My Surreal Life as a Parent

Last night, a few minutes before midnight, my wife and I spent a quiet moment celebrating what would have been the birthday of our unborn child, “Jonathan Michael”.  Jonathan is one of five children that we lost during pregnancy.  Because of the profound experience that we had with Jonathan’s pregnancy, we have chosen what would have been his birthday as the day to honor and remember each of our children that we will never hold in mortality.

This morning, I awoke early to take Joshua and Lauren to the junior high to depart for an overnight leadership camp being held up at “Clear Creek”.  I am so proud of Josh—all that he is and all that he has accomplished.  However, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little remarkable to be dropping Lauren off for a “leadership” camp.  We were once told that, if we were lucky, our beautiful Kazakh flower might be able to say the colors of a few crayons by the time she finished public school.  Now here she is, staying overnight at a leadership camp.

After dropping off Josh and Lauren, I stopped by the cemetery to visit Jacob’s grave.  It was peaceful, serene, and beautiful there.   I desperately wish that I could feel that same serenity inside.  Oh, how I long to hold my sweet, beautiful boy again!

I then returned home to find out that Jennifer had received a voicemail from our Adoption facilitator indicating that she was in Kinshasa and wanted to allow Joseph and Bronson to speak to us.  (We didn’t even know that our facilitator was traveling to the DRC.)  Then when she was playing the voicemail again she received another voicemail from our facilitator stating that she was sorry that she had missed us and that we hadn’t been able to speak to our sons.  Jennifer’s phone never even rang—probably because she was in the middle of playing a voicemail. 

We were distraught.  We had been presented with the opportunity to talk to our sons and had somehow missed out on that opportunity.  In desperation, I decided to try calling the number back that showed as the source of the voicemails.  It was a strange number with too few digits for international dialing.  I decided to go ahead and add the country code for DRC and attempt to call the number back.  To my great surprise, the call went through and a woman answered the phone…It was our facilitator.

Moments later, we were speaking to our wonderful sons, Joseph and Bronson, for the first time in this life!

Joseph is so smart.  He speaks Lingala, French, and English.  I was startled at how well he could communicate with us in English.  However, Bronson only speaks Lingala.  All we could do was tell him that we love him over and over again and bask in his glorious voice.

Indeed, my life as a parent seems strange and surreal.  From my children whose voices I will never hear in this life, to my daughter who was diagnosed with apraxia of speech but is now attending leadership camps, to my precious son whose voice was quieted much too soon, to hearing the voices of my two sons for the first time through a mobile phone from half way around the world, my life has certainly been filled with many soul-carving experiences.