Choosing to SEE

by Mary Beth Chapman

  I was diagnosed with depression early in 1991. All these years later, I can see how the seeds of hope God planted then would need time to root and grow deeply into the faith that I have in the God of all comfort . . . so I would be able to withstand the terrible storms that would devastate our family in 2008.

  “Go There With You”

  Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman

  I know you’ve heard me say these words before

  But every time I say I love you the words mean something more

  I spoke them as a promise right from the start

  I said death would be the only thing that could tear us apart

  And now that you are standing on the edge of the unknown

  I love you means I’ll be with you wherever you must go

  I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone

  And fill it up with you – make all your joy and pain my own

  No matter how deep a valley you go through

  I will go there with you

  And I will give myself to love the way Love gave itself for me

  And climb with you to mountaintops or swim a raging sea

  To the place where one heart is made from two

  I will go there with you

  I see it in your tears – you wonder where you are

  The wind is growing colder and the sky is growing dark

  Though it’s something neither of us understands

  We can walk through this together if we hold each other’s hand

  I said for better or worse I’d be with you

  So no matter where you’re going I will go there too

  I will take a heart whose nature is to beat for me alone

  And fill it up with you – make all your joy and pain my own

  No matter how deep a valley you go through

  I will go there with you

  I know sometimes I let you down

  But I won’t let you go – we’ll always be together

  11

  With Hope

  But we do not want you to be uninformed,

  brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may

  not grieve as others do who have no hope.

  1 Thessalonians 4:13 ESV

  It was Friday evening, January 2, 1998. Steven and I had recently joined a small group of four or five other couples from our church, and all the families had gathered at the home of our friends Terri and Dan Coley. The University of Tennessee was playing in the national championship football game, and the adults were cheering and yelling at the TV while the kids were having a great time running around the Coleys’ house.

  I’ve always been a big fan of college sports, but by halftime I needed to go home as I was struggling with bad cramps. Being in my bed with a heating pad sounded like a great way to watch the second half of the game. Steven helped me gather up our kids, and we said goodbye and headed home.

  Our friend Lori Mullican decided to leave at halftime as well. She had two little girls, Erin, eight, and Alex, five. She wanted to get them home to bed since they were going hiking with friends early the next morning. As Steven and I pulled out of the driveway, I saw Lori getting her girls situated in the back seat, helping them with their seat belts.

  Off we drove, trying to get home soon so we wouldn’t miss much of the second half.

  Lori hopped into her Honda Accord and headed down the same road we had taken a minute earlier. Her house was close by, so she didn’t fasten her own safety belt.

  Chatting with her girls, she headed down a road we all drove dozens of times each week . . . and the last thing she remembers about that night was approaching a familiar intersection. The traffic light was green.

  What Lori doesn’t remember is the seventeen-year-old driver of a truck approaching the same intersection. His eyes were on his rearview mirror, and he didn’t see his light turn red. He never even slowed down and T-boned Lori’s side of the car at full speed, right behind the driver’s seat. Right where Erin was sitting.

  The next thing Lori knew was that she was lying on a very hard bed. Every part of her hurt. She would later find out that she had a broken neck, abrasions, lacerations, and bruises everywhere. Ironically, not wearing her seat belt had saved her life; she had been thrown clear of the spinning car through the front driver’s side window and so had been spared more serious injuries.

  As she regained consciousness, though, all she cared about were her daughters. A nurse got her husband, Ray . . . and he told her that Alex had been leaking cerebral fluid through a crack in her skull, but she was alive. Then Ray had to do the hardest thing he had ever done: he told Lori that Erin did not make it.

  When we got the phone call that night, I couldn’t believe it. We prayed for this precious family. Then we agreed that Steven should go to the hospital to offer what comfort and prayer that he could. Being the “newbies” of the small group, we wrestled with how much to enter in, and we tried our best to support those who at the time were closest to the Mullicans.

  When Steven arrived at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and eventually was able to connect with Ray for a moment, Ray looked Steven right in the eyes. “We’re not home yet,” he said. It was the title to a song Steven had written a year or two before about the journey toward heaven.

  They hugged and cried. Then Steven stayed and prayed as Ray and Lori needed to make decisions about Lori and Alex’s medical treatments and organ donation for Erin.

  Steven and I couldn’t imagine such pain. Lori and Alex’s physical injuries would slowly heal, but the emotional loss was devastating.

  As they made preparations for the funeral, Ray and Lori asked Steven to sing “Not Home Yet,” the song that Ray and Steven talked about in the emergency room that night.

  Alex got out of the hospital an hour before her sister’s funeral. Lori had been discharged as well. Alex couldn’t understand what had happened, and she internalized the pain of her older sister’s death. For years to come she would struggle in school and bottle up intense frustration and guilt.

  As Steven and Ray spent time together over the months that followed, Steven was moved to write the Mullicans a more personal song about their grief journey. He took a tape of Erin singing “Jesus Loves Me” and incorporated it into the beginning of his song “With Hope,” which was recorded on his Speechless CD. It’s a testimony to a family that we watched grieve with the hope of a living Comforter, a brave family who daily confirmed through their pain and tears that they would see their little girl again.

  Since we were new to the small group, I didn’t know Lori very well yet. I had no words for her. I couldn’t even imagine losing a child so suddenly . . . and on top of that being injured and worried about her other daughter.

  But I wanted to do what I could. Over time I started going over to Lori’s house and just hanging out with her. She showed me a recent picture of her girls. I asked her for the negative and had a black-and-white copy enlarged to portrait size. I loved hand tinting black and white photographs, so I wanted to do one as a gift for Lori. It was my way of loving her without inadvertently saying the painful, stupid words that sometimes get said to grieving parents, even when people’s intentions are good.

  Sometimes long minutes would go by where nothing would be said. Other times we’d talk about insignificant things. Every now and then God would give me words . . . but mostly I’d try to make her laugh, which is my way. I felt so incapable of putting any kind of salve on so huge a wound. As we spent time together, we became close friends. It felt as if walking with her during this time included me in their fellowship of suffering. I had no idea what God was preparing me for.

  And so it made sad sense that when my own day of tragedy would come ten years later, Lori would be the first person I would call.

  “With Hope”

  Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman This is not at all how

  We thought it was supposed to be

  We had so many plans for you

 
; We had so many dreams

  And now you’ve gone away

  And left us with the memories of your smile

  And nothing we can say

  And nothing we can do

  Can take away the pain

  The pain of losing you, but . . .

  We can cry with hope

  We can say goodbye with hope

  ’Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no

  And we can grieve with hope

  ’Cause we believe with hope

  There’s a place where we’ll see your face again

  We’ll see your face again

  And never have I known

  Anything so hard to understand

  And never have I questioned more

  The wisdom of God’s plan

  But through the cloud of tears

  I see the Father smile and say well done

  And I imagine you

  Where you wanted most to be

  Seeing all your dreams come true

  ’Cause now you’re home

  And now you’re free, and . . .

  We wait with hope

  And we ache with hope

  We hold on with hope

  We let go with hope

  12

  Laughter

  Before you make your final decision about adoption

  please remember that there are children being born as

  you read this letter that have no hope for the future. All

  they will know is a crib or one small room with work

  that comes along with it. Not everyone in this world

  can help these children but not to brag, we are financially

  equipped & I know deep down in your heart you

  would love a baby but you say you’re scared of the challenge.

  Look you have 4 people under the same roof as

  you that would be a help to you. I know we’re gone

  for 7 hrs. in the day but we are home for 6 hrs. Before

  we have to go to bed. Please pray about adopting.

  Note written by Emily Chapman, age eleven, 1997

  Do not be afraid, for I am with you;

  I will bring your children from the east

  and gather you from the west.

  Isaiah 43:5

  Our daughter Emily has always been a very compassionate person.

  In 1997, when Emily and her friend Carrie Coley were about eleven years old, my friend Terri Coley and I took our girls on a mother-daughter trip to Haiti with Compassion International. Emily was deeply touched by the poverty and needs of children and families who had nothing. And once she got home and did some research, she engaged on an all-out adoption campaign. This wasn’t just adoption in theory, as in us helping other people adopt, which I was happy to do. This was up close and personal: Emily wanted us to adopt a little sister from another country, like the orphans she’d seen in Haiti.

  After Will was born, I had had my tubes tied. As far as I was concerned, we were done. Steven would say in concert, “We have Eenie, Meenie, and Minie, and we hope to have no Mo!” I was so thankful for our three children, and I just wanted to get our life in order and keep it that way. Adoption was for other people, mentally healthy people, more flexible people.

  But as far as Emily Chapman was concerned, it was God’s will that her mother’s orderly plans be disrupted. Again. Emily would write letters to Steven and me, laying out all the reasons we should adopt. At the bottom she would sign her own name and leave two lines for “witnesses.” And there would be the scribbly scrabbly signatures of Caleb and Will Chapman, official witnesses, ages eight and nine.

  When her birthday rolled around, Emily’s list was short and sweet:

  1. Baby

  2. Four wheeler

  3. Concordance

  This tells you a lot about Emily’s personality.

  For his part, Steven didn’t need much convincing. He loved the idea of us adopting. He thought it was a beautiful theological picture of how God adopts us as His children. He also thought that since we had been so blessed, it was a way to share our blessings. And since we were in the public eye, it might also inspire other families to open their homes to adopt orphans.

  The only little detail Steven was worried about was my, uh, mental stability.

  I had my hands full already, and I, too, wondered if I could psychologically handle the stress and the demands of a new baby in our busy family.

  Meanwhile, Miss Persistent had bought a book on international adoption with her birthday money, and while I drove our minivan to soccer practice and errands, Emily would sit in the back and read out loud to me.

  “Mom!” she’d say. “Did you know it only costs this or that to adopt a child from here or there?” She was relentless.

  Then Emily went with Steven while he sang at a fundraising event for Bethany Christian Services, a Christian adoption agency. “Mom!” she said when she came home. “Did you know that Bethany is trying to build up their China program? They’re discounting Chinese adoptions right now!”

  Because Emily was so adamant in her adoption PR campaign, I’d done a little reading on my own.

  “You know,” I told Steven, “when I think about adoption, I always picture a little girl from Asia. And I always think I’d name her Hannah, since that means ‘gift of God’s grace.’

  “But there are a couple of problems,” I went on. “I read that you can’t have more than two biological children at home if you adopt from China, and we already have three. And I’ve read about attachment issues and how hard it sometimes is for older children to really attach to their adoptive families. The children coming out of China right now are mostly older toddlers. If we were to ever adopt – given my issues – I’d be more likely to pursue an infant less than a year old.”

  So the next day Steven called Bethany’s headquarters. We were sitting on the side of our bed, and I could hear his part of the conversation.

  “I understand the law is that you can’t have more than two biological children at home, so I’m afraid we wouldn’t qualify,” he was saying. There was a pause. “Oh really?” he responded. “That’s interesting. Let me tell my wife.”

  Steven put his hand over the phone and turned to me. “Sweetie,” he said, “get this. The Chinese government changed that law just last month! Now you can have four biological children at home.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said.

  But I had another card to play.

  “Ask about the age of the kids they’re placing. They probably don’t have babies under the age of one.”

  Steven was back on the phone. I heard the nice Bethany person talking, and then Steven said, “Oh really? Hold on for a second and let me tell my wife.

  “The average age of the kids available for adoption used to be older,” he said to me, “but things have changed and now they’re placing children who are between six and ten months old.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said. “Okay, ask her if they have any blond-haired, blue-eyed Chinese children!”

  I’m sure the nice people at Bethany didn’t think much of my humor, but the surprising information did make me agree to at least pray seriously about adoption. Down deep, I really did want to be open for whatever God wanted us to do. I was just really, really scared of my abilities as an adoptive parent.

  So we prayed regularly – but guaranteed, not as regularly as Emily Chapman – for God’s leading about the adoption decision.

  Then Steven and I decided to spend one whole day together thinking about what God wanted us to do. We had a few errands to run and then it was off to lunch before a doctor’s appointment.

  Everything we saw was Asian. We looked in the window of an antique store . . . everything was Chinese. An Asian clerk checked us out at Target.

  “Hey,” Steven said, “if we were to end up adopting a child from China, we would be so old! We’d be like Abraham and Sarah. We’d have to find out what the Chinese name for ‘laughter’ is, so we could name our
child like they did when God told them they were going to have Isaac in their old age.”

  I laughed at him as I shut the car door to go into the restaurant. We knew absolutely no words in Chinese. I got a table and looked up when the waitress asked me what I would like to drink. Yes, she was Asian.

  I had a doctor’s appointment right after lunch. I needed to get a possible infection on my ankle checked out. There were all kinds of magazines in the waiting room. Suddenly Steven said, “Mary Beth! You are not going to believe this! Look!”

  He was reading a tattered Reader’s Digest and had opened it to an article about a Chinese couple who were desperate to find a cure for their little son’s heart problem. The story described the little boy, and then there was this line: “The boy they called Shao-Shao (pronounced Sho-Sho), meaning ‘laughter’ in Chinese, had a rare and very dangerous heart disease.”

  Only an hour before, we had been asking what the Chinese word for “laughter” was, which is not exactly the sort of thing you wonder about every day. And now here we were in this doctor’s office, looking at an eight-month-old Reader’s Digest we otherwise would never have seen and reading the exact answer to our question.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I took the magazine and chucked it across the room.

  A few minutes later I wasn’t particularly surprised when the doctor called me in, examined my ankle, and told me it wasn’t infected. I knew what God was up to: the ankle had just been the means to get us to read that old Reader’s Digest!

  I realize this could have simply been a coincidence. But I was beginning to believe that God was nudging us down the road toward adoption, building my faith as He did so.

  But I was also full of fear.

  “What if I can’t do this?” I wondered. “What if I feel differently toward this child than I do toward my biological ones?”