And Then You Came for Me: A Story of Adoption and Faith

Parenting & Family life

by Matushka Lauren Huggins

One morning in the fall of 2008, as the sun rose over our home in Colorado Springs, my two-year-old adopted son and I were sitting at our breakfast table. He was born in Ethiopia and had been living with us for about a year. Between bites of cereal, he said something that took me aback: “Mommy, when I was in the orphanage, I was looking all around for you.” His eyes became as big as saucers, and he turned his head from side to side. “I was waiting and waiting for you and wondering when you would come... and then you came for me!”

Since our engagement, my husband and I had known we would like to adopt. We had been inspired by a family in our church who had adopted five brothers and sisters from Mexico, though they already had several birth children in high school. They were not wealthy, but it didn’t seem to matter, as they always had joyful smiles on their faces. After I gave birth to a son and daughter, our desire to adopt only grew stronger. I was working as a nurse and my husband taught special education. We knew the love that parents have for children firsthand and we wanted this love to multiply. For us, as a young family, it was a way of striving to fulfill Christ’s commandments.

Why did we decide to adopt children from Ethiopia? In part, it was because we had family living in Africa whom we had visited previously. Another factor was that Ethiopia has a large Orthodox population with deep historical roots. We wanted to help our children connect with this piece of their heritage.

The paperwork was overwhelming! The adoption agency put us through an extensive home study, delving into personal issues from our past. We went through background checks and psychological testing, and we had to prove we could provide financially for the new children and give them health insurance. We were also surprised by the up-front cost: the fees, we learned, would amount to at least $25,000, and might run as high as $50,000. However, we applied for several grants and thankfully received one. We sold a car. Our extended families chipped in, and the Ethiopian ladies of the church cooked a feast to help us raise money. The hardest part of the process was, was… WAITING. I would check my email several times a day, hoping for any piece of news. We had to remind ourselves that our child had suffered much more to be in the position to be adopted.

After 12 months, the time came for us to travel to Ethiopia and finally hold our new baby in our arms. We went to a large, well-organized orphanage in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. From our guest house, we were awakened each morning by the sounds of roosters crowing and the Orthodox morning prayers being chanted in Ge’ez (an ancient Ethiopian language) over the loudspeaker throughout the town. After that, the Muslim prayers would start over the loudspeaker as well. It was a joy to walk into the room where our new little one was being cared for by attentive nannies. A year after we brought him home, we returned to Ethiopia and adopted a second child, a 7-month-old girl.

Our life together is a joy, but it certainly required adjustments. When we brought our son home, he spent months screaming louder than any child I have ever heard. He woke up crying, hourly, every night. I knew he had been through a traumatic infancy, and I assumed it was a natural result of his experience. It was also a coping mechanism. In the orphanage, he would do that and immediately get a bottle. He’d been so well fed that he was the biggest baby there.

Our adopted children have asked questions about their skin color, their birth parents, and other details about their backgrounds. We have a good bit of family information for our son, but now that he’s 13, it is difficult for him to talk about it. Meanwhile, we have very little background information about our 10-year-old daughter, but she talks about it several times a week. We’ve realized it is important to let them be where they are in that process. At the same time, we have tried to incorporate food, clothing, history, art, music, and a little language from their birth country into our home.

We moved to Saint Tikhon’s Seminary in 2010, and then to the small town of Durango, Colorado, where my husband is now assigned as a priest. Our children do stand out here. They are not white, but they don’t feel fully Ethiopian, because they were not raised there, nor are they part of typical African-American culture. This certainly may lead to questions of identity. It is our job to provide them with a safe, loving, nourishing haven while they continue to struggle and grow through these crosses.

Because they were so young when we began the process, adoption has seemed natural for our birth children. In fact, when our birth son was 5 years old, he said, “Let’s have another baby! Let’s go to the airport!” He was used to greeting my husband and me at the terminal to meet his new siblings. Even now as teenagers, they feel that our family situation is normal. They see no difference between adopted or birth siblings. All of them have said that they will consider adoption for their own families when they are parents.

I want to encourage more Orthodox families to consider adoption—and not only as a fallback when giving birth doesn’t work out. We can allow Christ to manifest His love through us by opening our homes, lives, and hearts to children in need. Some of the laws and procedures have changed since my husband and I went through the process—for instance, Ethiopia no longer allows overseas adoptions—but the need is still tremendous. According to UNICEF, there are globally 153 million orphaned children. In the United States in 2017, there were 690,000 children in the foster-care system. It is hard to truly comprehend these numbers.

There is a beautiful line in a hymn to the Theotokos that my husband often sings to our children at bedtime, praising her as the one “Who rescuest the perishing and receivest the orphaned and intercedest for the stranger.” It may be that the Lord has adoption in his plans for you, or maybe you can support families who are adopting or fostering. For example, respite care is needed to give foster parents some personal time as they can only let certified caretakers babysit the foster children.

Our infant adopted son had never set foot in an Orthodox church before we brought him into our home parish in Colorado Springs. He had a long birth name, which included Michael, as it was a family name. As I held him in my arms during services, he would often reach for a large icon of Archangel Michael, as if he knew him. He would also venerate the icons the way it is traditionally done in Ethiopia, by laying his forehead down on them and then kissing them. To me, this was a reminder that though these children had experienced hardship very early on, God and His angels were always with them; even in loneliness, even in darkness. I cannot endorse any particular adoption website, but see the resource links below if you’re interested in learning more.

◉ adoptuskids.com

◉ showhope.org

◉ zoeforlifeonline.org

◉ goarch.org/-/service-of-the-adoptionof-a-child

Lauren Huggins is a nurse and the mother of four children. She is also the wife of Father Benjamin Huggins, priest of Saint Andrew’s Orthodox Church (OCA) in Delta, Colorado. She lives with her family in Durango, Colorado.