Category: Family

People ask me all the time, “How do you do it? How do you get everything done with six kids?!?” The answer: I don’t. All KINDS of things don’t get done. But my kids are still alive, so I guess we are ok. I think. (Actually, I haven’t seen Erin in a while….)

One thing that doesn’t get done, especially in the summer when everyone is home, is blogging. But you need an update on Kieran and we need to share it!

Kieran is having surgery on Oct 30!!!

Just a little over a year after arriving here, he is going to have an extensive leg-lengthening surgery at Shriners in St. Louis that will eliminate his need for the crutches!

I remember singing in worship at the Orphan Summit in California last May 2012—weeks before we were able to even see Kieran’s file and accept his referral—about Jesus who “makes the lame to walk” and wondering, hoping, EXPECTING that I was going to get to see that kind of miracle in MY day, in MY son. Well, believers, we are going to witness this miracle together!

To tell you the truth, I so believed that this miracle was going to happen, that when we met with our elders to pray over Kieran and anoint him with oil (following the directives of James 5:14-15), I truly thought I was going to feel his legs grow right under my hands as I prayed on my knees in front of him. It could happen! God COULD do that if He wanted. I truly believe that. But I see more clearly now that part of the miracle for Kieran needs to be sought in the journey of learning to be patient and trust in a God he can’t see and in a new family that he can see.

For 6 years, since Kieran broke his femur, he has been told regularly by doctors in Ethiopia to “come back next week,” “come back next month,” “come back tomorrow,” and “Why are you here? Do you think you are going to run or something?” So when he got here and doctors were telling him to “come back later,” he was disappointed in the miracle-working America that he had dreamed up in his head. Even though, here in America, the waits (for test results, for medications to take effect, etc) were legitimate, he lost hope. He told the doctor at Shriners back in February when we went to see if anything could be done, “I glad to do what you say, and for research to help other kids, but I know I not going to change.”

However, the doctor looked at us surprised and said, “Well we are not miracle workers, but I’d like to think we can do some things that will help you walk again like other kids.” The tears rolled down my face. Hope. Restoration. Redemption. Mercy.

I think there is still a bit of Kieran that is thinking, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” and who could blame him? But I know his future is about to change radically!

<<GORE ALERT>>
For those of you who like the gory nitty-gritty details, the amazing doctors at Shriners will be breaking his majorly arched left femur bone and then putting a rod down the middle of it so it can form more straight and longer. In the same surgery, they will break the two lower bones (tibia and fibula) and put an external fixator device on the outside of his leg connected with pins through the bones. Everyday we will turn some knobs very slightly which will pull the disconnected bones further apart. Our bones like to grow together, so that is how his lower leg will also be lengthened.

Kieran and I will spend a week in the hospital and then for about 6 weeks return once a week to St Louis for physical therapy and a checkup. We will also have rehab at a local hospital (hopefully in Lincoln) twice a week, as well as 30-60 minutes of therapy at home twice a day. We will live, eat, and breath physical therapy. I’ll bet by the end of it, even Eva will be able to coach Kieran through it!

We have a long road ahead of us. Kieran will likely be out of school for 4-6 weeks while his leg strengthens and he learns to walk again. He will have that device on his leg for about 6 months. The therapy will be very painful, but if he doesn’t push through (with my help and others), his leg and muscles will not heal correctly and it will hurt even worse. Once his entire left leg is healed and strong enough to support all his weight, then the doctors will likely go in and break his other femur and put a rod in it to even out the two legs more exactly.

This is going to take a while. But he will walk again! And God, in His infinite and intimate wisdom, knows it is best for my son to walk through this miracle one day at a time.

Our adoptive Father is writing this story. To God be the glory!

As an update, Kieran’s treatments have gone well. We finished the first round in March and will do another in July. Late July we will head back to Shriner’s Children’s Hospital in St. Louis to see how the IV infusions have been affecting him. They will then determine if he is ready for leg surgery or will need more treatments first, and then check again later.

Thank you so much for your prayers and please continue to pray for healing for Kieran and wisdom for the doctors as they determine the best course of action for him.

Now for more behind our adoption story….

When I first announced our referral for Kieran last May 2012, I promised to share with you more about how God led us specifically to him, but I was unable to do so then because we had not yet passed court.  Last February, I shared one part of that story (starting in the 6th paragraph of this post), and now I would like fill in a few more details of what God showed me in that month preceding Easter 2012, the month in which I vowed not to ask or speak about adoption until we finished our Lenten fast.  (Funny how God is able to speak to us better when we are silent!)

The next weekend after God announced to me (while watching the “Hugo” movie) that now-named Kieran was to be our son, I flew off to an adoptive mom’s retreat in Atlanta, GA called Created for Care.  The theme song during the retreat was “Beautiful Things” by Gungor—a new song at the time.  It’s about how God makes beautiful things out of the dust.  I was soaking in all the adoptive mommy encouragement I could get, so I didn’t think a lot about the song at the time until I got home.  Click on the song title above to hear it or here is an excerpt:

All this pain,
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way?
I wonder if my life could really change… at all?

All this earth,
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come out from this ground… at all?

You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of the dust
You make beautiful things
You make beautiful things out of us

A few days after I returned from the retreat while having my quiet time, I felt God speak to me, as he did through Eli to Hannah, these words:

Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him. (1 Sam 1:17)

I had been praying for more than two years for Him to bring to us the boy He had promised. I had also known for almost two years that God had given me his Bible name: Solomon.  (God had given me each of the other kids’ Bible middle names).  Now I had been praying hard about this boy named “Sage” on the Waiting Child List, thinking this might be our boy. And like Hannah, after years of praying, I felt God was saying that now was the time He was going to grant that prayer and that I should go in “peace” (“Solomon” in Hebrew means “peace.”)

Really God?? Is it finally time!?

Then right there in my favorite spot on the couch, the Words on the pages of my Bible jumped out at me.  In 1 Sam 2:8, Hannah prayed:

He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
He seats them with princes
and has them inherit a throne of honor.

Did you know that was in Hannah’s prayer?  I didn’t!  In an instant, like a fast forward of clips in a movie, I saw all the promises and past pieces of the puzzle that God had shown me one by one, suddenly fall together.  I wish I could describe that instant to you—I will do my best!

The song above about how God forms beautiful things out of the dust converged with these verses about raising the poor and needy from the dust and ashes which converged with all the memories I have of walking in Ethiopia where the poor and lame sit in the dust of the streets, day after day, waiting for someone to hand them a coin or a piece of bread.  This is most likely where this crippled 15 year old boy “Sage” would end up if no one adopted him before he turned 16 because he would have no means of getting to school or doing manual labor to make a living for himself.

In this same instant, I looked up at my old 6-seat dining room table and instead pictured my family sitting at the table I had long dreamed of that seated 8 and was huge and round.  In that same instant, I remembered the story of another son of King David’s that was crippled as a small child and adopted into David’s family: Mephibosheth.

In those days, a person who was lame would have no rights or land or dignity.  Even after King David told Mephibosheth, “I will surely show you kindness… and restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table,” Mephibosheth himself bowed down and told King David, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?” (2 Sam 9:7-8)

King David adopted this son of his best friend Jonathan and promised that he would always sit at his table.  In essence, Mephibosheth grew up right alongside Solomon, with the same rights and dignity as the boy Solomon who would eventually become the successor to the King!!

So in this same instant, I pictured “Sage/Solomon” filling the 8th seat at my new Round Table!  Do you see it—round like a king’s Round Table??  In this vision, my Solomon and my Mephibosheth became one person, and though our family is not rich or kings by any stretch of the imagination, we know that we are rich through Christ with God’s grace!  And we are rich with blessings of love and family stability that I never want to take for granted.  Michael has always reminded our kids that they have “a charmed life.”  Though far from perfect, our family has a richness that far outweighs any monetary richness we could ever accumulate.

Thus, God showed me that he was going to lift this boy that he loved and had not forgotten out of the dirty streets of Ethiopia where he would beg for food, and put him into our family where he would become an heir to our throne, as meager as it is, and would never want for food or medical help or school again.  Our King Jesus would change him from Mephibosheth into King Solomon!

(Interesting aside: I never thought about the made up English name the agency gave him for anonymity on the Waiting Child List, Sage, until months later.  I always thought of the color or the herb, but if you look up Sage in the dictionary, you will find “one who is wise.”  Who do you think of when you think of the wisest man on earth?  King Solomon??)

As confirmation, at the end of last January, in the very same moments when someone yelled upstairs to me that the truck had arrived to deliver our new round table, I was hearing the then new song “Kings and Queens” by Audio Adreniline on the radio.  Here is an excerpt and the video—a must see!

Boys become kings, girls will become queens, wrapped in your majesty, when we love the least of these

Audio Adrenaline – Kings and Queens (Exclusive Music Video Premiere) from audio-adrenaline on GodTube.

If not us, then who will be like Jesus to the least of these?

 

Outtakes:

People have been asking what we found out after our stay at Shriners Hospital for Children, so in case you didn’t see my update on Facebook, here is the plan:

Due to his genetic disorder Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), Kieran’s bones have a severely low density, and so he is not allowed to carry anything over 5# (including a heavy backpack).  He cannot do anything that has an impact, but we will begin aquatherapy at the hospital in the next few weeks to strengthen his leg muscles.  He has to be extra careful about everything because his bones could break very easily.  He can’t even listen to very loud music because he could break his eardrums and there is no cast for that. 🙂

He will start IV infusions with a bisphosphonate drug that will strengthen his bones over a period of 3 years or more.  He will do this like a chemotherapy patient: going to the hospital in Springfield once a week for 3 weeks, then about 3 months off, then start the cycle over again.  His first 3 appts are Mar 8, 14, and 22, so you can pray for him those days.  We will be at the hospital at 8am, he will have some labs drawn to check calcium levels, and then he will sit for at least 4 hours to receive the IV meds.  We will likely be there for about 6 hours before driving home.  Please especially pray for his first infusion because he will have flu-like symptoms (fever, bone aches, headache) for up to 48 hours after the infusion.  They say this usually only occurs after the first treatment.

After 2 rounds of these infusions, we will go back to Shriners for a couple days in July to recheck his bone density, etc. and see how effective the drugs have been.  At that point, they may schedule surgery for a few months after, or they may wait until he has had more rounds of the treatment.

When surgery is done, they will break his curved femur (the one that was broken a couple times at age 10 and didn’t heal correctly and is the reason his left leg is 8cm shorter than the other) and put a metal rod into it to straighten it. (Or it is possible they will get in there and see the rod won’t work and then put a plastic plate in instead, and then replace it with a rod later. Please pray the rod will work for him so it will be more permanent and less surgeries.)  During the same surgery, they will break the two bones in the lower part of his leg and attach an external fixation device (warning: don’t click on that if you are faint at heart! 🙂 ).  With this device, we will turn knobs a tiny bit everyday to lengthen his leg, and then we will need to drive (2+ hrs) to Shriners in St. Louis once a week for a month or two until they get things to the length they want it.  The device will stay on at least 5 months.  (If anyone has any basketball breakaway-type pants about size 10 that they would like to donate, he will need something he can on get over the device.)  We will also have an hour of physical therapy, twice a day, to do at home during those 5 months.

The point of the surgeries is to lengthen the left leg so that it matches the right leg and he will no longer need to walk with crutches.  It is possible that after the first leg heals, they may have to make adjustments by putting a rod into the other femur. (It is bowed some too, as are most of his bones, but not as badly.)

His back does have compression fractures due to his OI, and so the broken vertebrae cause the shortened torso and curved spine, but since it is only curved 30% and not too badly, surgery is not warranted.  The growth plates in his lower body were likely fractured as well, so that is why he is shorter and will not likely grow much more—unless, of course, God has other plans. 🙂

There will be a lot of driving, a lot of doctor appointments, a lot of pain, and a lot of work to make this all happen, but there is hope!!  The second day we were at Shriners before the doctors had decided a course of action, the geneticist was asking a lot of questions through a translator and explaining a lot of medical things to make sure Kieran understood the nature of his disorder.  At the end, Kieran very politely told him that he was happy to do the testing and the work and was happy if it would be helpful to other patients in the future, but that he knew that nothing was going to change for him.  The geneticist looked surprised and said, “Well, I’d like to think we can do something about this!”  Tears rolled down my face.  Really???  There is hope??  This CAN be fixed?!?

I had braced myself and him for the fact that even in America, not everything can be fixed, but we will try everything we can.  In the meantime, he could go to school, get a job, have a life—none of which would be possible for a person with disabilities in Ethiopia where he was from.  And he always has God with him, guiding him, and writing a story through him of His grace and glory.

I think we are still holding our breath a little, wondering if it really will work.  But since that third day when they told us the plan, I have seen Kieran walk a little lighter (pun intended!), and hope is slowly lifting that burden off his back.  I do catch myself thinking things like, “Well, maybe NEXT year he can go out in the snow and play,” or “Maybe this summer he will be willing to get in the pool with us,” or “Maybe someday he will dance with us!” (His region in Ethiopia is known for their dancing.)  Oh, the possibilities!!

Thank you so much to everyone who has prayed for Kieran, beginning way back when he was at the orphanage, and all the way through today!  Please keep praying—God is writing a beautiful story of healing and redemption and you are a part of it!!  You are a blessing to us!

Pictured at the top are Kieran with his geneticist and nurse—both very competent and very caring!