By what you don’t see
The person in the mirror
Doesn’t look like the magazine
Oh, but when I look at you it’s clear to me that . . .
I can see the fingerprints of God
When I look at you
I can see the fingerprints of God
And I know it’s true
You’re a masterpiece
That all creation quietly applauds
And you’re covered with the fingerprints of God
“Fingerprints of God”
Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman
For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the
outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.
1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
Even as we traveled home from China with a new little daughter, my mind was on my firstborn. Emily had been the catalyst for us entering the wild world of adoption, and it was amazing to think that the passionate prayers of a young girl could bring such life-altering changes. Now Emily was in high school. She’d traveled a long way since those middle school years.
It’s safe to say that no amount of money could convince Emily – or me, for that matter – to travel back in time and repeat the dark ages of middle school. Since she was our oldest, I wasn’t quite prepared for the change in her environment when we turned the corner and left the safe, happy world of elementary school. I should have remembered from my own experience. Ah, junior high – that jungle where the strong devour the weak, where hormones, cliques, and gossip rule.
In the midst of jocks, popular kids, musicians, nerds, and whatnot, Emily struggled to find her place. While many of her classmates spent their Friday evenings at the movies or the mall, our Emily was at home passionately campaigning for the expansion of our family through the miracle of adoption. Emily was mature beyond her years. It’s just how God made her. At an early age she tuned in to that which carried eternal weight and significance . . . something that just hadn’t quite come into focus for most of her peers.
As she struggled to discover a group of friends who would accept her for who she was, Emily eventually began spending most of her time with the “smart kids.” Before, academics had not been her strong point. But now she spent tons of time studying. She made high grades and her teachers recommended her for honors classes.
While these achievements were understandably exciting, Steven and I began to notice that Emily was putting a lot of her identity and worth in her academic work. Since she was like me – a performance-driven perfectionist – she wanted to do everything just right. There were times we’d have to tell her to go to bed and quit studying. We didn’t have a whole lot of friends who were telling their kids not to work so hard on homework.
Middle school was also the season in Emily’s life when her body started changing. She was not one of those skinny-mini girls with an overactive metabolism. Like many of us, she got wider before she got taller. It was so hard to find clothes that fit her like they did on “other” girls. I anguished for Emily as I remembered the sting of being called “Chubby Chapman” in my own early years.
We avoided shopping. It usually led to tears, frustration, and self-hatred. One afternoon, I went out on my own and returned with a bunch of clothes for Emily. She started making her way through the pile, taking each outfit, trying it on in the bathroom, and coming out to show me.
But her frustration grew with every outfit she put on. Her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t look like the size zero girls in the clothing ads or the girls at school who could throw on tiny jeans and have them fit just right. By the time Steven came home, Emily and I were both crying on the floor, surrounded by shopping bags and heaps of rejected clothes.
It was after this fashion show gone wrong that Steven wrote the lyrics of his song “Fingerprints of God.” Mature as she was for her age, Emily didn’t recognize the beauty we saw in her. And she certainly didn’t understand how unique she was in the eyes of God. But as Steven’s song became a hit and connected with so very many people, Emily realized that she wasn’t alone in her inadequate feelings . . . and gradually she learned to place her worth in God’s view of her rather than the fashion magazines’ perspective. It wasn’t like she had it all figured out perfectly. But Emily began the lifelong journey of learning to rest in who God had created her to be. She found that her worth was not in what she could do but in what had been done for her through Christ.
Even during those tough teenage years, though, Emily adored her little sisters from China. Shaoey joined the family during Emily’s final year of middle school, and Stevey Joy came home while Emily was in high school.
Emily spent countless hours in the dress-up closet playing princess with the little girls. She took care of them and saved my sanity when Steven was traveling and Caleb and Will had places to be, and I was just one parent running back and forth between five children.
Then, during Emily’s final year of high school, Steven became convinced we should adopt again. Emily, our outspoken adoption advocate who had relentlessly campaigned for us to bring home her first two sisters, was surprisingly resistant to the idea of gaining another sibling. She says that part of her reservation was selfish: she wanted focused attention from all of us since it was her last year living at home. But she also knew how much stress would fall on my shoulders with her heading to college in the fall, Steven launching his “All Things New” tour, and neither Caleb nor Will being old enough to drive.
But in her thoughtful and deliberate way, Emily came to Steven and me and said something like this: “Mom and Dad, I’m a bit weary about the idea of adding another child to the Chapman clan. But if God confirms in your hearts that we’re to welcome home another little girl from China, I’ll support you and watch expectantly for what God will accomplish!”
God did bring Maria into our family, and it didn’t take long for Emily to have a change of heart about her adoption. Of course, none of us knew quite what to expect once Maria came into the picture . . . or all the things God was going to do through her little life.
18
I Just Met a Girl Named Maria
I found you in the most unlikely way
But really it was You who found me . . .
I wish You could stay
But I’ll, I’ll wait for the day
And I watch as the cold winter melts into spring
And I’ll be remembering You
Oh and I’ll smell the flowers and hear the birds sing
And I’ll be remembering You, I’ll be remembering You
From the first moment when I heard Your name
Something in my heart came alive
You showed me love and no words could explain . . .
And though You’ve gone away
You’ll come back and . . .
And I’ll watch as the sun fills a sky that was dark
And I’ll be remembering You
And I’ll think of the way that You fill up my heart
And I’ll be remembering You
“Remembering You”
Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman and Caleb Chapman
In April or May of 2003 . . . no one really knows the exact day . . . a baby girl was born outside a city in China called Tian Jian . . . no one really knows exactly where.
There are two billion people in China, with eleven or twelve million in Tian Jian alone. Somehow this tiny infant was found on a riverbank, cold and blue, when she was about forty-eight hours old. She was taken to a state orphanage. From there she ended up in a Christian foster home for special needs orphans.
She was placed in the care of an Australian family who lived outside of Beijing. The orphanage had a Chinese name for her, but this new family called her Rowena. She captured the hearts of these people for four months until the family was unexpectedly transferred back to Australia. They would have pursued her adoption, but at the time there was no adoption agreement between Australia and China.
Little Rowena was taken back to t
he Christian foster home and then placed in the home of missionaries named Tim and Amy Hedden. Tim and Amy, along with all of their children, quickly fell in love with this little girl. They named her Maria.
Why Maria? It just seemed to fit her.
Meanwhile, our home in Franklin, Tennessee, had become nonstop busy. We were definitely done with adopting. For ourselves, I mean. We loved helping family and friends adopt, and as a result of an amazing staff and God’s blessing, Show Hope’s ministry was going great. We were helping families adopt orphans from all over the world and becoming more and more involved with orphan care and advocacy.
But as far as we were concerned, the Chapman family’s quiver was full. We were looking forward to Emily’s senior year in high school, celebrating her graduation, and pushing her gently from the nest into whatever college God had for her.
Then Steven was invited to China to do the music for a Luis Palau outreach there. One Sunday morning in April, Luis preached for Beijing International Christian Fellowship. Steven sang and led worship for this community of mostly Western expatriates. After the service, an American family serving at a special needs foster home came up to Steven. They were Tim and Amy Hedden, their four biological children, and two Chinese foster babies.
Steven was missing his two little Chinese girls back home in Tennessee, so he was drawn to the girls. “This is Natalie,” Amy told him. Natalie had the biggest Chinese eyes that Steven had ever seen. Her special need was a cleft lip, but her smile and charm warmed his heart. The Heddens told Steven that they were in the process of adopting Natalie.
Then the attention shifted to the next little one. “And this is Maria,” Amy continued. “She doesn’t have a home yet.”
Maria was a tiny drooling machine, with the smallest Chinese eyes Steven had ever seen. They made her look very mischievous . . . which, we would find out, fit her to a T. Steven held out his arms, and Amy smiled and handed her over. He hugged Maria and tickled her and told her how beautiful she was, intending just to love on her for a minute.
But then something unexpected happened.
When he handed Maria back to Amy, Steven felt like he was giving his own daughter back. The rush of feelings caught him completely off guard. He’d held dozens of babies and toddlers on this trip as well as all the other trips . . . but this was different.
As he left, Steven strained his neck to watch the Heddens as they turned to walk to their van, doing his best to watch little Maria for as long as he could. When he could no longer see her, he dialed my number. As I picked up my phone, I wondered what was wrong. My husband was all choked up.
“I’m okay!” he told me. “But the strangest thing just happened. I just met a girl named Maria . . .”
I don’t know how I knew what he meant, but I did.
“Don’t even think about it!” I told my softy of a husband. “If we are even going to consider another adoption, she better know how to play guitar, because she is going on the road with you!”
We laughed a few seconds, but somehow I knew this was going to come back up.
The rest of the week in China, wherever Steven went with Luis Palau, he was thinking about Maria. At first he tried to plan how he could help the Heddens adopt her. China had a law that said you couldn’t adopt two children at once, but Steven kept trying to think of a way to help them give Maria a forever home along with Natalie.
He was perplexed. We weren’t adopting again. But down deep, all he could think about was how much he wanted us to adopt Maria. He didn’t know why. It made no sense. It was like an instant, permanent connection in his heart.
The following Saturday was the day before Easter, and Steven was able to go to Maria’s foster home. He played music for the kids and carried Maria around all day long while the kids had a big Easter egg hunt.
The next day, Steven arrived at the same church where he had met Maria a week earlier. The Heddens met him in the hallway, carrying Maria in a beautiful pink Easter dress. After the service they said their goodbyes and took a few pictures in the parking lot before Steven left for the airport to come home. One of those pictures would become of monumental importance in the coming days.
“Can you believe this?” he asked me on the phone. “I’ve fallen in love with this little girl!”
I had sent him to China with strict orders not to fall in love with any more little Chinese girls in need of a family. But as I thought and prayed about my husband’s new little love, God took hold of my heart and changed it. By the time Steven traveled the twenty-some hours home from China, I was in full adoption mode. As far as I was concerned, we were going to China to get Maria as soon as we could. I’d completed all the adoption paperwork, and it was sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for his signature.
But by now Steven had shifted gears and tried to tone down his excitement about Maria. He had argued with himself about it all the way home on the flight from China. He had come to the conclusion that we didn’t have any business adopting again.
When he told me this, I just shrugged. As far as I was concerned, it was a done deal.
A few days later, I got a call from Steven while he was at the recording studio. He had checked his emails, and Amy Hedden had emailed a picture taken in the church parking lot in China as he was kissing Maria goodbye. When Steven saw that picture, it hit him: this wasn’t a photo of a man kissing the forehead of a little orphan. It was a picture of a daddy kissing his daughter.
“I know what we’re supposed to do about Maria,” he excitedly told me on the phone. “Let’s go get her!”
It was like God had planned it from the beginning.
Maria was a special needs orphan. The doctors in China had said that she was born with a hole in her heart, and she was diagnosed with ASD, atrial septal defect. This is a common congenital heart defect. Over time it can lead to irregular heartbeats, hypertension, stroke, or enlargement of the right side of the heart.
Oddly enough – God knew what was coming even though we didn’t – when I had prepared for Stevey Joy’s adoption, I had gotten two of every official paper that I needed. It was one of those random, “just in case” kind of things. So I already had all of the documents that it normally takes quite a while to get hold of.
Maria hadn’t yet been listed on a special needs adoption list. Special needs children are put on different lists for different agencies. At the time, if you met an orphan you would love to adopt, you would search around on various agencies’ lists, and if no one else had yet been matched with him or her, you could ask to be matched.
I’m sure the process is different now, but anyway, we waited . . . and eventually Maria was placed on a special needs list and we were able to be matched with her through a Kentucky adoption agency. After climbing the now-familiar mountain of paperwork, it appeared as though all was well for us to make our trip to China to get Maria.
When we got to China, there was good news and bad news.
The good news was that Maria was there and her papers had been collected to be able to complete her adoption. However, the medical papers with her initial heart diagnosis had been lost.
She was just tiny when she had the tests to determine the ASD. Now, when she was examined again so her adoption papers would be complete, her heart was healthy. We had no way of knowing if her original condition was a misdiagnosis or if her heart had been healed. Sometimes these types of holes close up on their own as the child grows. At any rate, there was no evidence that she still had the condition.
So while that was good, the bad news from an adoption standpoint was that now officials wanted to reclassify Maria as “healthy” instead of “special needs.” This meant that she would have to reenter the system and go through a completely different process, which in essence would make our being able to adopt her next to impossible.
We started praying immediately.
We were told to come back in a few months, and that they would have it figured out. I was devastated. I tried my best to hold it toge
ther, but the tears came in spite of my best attempts. The officials asked us to go to a nearby building to wait.
We paced, cried, and prayed. Our case was being considered by everybody from the official in the big office with the leather chair to the clerk in the finance office with the steel stool and the rubber stamp . . . and it seemed like everyone in that hierarchy had an equal vote.
Over the next few days, we’d get word that it looked like we were going to be approved to adopt Maria. We’d prepare to leave the hotel to go pick up our little one. Then we’d get a message that it looked like it was not going to work out. So we’d stay at the hotel for a few more days.
We were on a roller coaster of excitement and despair, and by the time it was all over I was sure that, due to stress, we would have developed the heart problems that Maria no longer had. But in the end, after many tears and a lot of sweating, God allowed us to adopt Maria. Her paperwork was approved and completed, and with much excitement and laughter, we went to the Heddens’ home to pick her up.
This was really, really difficult. It was like Maria had a family, one that wanted her, but because of the Chinese law they couldn’t adopt her. I was grieving as I saw how hard it was for the Heddens, but at the same time I wanted to shout and scream with joy that we would become a forever family. We prayed and all cried together.
Then it was time to take Maria with us. There was a long, sad moment, and then Amy looked at me and calmly said, “You need to go now.” She had packed a little bag for Maria. “Pick up her bag and take her things,” Amy continued. “It’s time.” She was being the mom who needed to pick up the pieces and comfort her family once we had gone.
We gave Maria the middle name “Sue” in honor of Amy Hedden’s middle name. We will never forget the wonderful family who loved and guarded our little girl until it was God’s timing for us to come and make her our own.
But then our new life with Maria Sue Chapman began . . . and it was wild and crazy, right from the start.
19
I’m Divin’ In!
Choosing to SEE Page 11