But I really wanted Love to be true, so I decided to give her a chance. Love promised that I didn’t have to run or hide or numb myself from life anymore. Love told me that I could live through my feelings with her help. I decided to test these promises one at a time. I stopped smoking, drinking, bingeing, puking, and drugging, all at once. I read somewhere that “the truth will set you free—but it will piss you off first.” That certainly proved to be accurate. I shook and sweated and cursed Love for two weeks. Eventually, though, I stopped shaking. The world became brighter and clearer. I saw my first sober sunrise in decades.
After I gave birth to Chase, I felt myself loving my baby, giving myself to him, caring for his needs, as if I had something to offer. I wasn’t sure I actually had something to offer him, but it felt like I had to pretend I did. So I just pretended. But he responded to my offering by loving and needing me. Me. And I knew he wasn’t pretending because he was just a baby and babies haven’t heard fear yet. The love between Chase and me became very, very real. So I tried loving my husband too. Loving Craig, a real live grown-up, was harder—but he responded too. I could tell that he was starting to love me back.
These two people, they needed me. Me. If two such good, kind, full people needed and wanted and loved me, could I really be so worthless? Suddenly it seemed that there might be parts of life that were beautiful and good and that were meant for ME. I became even more suspicious of the bastard from whom I’d been taking orders for twenty years.
So I started listening harder. I looked closely at people and nature and read books about God and Love. Without all the bingeing and purging, my skin cleared up and my cheeks, bloated from years of broken blood vessels, flattened out. As the tobacco loosened from my lungs, I was able to take deep breaths again. I needed those deep breaths. I felt sad and terrified and angry, and with nothing to dull those feelings, I learned to just let feelings be—because eventually they pass. I learned that all things pass; that life is hard to endure but not impossible. I discovered that after the enduring, if you choose not to run away, there are prizes. Those prizes are wisdom and dignity. I learned that Love and I, We could do hard things.
Next, I tested out Love’s claim that I had nothing to be ashamed of. That promise was the hardest to swallow, but since Love had not lied to me yet, I had to try. I started writing and publishing all of the secret thoughts and feelings that Fear had promised I’d be shunned and despised for having. I published my insides on the Internet. The Internet is read by many, many people, you know. Many people whose anonymity allows them to be especially vicious. Still, I did not become despised. Very few were vicious. It turned out that sharing my secret self made me more beloved by others than I’d ever been in my life. Then I saw that when I allowed Love to set me free through my writing, my readers decided to set themselves free too. Another miracle: people wrote, not to say that they were disgusted or horrified by me, but that they saw themselves—their own battles and triumphs—in my experiences.
And I realized the secret of my writing is this: the voice I use to write is not really my voice. It’s Love’s voice. I say what she says; I write what she prompts me to write. And that’s why you recognize the voice. Because you have the same voice inside you. My love voice speaks directly to yours. We are the same. At our core, we are exactly the same. We are Love. The heart rejoices when it hears the truth. Namaste—the divine light in me recognizes and honors the divine light in you.
Next, I decided to test Love’s claims about giving. Craig and I gave away all of our money, twice. Once to an orphanage and again to our mortgage company. With nothing, we were happier than we’d ever been. That’s the thing about losing it all. You realize you’re fine without it. For the first time in our lives, we felt secure. It was a miracle. When you give it all away—the stuff—you learn that it is impossible to lose whatever it is that you cannot live without. Love was right. The thing you need is unshakable, untakable. What you need is not in things, it’s in you. It’s Love.
The more fiercely I believe what Love says and the more boldly I live out her promises, the healthier and stronger and realer I become. So, for me, it’s not a question of better. It’s about a daily choice: the constant battle to listen to Love and silence Fear. Of course, even though I choose Love daily, I can still hear the reverberations of Fear’s voice, like a bell that keeps echoing even after it’s been stilled. Right now I am neither Fear nor Love, but the one who chooses between them. However, I have a feeling that after years of choosing Love, after decades of ignoring Fear and tuning into Love, I will turn into Love. I pray that she and I will become one, that eventually all the words that come out of my mouth will be her words. And that when I slip into the arms of God, it will be as if there were no break at all in our eternal conversation. When I die, God will look at me and say, “Now where were we, Darling?”
But for now, I feel myself rising, rising, rising. I am free. I am healing.
It Will Be Beautiful
For years, people have asked me where my passion to adopt originated. I’ve tried to explain it so many different ways, fumbling, offering statistics and scriptures about the need for orphan care, ultimately becoming flustered and defensive. None of it rang true to me. All the reasons were there, just not the real reason. The real reason was down far too deep to pull up and describe with words.
Then one day I read Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. In it, there is a character named Tom, a craftsman of little means, who is obsessed with the idea of building a cathedral to God. In his quest to realize this goal, he squanders his savings, puts his family through hell, and spends the prime of his life searching, planning, and dreaming this impossible dream. After twenty years, Tom finds himself in front of a man with the means to help. The man asks him one simple but loaded question. Why? Why do you want to build this cathedral so badly? Tom hesitates for a moment and says, Because it will be beautiful. My heart soared when I read that line. Yes. Because it will be beautiful. That is the truest answer to the question I’ve been asked for so many years. Glennon, why do you want to adopt? Because it will be beautiful.
I want to adopt to live the belief that We Belong to Each Other—that we are one human family—to look beyond my backyard and to welcome one of God’s children as my own. Because to join in communion and grief and redemption with every mother who has wanted desperately to raise her own baby but lacked the resources—well, it’s the most beautiful thing I can imagine. And that’s what I do. I think of the most beautiful thing I can imagine and then try to do that thing. It’s an interesting but difficult way to live.
Craig and I tried to adopt for years. We spent our days and evenings on the phone, Internet, and each other’s nerves trying to adopt internationally. Each time we got close, the dreaded background check arrived, and agency after agency rejected us because of my checkered record and status as a recovering alcoholic.
I cried myself to sleep many nights, while Craig squeezed me tight and prayed that God would either open an adoption door or take away the desperation in my heart. Then I’d wake up early to start the whole obsessive process over again. During one interview, as the social worker asked us questions about the past and we answered them honestly, we could actually hear her voice become more distant and cold. I said, “I don’t think she’s going to give us a baby, do you?” Craig shook his head and admitted that he wanted to stop doing interviews altogether because he was afraid they’d take away the kids we already had. I constantly doubted my worth as a mother, because we were repeatedly told in so many words that these babies were better off in orphanages than in my home. It was humbling, and it shook my faith.
Then, in August, we found some hope at an agency that facilitated adoptions from Guatemala. The social worker told us that they would find a way to bring us a baby from their orphanage. The agency sent us pictures of the little ones, and I fell in love. While our paperwork was being processed, I spent my days mentally planning and daydreaming. I knew our baby would be a litt
le girl, and I knew her name would be Maria. I have no idea where this information originated, so I assumed it was from God. I never told anyone that I knew she would be named Maria, because people can only be expected to take so much. But I knew it. There was a country song out at the time called “My Maria,” and I would drive around, belting out the lyrics and fantasizing about how Craig, Chase, Tish, Maria, and I would dance to “My Maria” in front of our family and friends at Maria’s coming-home party.
Eventually, we got a phone call from the agency. Craig took the call, and then he told me gently that the agency had decided we were too much of a risk. The door to Guatemala was officially closed. I sat on the floor, stunned and devastated. Chase walked in while I sobbed, and he looked at Craig and said, “Why?” Craig said, “She’s just sad, honey. Mommy’s just sad.” Months passed and I pulled myself together, reasonably enough.
Christmas morning came, and after the flurry of excitement and gifts, we all rested into the day. Bubba fell asleep and Sister and Tisha slid into the kitchen to start breakfast. I flopped onto the couch and congratulated myself for pulling off another Christmas. Craig snuggled next to me and handed me one last gift that he had hidden away. I smiled and opened it, and when all of the paper was removed, I was holding a scrapbook, handmade by Craig. In a square plastic frame on the cover was a little girl’s smiling face. The girl looked about seven years old. She had deep brown eyes, long, mocha curls, and a brilliant smile. Underneath her picture, Craig had written out her name in letter stickers: Maria Renee.
After we found out we wouldn’t be allowed to bring a baby home from Guatemala, Craig called the agency to ask if he could sponsor a child there, in honor of me and of our dream. The woman at the orphanage said they had just the little girl for us. Her name was Maria, she said. She sent Craig pictures of Maria and her orphanage home, and Craig put them together in a scrapbook for me so I’d have something to hold on Christmas morning.
I bawled ’til I couldn’t see. Bubba woke up and became alarmed. Everyone stared. I didn’t care. I have never in my life felt the presence of God more strongly than I did at that moment, sitting with that scrapbook in my lap and my husband beside me. I actually felt God saying, “I was watching, and I was speaking. You were right, there is a Maria for you. Here she is.”
Since I couldn’t speak, I left my family and walked into my bedroom, found my journal, and brought it back to the family room. I opened it and showed them page after page where I’d doodled “Maria Melton” like a lovesick teenager.
We fell more deeply in love with Maria during the next year. We sent her gifts and letters that my mom translated into Spanish for us. We told her that God loved her very much and so did we, and we explained that we prayed for her and for her friends every night. We asked Chase’s birthday party guests to donate money instead of gifts, and we sent the money to Maria so that she could throw a birthday party for herself that year. The orphanage told us that the money went so far that Maria was able to invite another orphanage to her party too, and that they all played with piñatas and balloons for the first time in their lives.
We got a letter last year announcing that Maria had finally been adopted by a family in the States. The odds had been against her. We had been told that the likelihood that Maria would find a forever home was slim to none, but we know that with God, nothing is impossible.
A few months later, we decided to try again. Chase wasn’t so sure about this plan. When I told him we were going to start a Vietnamese adoption he said, I don’t know, Mom. We don’t seem to be very good at this. Maybe we should just adopt a highway. I probably should have listened, because a few months later we found out that the Vietnamese didn’t want us either. Craig and I decided that God was clearly telling us to let go. So we tried, but we couldn’t. One day in the car, we decided that we would just start another home study, an intense and lengthy interview with a social worker, without an agency or country that would accept us. We hoped that once we stepped out in faith, our next step would be revealed. We already had a social worker who was ready to get us started and the money we needed in the bank. Our hope and energy were renewed. Once again, I started picturing Chase and Tish holding their new sibling.
When we arrived home from that exciting car ride, I went through the mail and saw a letter from the Guatemalan agency that had helped us try to adopt. The letter was from Maria’s orphanage. It began like this: “This is one of the toughest times I’ve seen at our home in Guatemala. My heart breaks to think of the children we’ve had to turn away. Toddlers roaming among piles of garbage, six-year-olds begging for food, ten-year-old girls caring for infant siblings on their own.” The letter went on to describe a four-year-old girl named Marielos whom police had brought to the orphanage after her mother’s boyfriend raped her repeatedly. She spent her first week there “either speechless or sobbing.” The director wrote that she “stayed up with Marielos many nights, holding her tightly as she cried softly.” Next she described the miraculous way Marielos began to heal in the arms of her “special mother.” But then she reported that due to lack of funds, the orphanage was being forced to turn away traumatized children like Marielos every day. The letter was a request for small donations that, combined, would keep the orphanage running. My head spun when I saw the amount that they needed: it was almost exactly the amount that Craig and I had saved for the adoption.
I sensed a voice that was a calmer version of my own suggest something like, Here we are. Now what do you want more? Do you really want to help my orphans, or do you really want an adopted child? There might be a difference. I stood in the kitchen, stunned and sweating. The suggestion continued, You’ve been begging for an invitation from me, and you’re holding it.
I considered not telling Craig about the letter and the voice. Not because I was worried he’d think I was crazy, which is what I usually worry about, but because I was afraid he would know the right thing to do, and then he’d want to do it. But I told him anyway. And he listened, and he read the letter, and then got very quiet. He said, “You know, if we do this, it means we won’t have any adoption money left.” I said, “Yes, it would mean giving that away for this, I guess.” We went to bed early that night and didn’t speak about it again. We were well aware that we were walking on holy ground.
I sent one e-mail to Craig the next morning, telling him that I wasn’t able to make this decision because I was too blinded by my own desire for a baby. I wanted him to decide. That night he came home and he said quietly that he was positive that the money belonged to the orphanage. He had sent our adoption fund, which was two-thirds of the total amount they needed to keep the orphanage afloat, and our entire savings account. Next: Lots more quiet, a few tears, and then just awe . . . and peace.
Peace, for me, usually lasts about twenty minutes. At this point, one might assume that I finally decided that it was time to leave it all well enough alone and focus on the blessings right in front of me. That’s really not my style.
When Sister was in Rwanda working with the International Justice Mission, she spent every Sunday at a Missionaries of Charity orphanage, holding babies. For hours upon hours, she held four children at a time as they climbed her legs and back and touched her face, desperate for touch, affection, connection. Sister told us that there were children there who desperately needed to be adopted.
Craig and I agreed that this must be the invitation for which we’d been waiting so long. We began again. We spent six months jumping through hoop after exhausting hoop trying to get approved to adopt a Rwandan baby. We were urged on by “sign” after “sign” that we were on the right track: a favorable home study, an FBI clearance (!), our final paperwork. One of the Sisters who ran the orphanage even told Sister that she knew which baby was ours—a five-month-old little boy. We named him Hills. Rwanda is called the Land of a Thousand Hills, and we thought Hills an appropriate name to describe the journey we took to find him. My name, Glennon, means valley, or resting place between the hills. I
thought that our little man was going to have a wonderful life with us, but not one without challenges. I wanted to be his valley, his resting place between the Hills of Life.
We were waiting on one piece of paper. Just one, and we could send our entire “dossier” to Rwanda and take our place in line. But one morning I woke up to a 911 message from Sister. She said that Rwanda, without notice, was terminating adoptions. Any family whose completed paperwork was not in Rwanda by the end of the day was unqualified to adopt. I was stunned. I was furious. Our baby. Craig and I looked at each other and said, Oh . . . helllllllll NO.
We dropped the girls off at a friend’s house at six in the morning and drove to Washington, D.C. We found the Rwandan embassy. We walked in, introduced ourselves, and kindly explained that we were not leaving until our final paperwork was signed and we were grandfathered in to the adoption system.
Then we turned toward the tiny embassy lobby and saw three other anxious-looking couples already sitting there. They were there for the same reason we were. They had all flown in from Texas when they heard the news. They were staging a sit-in too. We started teary introductions and I turned to one gentleman, Mark, and said, Hello, I’m Glennon. This is my son, Chase. Chase reached out his little hand, and as Mark shook it, his eyes started watering. I felt concerned. Mark asked me if he could take a picture of Chase to send to his wife. I felt more concerned but consented. After Mark sent the picture, he explained that his family’s adoption journey began when his wife lost their baby boy, Chase, to a miscarriage. When he sent Chase’s picture to his wife, he included a message that said, Honey, it’s going to be okay. I just got to the embassy and Chase is here.
It was that kind of day.
Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed Page 19
