Broken babies

John Mark was still healing the first time I felt his round little head burrow into my shoulder. Places babies should never feel anything but the caress of a mother’s lips were bruised, aching, and still knitting themselves back to some semblance of the perfect they had been at the moment of his birth. My heart for that child was so total, so intense, instantaneously. I could– still can, actually– bring myself to nauseous tears imagining the horror of his first few weeks. Someone hurt my baby. If I think on it too long …

And yet, he thrives.

Six years old now, John Mark is the poster boy for foster adoption, for grace, for the verse we chose to flag his life with:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.– Genesis 50:20

The truth is, we– our family– took a huge chance in falling in love with John Mark. He wasn’t legally free, first of all. There was no guarantee, as our hearts grew around his deeply brown eyes, his mostly bald head, that he’d be ours for another month, let alone forever. To fold him into the collective us, to accept him fully as a member of we, was to risk a future in which we felt a permanent loss, in which we always wondered “What if he had stayed?”

Second, he was broken. If you’re never been involved in the foster care system, let me be the one to introduce you to a phrase that ought to never, ever have been coined: broken baby. A broken baby is just what it sounds like: a little life abused, a little soul battered, a little person whose body and spirit has cracked in the hands of the very people to which it was entrusted. Broken babies can draw their first breaths as meth-addicted, premature 3 pounders. Or they can start this life as robust full-term infants with bright futures. Somewhere along the line, something falls apart, something goes hideously wrong, and then … broken babies.

Broken babies are riddles wrapped in questions. Will he heal? Will the damage be permanent? Was his brain injured? Are his eyes o.k.? Did he lose any range of motion? Will he have chronic pain? Are his organs functioning? Will his IQ be normal? Is surgery necessary?

In John Mark’s case, there was healing. There was redemption. There was forever.

But still… it all started with that first deep breath. With that first yes. With that, “Can we do this? Oh my gosh, I think we’re doing this.” It was a chance. And though God knew how the story would play out, He wasn’t letting us in on the end of the tale as we put our foot to the path. We just walked. A child needed a home. A baby needed a Momma. A boy needed a man to call Daddy. We had an empty crib and …

We said yes.

Although there are many things I regret in John Mark’s life, there is nothing I would take back. Not even those tragic, traumatic first weeks– though as I say this, my breath goes shallow and I can feel, again, the bile rising in my throat at the thought of someone, anyone causing harm to one of my precious babies. God’s story for John Mark began with that awful opening chapter. It’s what led him here, to us, and what will set the stage for everything and anything he does in his life. I can’t question the script I did not write; some day, I’ll lean in as the author tells me why. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I don’t need to know, or maybe, even, I’ll see it unfold here, on this earth. Maybe some day I will hear John Mark himself tell the story, and it will sound less like a horror story and more like a hymn.

I pray for that day.

But even if it never happens, even if the only proof I have in this life that God is good is what I see here, today, with my own eyes, it is enough.

We took a chance on a broken baby. A discarded kid. Someone who society said might cost too much, emotionally, to open our home and hearts to. We took the chance. And we were changed, forever.

For the better.

**John Mark came to our family six years ago as of October 31. Happy Gotcha’ Day to a strong, determined, brave, kind, generous young man. We love you!**