“As a missionary kid, growing up in Europe, I never really felt like I fit in. I was not Portuguese and I was not American. However, when I started attending Black Forest Academy, a missionary kids’ boarding school in Kandern, Germany, I finally felt like I was with a group of people who knew and understood me. That was why it was so hard for me to come back to the United States in 11th grade. This was the first time I truly began to question God and his plan for my life. At BFA I had strong Christian friends who understood me and mentors who challenged me to grow in my faith. Why would God remove me from such a Christ-centered environment, to a place where I felt alone? Where I struggled daily to understand my purpose? Honestly, that question was not answered that year, nor the following. It took the next 10 years to start seeing God’s hand in that circumstance and to start to understand how He had chosen to guide my life.
After I graduated, I decided to attend Biola University and major in Biology. I was an ok student, but struggled in some of my classes. It wasn’t until 4 years after graduating from college that I was diagnosed with a condition called Focal Onset Impaired Awareness Epilepsy and found out that many of my learning struggles and memory problems were caused by the Epilepsy. Once this was treated with medication, I was able to go back to school and obtain my PhD in Biology and I think I got mostly all A’s!
As I look back on my life experiences thus far, I would say I have had three major struggles that truly wrenched my soul. The first two, I just listed. The lack of cultural identity, makes a person feel lost. It is hard to put in words, but essentially it makes one feel like they are constantly searching. The poor performance in school is hard for an intelligent person, which I am now ok admitting that I am. I understood concepts, but could not store them in long-term memory and communicate them back to my professors, which was so frustrating.
The third struggle was the loss of an adoption referral that my husband and I received 2 years ago. And again, to someone who has not adopted or planned to adopt, this is not an experience that can be easily explained. We were supposed to adopt a 2 year old little girl from Ghana; her name was Afia. We received the referral in May of 2015 and had completed all the paperwork. We were supposed to go and meet her then bring her home. However, providentially, the paperwork was held up. Eleven months later, the family that had abandoned her, came back and asked for her back. So, the adoption was canceled. For Afia, this was a good thing, for us, it was devastating.
As Disney-raised Christians, we expect the bad things in life all to work out. Beauty falls in love with the Beast who turns into the Prince and she escapes the mundane village to a magical palace. Yet, as I have seen the providence of God working out in my life and the lives of those around me, God has not promised a fairytale if we follow his will. Instead, the Bible promises struggles and I am learning to embrace these struggles (John 16:33). My husband and I have five adopted children and every day is a struggle to help them grow, learn and thrive. What I have learned in the struggles is not how to decipher God’s plan or where to find the fairytale. Instead I’ve found that I should continue to cling to him and follow his will whether I find out the reason for the struggle or not. He is God! His ways are higher than mine (Isaiah 55:8-9). Knowing that brings me peace.”