimbabwe. All these beautiful children were orphaned due to the AIDS epidemic in Africa, beautiful children with eyes that just pierced my soul. Why should we just stop in China? Why not Africa as well? What an amazing Christmas card picture our family would make. My grandparents were once missionaries in Southern Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe. My dad was born there. How amazing that would be if he could have a grandson born in the same country he was. We got home late that night but I couldn’t go to sleep. I had to research it right away. Early that morning, I got at least a partial answer. Zimbabwe did not allow for international adoption of their children, especially not an inter-racial adoption. However, there were alternatives such as South Africa, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. One problem remained. We had already made such a monetary investment in China, that I couldn’t see how we could possibly afford to go to Africa while we waited.

My dream seemed dashed. Then I heard a comment made by a family who had been in the same position of not being able to afford the adoption they so wanted to pursue. She made a statement of faith that “If God wanted to provide $20,000 for an adoption, He could drop it out of the ceiling right now.” She was absolutely right. It happened for them. I started looking at all the ceiling tiles everywhere I went.

Until some cash fell from the ceiling for us, we resolved that we were just going to go about life. We were just going to sit back and enjoy watching the 2007 World Series. I was pulling for the Rockies and our son Hunter was rooting for the Red Sox. While Hunter and I were engrossed in the games and the outcomes, Holly was paying more attention to the players themselves. “Jacoby Ellsbury…I like that name Jacoby. If I were to have another little boy I think I would name him Jacoby.” I figured that would never happen since we were getting a little girl and her name was to be Taylor. So there we were, going on with life while waiting for our international family to fall into place. Waiting, waiting, and more waiting.

I got home from the office one evening and Holly told me she had gotten a call earlier that day from a dear friend of ours. I had no reason to think much of it. Then she told me why she had called. “I know that you are waiting for your little girl, but would you guys be interested in adopting another baby?” She knew of a baby about to be born who needed to find a family. Where did that come from? Had she been in Africa last week, or China? We had not really given much thought to domestic adoption and really didn’t want to go that route. But how do you say “no” when you are desperately wanting the wait to be over and Hunter so wanted to be a big brother already? So we said we would consider it, but I don’t think we were expecting it to go anywhere. We were especially freaked out when she asked who our attorney was so that she could get all the information to them. We didn’t even have an attorney. It all seemed overwhelming and we weren’t sure that we should be rushing into it. The more we prayed for it not to happen, the more we found our life speeding that direction.

When I say speeding, I do mean speeding. The normal gestation period is 40 weeks. For an elephant, it is about 90 weeks. I have jokingly referred to our China adoption as the world’s longest gestation period. We weren’t looking at 90 weeks, we weren’t even looking at the usual 40. We were now on a fast track that would bring our baby in just over a month! We had plenty of time to prepare ourselves for Hunter, even more time for Taylor, but this was a serious time crunch. I had to get the room repainted, dig around for some of Hunter’s packed away baby stuff, find the “What to expect…” books for a refresher course, etc. Oh, and a name, our little boy needed a name.

Of course Holly hadn’t forgotten about Jacoby. I wasn’t so sure. As much as I love baseball, I wasn’t sure I was ready to name him after a baseball player I didn’t even know. He has been an above average ball player for the first couple of years of his career but what about down the road — you just never know. And it wasn’t an ordinary name, so of course I had to Google it to find out a little bit of history. I found out Jacoby is a variant of Jacob. OK, no problem there. Jacob originates from Hebrew and means “one who supplants.” Wow!!! It sent chills up my spine. Supplants means to take the place of another. Jacoby — one who takes the place of another. The symbolism was unmistakable and the picture became so much more clear.

The moment arrived when our little boy was here. We hadn’t told anyone, not even our parents. We kept him “hidden” until the adoption was finalized and Jacoby was officially part of our family. Hunter’s little brother and in the future, Taylor’s big brother. We had never seen this part of the picture, but now it was so amazingly and unmistakably clear. Although it has been just a few months since he became our youngest son, we cannot imagine our lives without him. We cannot imagine God’s picture of our family appearing any other way. I was looking for God to paint the picture by dropping money from the ceiling, but now I realize He decided to paint it by dropping a little boy out of the ceiling and right into our lives. He is a much better artist than I am. My mind goes back to that concert in April and a song I will forever cherish, “God is God and I am not, I can only see a part of the picture He’s painting.”

Todd Hook is an optometrist in Bentonville and is the owner and doctor at Hook Eye Care. Holly is a professor at NWACC and works for the Northwest Arkansas Children‘s Museum. Both are involved in helping families in the adoptive process and helping get families started in their international adoptions. Holly can be contacted at hookidr@juno.com and Todd can be contacted at toddhook@gmail.com.