Putting on Christ

When Jared and I traveled to South Korea to bring home our boys, we basically flew solo. If there were other couples also in Seoul with the same purpose as us, we turned a blind eye to that knowledge, determined to flit around that cosmopolitan city unfettered by anything but our own whims, desires, and Thomas' nap schedule. But adopting from Ethiopia is not the same as adopting from South Korea. Besides many other nuances to our journey, there was the fact that we would be members of a travel group. Frankly, the notion of a travel group was as foreign to us as our daughter's country of birth, but by our third time around, our youthful "go-it-alone" spirit had become more tempered and we were more willingly to embrace, and even anticipated, a collective adoption experience. Our first awakening to the members of our group came via a conference call days before travel. It makes me giggle a bit as I recollect the voices of and the questions raised by these then faceless individuals who have now become an intricate part of our daughter's adoption story and thus our lives. There were seventeen of us making a pilgrimage to the unfamiliar land of our children. We came from all over the States with diverse religious backgrounds, political affiliations, and familial stories. We ate countless meals together, slept in the same hotel together, shared long van rides, and most poignantly, we met our precious children together. In nine days, we became intimate with those who weeks earlier had been strangers. Each man and woman was a unique, gifted, lovely individual. I miss them dearly.

To say the least, it had been a physically trying and emotionally exhausting day. We had left the Union Hotel in Addis around 6:30 AM, driving some six plus hours to the southern part of Ethiopia where we had briefly met members of our childrens' birth families, as well as toured the facility in which each of our sons and daughters had lived for a time before being moved to Holt's facility in the capital. By 8 PM, most of our group had retired for the evening, having had their fill of pizza, rice, or Ethiopian cuisine, OFF spray and mosquito nets readily available. Meanwhile, a few of us lingered, empty St. George beer bottles littering the dinner table and fresh ones in hand. We met David and Nancy and their two children while waiting for our flight from D.C. to Addis. David is a constitutional lawyer from Tennessee; Nancy is a writer with an accent so thick and a sense of humor so like my friend Jennifer (another southerner I adore), I could not help but immediately love her. Throughout the hours spent together, some of their story unraveled. Together the two co-authored a book about their experiences when David, after receiving special permission because of his age, joined the army and served a tour of duty in Iraq. At that table with those beers, David, a new convert to Reformed Christianity, shared with us some of his stories; stories of jeeps passing safely on a roads where other jeeps blow up; stories of collecting the personal articles for family members following deaths; stories of funerals. As he spoke about the funerals he had attended (Lord have mercy), David related that with the exception of one, the American flag had been draped across every casket. With tears and a faltering voice, he explained that while the American flag had initially also dressed this Catholic soldier's remains, before entering the church for the funeral, the flag was lifted off being replaced with a white shroud. This particular story made me cry; it still does for through this simple, symbolic act, a weighty testimony was communicated: While this man was an American citizen, a solider who had served and sacrificed his life for his country, he was ultimately a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven and belonged to the God to whom he now returned.

Sunday morning I dressed Lucia in an Ethiopian garment. It is a lovely piece of clothing, linen and lightly colored with splashes of vibrant gold, red, blue, and green. Held by her godmother, I was proud to see my daughter adorned in cloth from her place of origin and thankful for the beauty of the Ethiopian culture which has now been brought into our family. As we moved from the nave into the sanctuary of the church and prepared for Lucia's descent into the baptismal font representative of her burial and resurrection with Christ, her dress was removed. Naked she was held by our priest and then immersed three times into the waters sanctified by the sign of the cross, holy oil, and prayers, while Father invoked the name of the Trinity. Earlier a white gown and jacket had been blessed by our priest; a dress which 48 years earlier my sister, Rebecca, had donned on her own baptismal day; a dress which now became my daughter's baptismal gown. Like the deceased soldier, Lucia was draped in white to proclaim her membership in the family of God. Later as incense filled that sacred space, the serving priests, Lucia and her godparents, and the remainder of our family processed around the baptismal font and table holding the Gospel book singing three times the hymn familiar to all Orthodox Christian: "As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. Alleluia."

As a mother of four children, I have many hopes and dreams for my sons and daughter. As a mother of four children adopted internationally, I pray that Jared and I will actively seek to create a home which will foster and nurture a love and respect for my children's birth countries. As they leave childhood and transform into young adults, I hope Thomas, Russell, Elliot, and Lucia all will love bee bim bop, bulgogi, doro wat, injera and other foods from their homelands. I would be proud if they learned how to play Korean drums, master the art of Tae kwon do, or perform traditional African dances. I pray that their hearts will long for Korea and Ethiopia as mine does. But in the end, my most sincere desire is that my children will continue to live in the mystery which transpired on their baptismal days. I pray that for them, as well as for me and my husband, our identity will stem  from Christ and His Church, a kingdom where there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, Korean nor Ethiopian nor American, because within Her we are all one in Christ Jesus.