A Wonderful Adoption Story

I was fourteen when the Webb's took me in as a foster child. I had been a ward of the State of Hawaii since I was 10 years old. The Webbs would be my 5th foster home. It was hard to find a permanent home for a teenaged girl, so I was in several temporary foster homes. The Webbs, Sam and Nancy, were assistant pastors of a church in Hawaii and were just 10 years older than I was. They had just lost a child and their hearts were broken, but open to accepting a new one, albeit, fourteen years old.

I was with them for 6 months when they had to move to Washington to do an emergency pastorship for a church there. By this time, I had a special "radar" for knowing when I was going to be left, and I asked them in the car one day if they had been talking to a social worker. Their stunned silence told me a lot. When they left, we all cried. I had fallen in love with them. They were the family that I would always love and miss. All my foster parents were special and I fell in love with them all differently. But the Webbs took my heart and soul and every wish I ever had for constant love with them when they got on the plane.

I spent a confused year with a wonderful family. However, each night I would go into the walk-in closet and cry myself to sleep. I was so unhappy. So thankful for this home. So much misery missing the Webbs. I couldn't share my sadness with this family because I didn't want them to think I was unappreciative of them opening their home to me. So, I hid in the closet, and every morning, Uncle Ken would find me there and wake me to get ready for school. I'd make up excuses for why I'd go into the closet. No one knew I cried myself to sleep over missing the Webbs.

A year later, the Webbs came back. An announcement was made in church and the following week I dressed in my best. I sat in the waaaaay back of the church, so as not to be seen by them. I think I felt like the spurned girlfriend, seeing the love of her life with someone else and feeling ashamed and avoidant, and still longing to see them. There had been no contact the whole time they were gone, so I had no idea how they would feel. I didn't want them to feel anything BAD at seeing me, so I slunk off and peered over people's shoulders when Sam and Nancy came to the pulpit.

So, you're wondering. How is this an adoption story? Is there a happy ending?

Little could I believe that a young, beautiful, all American couple could want a messed up, Eurasian, 15-year-old, ward of the state. But they did. They had missed me, too. But they didn't want to offend the family that I was with, any more than I did. They had fallen in love with me, but my heart was already taken. It took some gentle conferencing...but one day I was back in the warm and loving home of the Webbs. I moved to Guam with them as their permanent foster child when I was 16 years old. It was on Guam, at the ripe age of 17, that Sam and Nancy Webb, aged 27, adopted me...gave me their name...their history...their extended family. I have a son now who has grandparents because of them. Mom and Dad had two more children, my brother and sister. What my life would have been like, the unanchored feeling I would have forever carried around in my chest, the eternal longing for family. I cannot even, well I don't WANT to imagine. It's never too late. There is always hope. And prayers do get answered.

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