The Heart of a Child this Mother’s Day
I have always wanted to adopt a child or be a foster parent- just the idea of providing a home for a child needing one has always spoken to me. However at this juncture of my life, it would not be possible, so I have a special admiration for people who can and do adopt/foster. Even more so when they already have children of their own.
Enter the Hopkins family. I have to give some history here- Stacy was a friend of mine in college, and Luke actually dated a friend of mine our freshman year. He and I ended up later working together at a bar (still in college) and it was around that time that he and Stacy met, dated, and got married. Pretty much that quickly, also. I admire the both of them very much because they met relatively young, fell in love instantly and got married… gosh I mean they had dated maybe a month? Luke would then go back to school and now he’s a college professor. Stacy and he have had two lovely children and now live north of Atlanta. They are one of those couples that I look at and go- wow, they have got it together. I admire them all on their own as it is.
Then, I see on Facebook that they are adopting a little baby boy from China. They have all this love as it is with their own family, and yet they want to give more. As Stacy said in her blog, http://hopefornoah.blogspot.com/:
Luke brought up the idea of us adopting in March 2012 and we’ve been thinking about it ever since. Sometimes talking about. Most of the time reading and researching about adoption and occasionally mentioning it to a few of you.
I started praying about it about 5 months ago and on February 28, 2013 found a picture and bio that tugged about my heart in a different way. I showed Luke and we wrestled with what to do and where to go from there for just a few days. I tracked down the agency that had Noah’s (then called Henry) file and requested more information. We reviewed his file, photos and 2 short videos and the idea of adopting him from China-out of an orphanage-felt like what we were meant to do.
Stacy goes further to explain that Noah is deemed special needs, for what seems to me to be a shocking reason:
The fact that Noah has albinism makes others not want to adopt him. It deems him special needs and sets him up for a lifetime of challenges with vision and sun exposure regardless of what country he lives in. To many Chinese he has “a curse from God”. People with albinism are treated very poorly in China, not given proper care and released into the streets at age 16. Not Noah.
I have to be honest, I am literally crying as I type this. I can never think of any child as a “curse from God”- it’s a reminder of how progressive our world is in many ways, there are still some places that are so backwards. I can’t even think of what might have happened to this child if it wasn’t for Stacy and Luke.
This Mother’s Day, I think about children. Children who don’t have a mother, or even a parent, how lonely that must be. Even as infants we have an instinct to go to our mothers, to cling to them, to rely on them for life. To not have that… is just beyond me. But how lucky this child is, to have captured to hearts of a family halfway around the world.
When Stacy sent me Noah’s pictures, I instantly responded back that he looks like a Chinese version of her son. I honestly didn’t know he had albinism- all I saw was this blonde hair on this sweet child and how he just looks like he is supposed to be Stacy and Luke’s child.
And of course, he is supposed to be their child. God works in ways we will never understand. How grateful we must be…
I am going to include a link to Stacy and Luke’s fundraiser below- adoptions are terribly expensive, and as I understand (not from Stacy but just from news reports I have seen) even more so for international adoptions. They are selling t-shirts to assist in this cause, if you would consider purchasing one- or even sharing this through your own social media channels, I know this Hopkins family would appreciate it. I frankly can’t think of a better gift to give on Mother’s Day, the heart of a child to a welcoming family.
https://www.bonfirefunds.com/fund/hope-for-noah/4309
