It was 2:30 am on the night I returned from China in 2009. I was wide awake from jet lag and Susan was hanging in there just to be able to hear about this little Chinese girl I had met. This conversation was a long time coming for her. She had felt God stirring in her heart almost eight years earlier to adopt a little girl from China. God had finally captured my heart for this idea of adoption. Of course it only took me eight years and a trip to China to do it, but I was finally coming around.
In the midst of our conversation about this little girl we only knew as Xiao Xia, I had this thought come into my mind. If we really do adopt this little girl, I want to name her Hope. I was still dragging my feet and unwilling to share this thought with Susan. If I offered a possible name, it seemed like I was crossing a threshold of commitment to adoption I had not previously been willing to make. Just about 2 or 3 minutes later, still not having shared the name, my concerns became irrelevant. Susan spoke up and said to me, if we adopt her, I want to name her Hope. You can imagine my surprise as I shared with Susan, I just had the same thought minutes before. It was in that moment I knew we were going to adopt this little girl who we would call Hope.
So in the middle of the night, we headed towards our computer to learn how you go about adopting from China. The Shaohanna’s Hope website (back then) was the first site we went too. As we sat there, we talked and cried together about what God was now stirring in both of our hearts. Susan repeated something she had read or heard Stephen Curtis Chapman say about knowing this was his daughter in China and he just needed to go and get her. Now I don’t know where this statement came from or even how accurate it was at the time, but God used those words from Stephen Curtis Chapman spoken through my wife to confirm the same feeling I had in my heart. Upon hearing these words, I wept uncontrollably. The jet lag helped, but I was up the rest of the night reading about adopting from China.
I thought God’s confirmation of a name and my willingness to finally say yes to adoption was a clear sign to move forward. God had honored Susan’s obedience and patience with a less than unwilling husband. I thought the hard part was over since we were now both on the same page. First thing Monday morning when I began to call adoption agencies, I was unpleasantly surprised when the first few agencies refused to work with us after I shared my story of meeting Hope and our desire to adopt her. What we learned was China did not allow pre-identified adoptions. Simply put, if you meet a child, your not allowed to adopt them. This would take a miracle is what we were told. Like finding a needle in a haystack.
So What’s in a Name? We would learn over the next three years before bringing her home, there was so much more meaning to the letters, H O P E, the name God had clearly given to us. HOPE: The Desire Of Fulfillment, Faith, Trust, Expectation, Belief. There were many lonely days on our journey where we had to hope against hope. On many occasions it felt like Susan and I were the only one’s who believed in the miracle of bringing Hope home to our family. Hebrews 11:1 says it best, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” In the end, our hope endured and allowed us to experience a God who still performs miracles in the 21st Century.
