I believe the Devil is real. Why? Because I have experienced evil.
After winning legal approval to adopt, I contacted the girl we hoped to adopt in order to find out if she in fact wanted to be adopted. As I mentioned previously, I had already developed a relationship with her through 2 mission trips and almost daily communication through Facebook.
After convincing her that we were actually serious, she exploded with joy. She was so excited about being adopted and moving to America. She called us mom and dad and constantly asked about her soon to be brothers and sisters. We put our house up for sale in order to get a bigger house that would accommodate a teenage daughter. We made plans for her schooling. We all got passports and made preliminary travel plans. And then everything blew up.
One day, out of nowhere, our soon to be adopted daughter sent me a long and formal message explaining to me that she was very sorry but she no longer wanted to be adopted. She said that she was Ukrainian and belonged in Ukraine. And that was it. We were shocked. I tried over and over again to convince her that she was making a huge mistake but she would not budge. Her writing style was so different that I was convinced it wasn’t even her.
Desperate for answers I contacted a Ukrainian friend who regularly visited the orphanage in which our prospective daughter lived. Through her, I discovered what had happened. The director of the orphanage had somehow talked her out of being adopted.
In that moment I remember how a girl from the same orphanage had told me that when she was 4 an American couple wanted to adopt her but her orphanage director had told her that the Americans would take her away, kill her and sell her organs. Terrified, the little girl said no to the American couple and 13 years later she still lives in the orphanage.
I learned that over the last decade the director of the orphanage had not permitted a single adoption—not even to Ukrainian couples. Why? Money. He receives money from the Ukrainian government based on how many children are in his school and how many of those children graduate.
Fury can’t adequately describe what I felt. We tried every method possible to change her mind but she would not budge. She would not even discuss it. Then our adoption appointment with the Ukrainian government came and went. Somehow, in spite of all that God had done to open the way for us we had failed. We did not get our precious girl. Now she is too old to adopt and she’ll soon be released from the orphan school to the streets.
What do you do with that? I don’t have many clear answers. The best I can offer is that now I have glimpsed the pain God feels when His children reject Him. Evil clouded our orphan’s judgment and she rejected a family that would have provided her with love, protection and opportunity. In the same way, evil clouds my judgment on a daily basis and I reject God’s best. Out of one of the most painful experiences in my life, perhaps that is the lesson. I’m not sure.
I take comfort in the reality that as much as my heart breaks for this orphan girl, the love I feel doesn’t even compare to God’s love for her. I know that His heart breaks for her too. I trust that He is present in her story and that He will never stop pursuing her.
Somehow in the failure and the pain God is present and He’s not finished.
