This was not how I saw it all playing out.
Twenty two years ago this June, David Dumitru joined our family.
The last of our five offspring, he is our only brown eyed child. Behind those beautiful dark eyes, however, lies a story born out of pain and rejection. The road to redemption has been a long, arduous one, but we are getting there.
We'd been warned that there are adjustments when adopting a child from a foreign culture, but until you experience it first hand, you simply don’t know what you don’t know. We learned by trial and error how to parent a child with multiple emotional and mental disabilities, and to David’s credit, he has survived us pretty well.
Our story began benignly enough during a family conversation in the living room of my in-laws. The discussion turned to a television expose’ on the plight of abandoned orphans in Romania, and even though my husband and I had not seen the story firsthand, we were intrigued by the details shared.
Unbeknownst to each other, God gently began whispering an idea into our ears.
We were a contented family of six at the time, living out the American dream, successful business owners, actively involved in ministry, and enjoying the relative ordered chaos that comes while rearing four children under age 10. By outward appearances, we’d had it all. We really had no plans to add to our family, as four was “our number” and our quiver was comfortably full. That being said, adoption was always an endearing concept for me. I had cousins who joined our family through adoption and I observed that love could trump bloodlines any day.
So with that still, small voice speaking softly in my ear, the thought of rescuing one of these little ones from a hopeless existence moved further on down into my heart. It didn’t take long until I discovered that my husband was experiencing that same parental tug to add one more to our family.
And so it began, our journey into the unknown world of adoption paperwork and appointments, home studies and safety checks…and waiting. Added to that was the challenge of navigating a private adoption in a foreign country so emotionally crippled under communism, each move was a step into the darkness.
At the time, Romania was a country in political turmoil and general unrest. Trying to rebound from a spontaneous prayer-vigil-turned-revolution a year earlier, she was like a woman laboring in childbirth. Under Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime, thousands of innocent children had been warehoused in unspeakable conditions under the guise of state care.
Disclaimer: This video footage is part one of a follow up report from the original 20/20 story "Shame of a Nation" in 1990. It tells the story of the late John Upton's efforts to rescue some of the least of these and contains graphic scenes of the conditions present in the orphanages at that time.
Twenty two years ago this June, David Dumitru joined our family.
The last of our five offspring, he is our only brown eyed child. Behind those beautiful dark eyes, however, lies a story born out of pain and rejection. The road to redemption has been a long, arduous one, but we are getting there.
We'd been warned that there are adjustments when adopting a child from a foreign culture, but until you experience it first hand, you simply don’t know what you don’t know. We learned by trial and error how to parent a child with multiple emotional and mental disabilities, and to David’s credit, he has survived us pretty well.
Our story began benignly enough during a family conversation in the living room of my in-laws. The discussion turned to a television expose’ on the plight of abandoned orphans in Romania, and even though my husband and I had not seen the story firsthand, we were intrigued by the details shared.
Unbeknownst to each other, God gently began whispering an idea into our ears.
We were a contented family of six at the time, living out the American dream, successful business owners, actively involved in ministry, and enjoying the relative ordered chaos that comes while rearing four children under age 10. By outward appearances, we’d had it all. We really had no plans to add to our family, as four was “our number” and our quiver was comfortably full. That being said, adoption was always an endearing concept for me. I had cousins who joined our family through adoption and I observed that love could trump bloodlines any day.
So with that still, small voice speaking softly in my ear, the thought of rescuing one of these little ones from a hopeless existence moved further on down into my heart. It didn’t take long until I discovered that my husband was experiencing that same parental tug to add one more to our family.
And so it began, our journey into the unknown world of adoption paperwork and appointments, home studies and safety checks…and waiting. Added to that was the challenge of navigating a private adoption in a foreign country so emotionally crippled under communism, each move was a step into the darkness.
At the time, Romania was a country in political turmoil and general unrest. Trying to rebound from a spontaneous prayer-vigil-turned-revolution a year earlier, she was like a woman laboring in childbirth. Under Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime, thousands of innocent children had been warehoused in unspeakable conditions under the guise of state care.
Disclaimer: This video footage is part one of a follow up report from the original 20/20 story "Shame of a Nation" in 1990. It tells the story of the late John Upton's efforts to rescue some of the least of these and contains graphic scenes of the conditions present in the orphanages at that time.
After the fall of Ceausescu’s reign, reports of extreme neglect began to surface, with disturbing accounts of woefully poor hygiene and inadequate nutrition, inhumane living conditions, with two or more children sharing cribs and tie restraints to 'keep them safe'; these were just some of the horrific stories that came to light. The question immediately asked was what to do with all these children?
As word spread about the desperate plight of these little ones, Americans responded en mass, with attorneys, caseworkers, and judges scrambling to find homes for this otherwise lost generation of children.
We were among the first wave of families seeking to adopt, and with the laws being written as we went (or so it seemed), we enlisted the help of a Christian Romanian man living in Oregon to help us navigate through the good, the bad and the ugly.
Still struggling to find her way, Romania remained an unstable country when Bruce’s plane landed in Bucharest in late May of 1991.
Arriving overnight, the airport terminal was dank and dimly lit. Only a few random ceiling lights illuminated its interior and with the sight of armed military police patrolling the lobby, it cast an ominous feeling. In his journal, he noted that he felt like he was entering a war zone.
Bruce was happy to have the company of his brother as his traveling companion, as I stayed back home to keep the household running while he was gone. This was his first trip to Romania, but it would not be his last. After 8 months of planning for it, the time had come to bring our little boy home.
It almost didn’t happen.
Two weeks before his scheduled departure, we received word that our 'first David', the dear little one whose picture we had posted on our refrigerator door, this sweet child we’d already called son and for whom we'd been praying, had suddenly become unavailable for adoption. His grandfather refused to relinquish his parental rights, so we were left with two choices: end our pursuit right then and there, or press on to Romania and take whatever child we were given.
After much prayer and wise counsel from trusted advisors, we elected to move forward and watch God work. We reasoned that since we had no choice with our biological children, we’d trust God to choose our adopted one as well. We’ve said many times since that it was divine grace that Bruce never met David until after we adopted him.
From a human perspective, David was randomly pulled from the stack of files our Romanian attorney had been given. To this day, we cannot say with complete confidence that he actually is who his paperwork says he is. Nonetheless, whomever he may have been is no longer who he is today, and he isn’t part of our family because a lawyer chose him.
God did.
Trust me when I say I needed to cling heavily to that truth many times during the early years. There were multiple reasons why David never should’ve been released to be adopted, let alone leave the country, but he was and he did. Believing that God divinely appointed this little guy to join our family is the only explanation for how it all happened, and it's a truth that sustained us through many tears.
The day Bruce and David met for the first time they were already legally linked as father and son and it was a good thing, because Bruce admitted later that it may not have happened at all otherwise. David did not make a great first impression; he looked like a wild animal, with dirty, matted, lice-infested hair that had not been cut or washed. He smelled so badly that even repeated baths didn’t wash away the stench that would last for weeks. Wearing badly tattered clothing that needed to be returned for another child, his only form of communication was to scream, and he was very good at that.
“It’s going to take time, Carla”.
Bruce’s phone call from the airport was more than a quick update on his travel status. It was his careful attempt to prepare me for the journey ahead, to alert me to the reality that our dream of a joyful-airport-union-followed-by-a-happily-ever-after-life just wasn’t going to happen.
To be continued…..
As word spread about the desperate plight of these little ones, Americans responded en mass, with attorneys, caseworkers, and judges scrambling to find homes for this otherwise lost generation of children.
We were among the first wave of families seeking to adopt, and with the laws being written as we went (or so it seemed), we enlisted the help of a Christian Romanian man living in Oregon to help us navigate through the good, the bad and the ugly.
Still struggling to find her way, Romania remained an unstable country when Bruce’s plane landed in Bucharest in late May of 1991.
Arriving overnight, the airport terminal was dank and dimly lit. Only a few random ceiling lights illuminated its interior and with the sight of armed military police patrolling the lobby, it cast an ominous feeling. In his journal, he noted that he felt like he was entering a war zone.
Bruce was happy to have the company of his brother as his traveling companion, as I stayed back home to keep the household running while he was gone. This was his first trip to Romania, but it would not be his last. After 8 months of planning for it, the time had come to bring our little boy home.
It almost didn’t happen.
Two weeks before his scheduled departure, we received word that our 'first David', the dear little one whose picture we had posted on our refrigerator door, this sweet child we’d already called son and for whom we'd been praying, had suddenly become unavailable for adoption. His grandfather refused to relinquish his parental rights, so we were left with two choices: end our pursuit right then and there, or press on to Romania and take whatever child we were given.
After much prayer and wise counsel from trusted advisors, we elected to move forward and watch God work. We reasoned that since we had no choice with our biological children, we’d trust God to choose our adopted one as well. We’ve said many times since that it was divine grace that Bruce never met David until after we adopted him.
From a human perspective, David was randomly pulled from the stack of files our Romanian attorney had been given. To this day, we cannot say with complete confidence that he actually is who his paperwork says he is. Nonetheless, whomever he may have been is no longer who he is today, and he isn’t part of our family because a lawyer chose him.
God did.
Trust me when I say I needed to cling heavily to that truth many times during the early years. There were multiple reasons why David never should’ve been released to be adopted, let alone leave the country, but he was and he did. Believing that God divinely appointed this little guy to join our family is the only explanation for how it all happened, and it's a truth that sustained us through many tears.
The day Bruce and David met for the first time they were already legally linked as father and son and it was a good thing, because Bruce admitted later that it may not have happened at all otherwise. David did not make a great first impression; he looked like a wild animal, with dirty, matted, lice-infested hair that had not been cut or washed. He smelled so badly that even repeated baths didn’t wash away the stench that would last for weeks. Wearing badly tattered clothing that needed to be returned for another child, his only form of communication was to scream, and he was very good at that.
“It’s going to take time, Carla”.
Bruce’s phone call from the airport was more than a quick update on his travel status. It was his careful attempt to prepare me for the journey ahead, to alert me to the reality that our dream of a joyful-airport-union-followed-by-a-happily-ever-after-life just wasn’t going to happen.
To be continued…..
