Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir Read Online Free
Author: Lorilyn Roberts
mortality. What would my life be like in ten years? What did I really, really want?
My desire to be a mother remained unfulfilled. No amount of involvement with children at church had quenched my desire and longing to have children of my own. I believed that if God was who He said He was in the Bible, there was no hope, no want no desire, and no dream that was so big that God wasn’t bigger still.
Now I sat in a restaurant as different in culture from America as the East is from the West. In Romans 8:37, Paul writes that “...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
Would Manisha be willing to love and accept me? I was probably the least likely person to adopt a child as a single woman. It would have been hard to find a person more insecure than I was just a few years earlier. I had spent a lifetime believing Satan’s lies that I was no good, that I would never amount to anything, that God didn’t love me, and that I was unlovable. Unwanted memories would flood my mind, stirring up buried emotions.
I would later meet Manisha in a dingy, dirty motel room halfway around the world. I would bring her out of filth, depravity, and hopelessness for a better life in a new country. She would be given full citizenship and the rights of every other American. She would leave her country of birth for a better place.
Had God not done the same for me? Had He not purchased me with Jesus’ shed blood? Did I not long for a better place, an inheritance, where there would be no more pain, sickness, or death? Where my adoption papers were already sealed, waiting for the moment when, as portrayed in Revelation, Jesus would break the seal and open the scroll?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
That God chose me, as weak as I am spiritually and mentally, to go to Nepal and adopt a daughter and later adopt a child from Vietnam, is a testament to His faithfulness and unconditional love. I always thought I would have to do something or give up something or suffer something that in my own strength I would cry out, “No, God. I will do anything but that.” I had to lay my life down before God could give it back to me.
The rich young ruler was unwilling.
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21).
Was it my dream to be a mother that took me to Nepal or was it God’s plan for me to adopt Manisha? This side of eternity, I may never know completely, but when I met my daughter for the first time, I knew I was standing on holy ground. Lest I get ahead of myself, night was falling and I needed to return to the Bleu Hotel. I gave what I learned later was a humongous gift for a tip and proceeded on my way.
As I departed, my waiter was immensely pleased, beaming and inviting me to return anytime. Even in his broken English, sign language, and Nepali, it came through clearly that I had made him a rich man, at least for one evening.
Chapter Three
There is a time for everything
Ecclesiastes 3:1
There was so much to do and so little time. If God had made a day to be twenty-five hours long, I could have filled that extra hour up with something. When a woman gets pregnant, she has nine months to prepare for her new bundle of joy. I only had two months.
Our U.S. international adoption laws were never written for the faint of heart. Not only did I have to meet the U.S. international requirements, I had to meet Nepal’s requirements as well. Each country has its own set of documentation that must be filled out, submitted, and approved.
I had to fill out an application for an I-600 Petition that permits a person to classify an orphan as an immediate relative, allowing the adoptive parents to bring the child into the country. I had to complete a notarized affidavit of support and provide a copy of
My desire to be a mother remained unfulfilled. No amount of involvement with children at church had quenched my desire and longing to have children of my own. I believed that if God was who He said He was in the Bible, there was no hope, no want no desire, and no dream that was so big that God wasn’t bigger still.
Now I sat in a restaurant as different in culture from America as the East is from the West. In Romans 8:37, Paul writes that “...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
Would Manisha be willing to love and accept me? I was probably the least likely person to adopt a child as a single woman. It would have been hard to find a person more insecure than I was just a few years earlier. I had spent a lifetime believing Satan’s lies that I was no good, that I would never amount to anything, that God didn’t love me, and that I was unlovable. Unwanted memories would flood my mind, stirring up buried emotions.
I would later meet Manisha in a dingy, dirty motel room halfway around the world. I would bring her out of filth, depravity, and hopelessness for a better life in a new country. She would be given full citizenship and the rights of every other American. She would leave her country of birth for a better place.
Had God not done the same for me? Had He not purchased me with Jesus’ shed blood? Did I not long for a better place, an inheritance, where there would be no more pain, sickness, or death? Where my adoption papers were already sealed, waiting for the moment when, as portrayed in Revelation, Jesus would break the seal and open the scroll?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
That God chose me, as weak as I am spiritually and mentally, to go to Nepal and adopt a daughter and later adopt a child from Vietnam, is a testament to His faithfulness and unconditional love. I always thought I would have to do something or give up something or suffer something that in my own strength I would cry out, “No, God. I will do anything but that.” I had to lay my life down before God could give it back to me.
The rich young ruler was unwilling.
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Mark 10:21).
Was it my dream to be a mother that took me to Nepal or was it God’s plan for me to adopt Manisha? This side of eternity, I may never know completely, but when I met my daughter for the first time, I knew I was standing on holy ground. Lest I get ahead of myself, night was falling and I needed to return to the Bleu Hotel. I gave what I learned later was a humongous gift for a tip and proceeded on my way.
As I departed, my waiter was immensely pleased, beaming and inviting me to return anytime. Even in his broken English, sign language, and Nepali, it came through clearly that I had made him a rich man, at least for one evening.
Chapter Three
There is a time for everything
Ecclesiastes 3:1
There was so much to do and so little time. If God had made a day to be twenty-five hours long, I could have filled that extra hour up with something. When a woman gets pregnant, she has nine months to prepare for her new bundle of joy. I only had two months.
Our U.S. international adoption laws were never written for the faint of heart. Not only did I have to meet the U.S. international requirements, I had to meet Nepal’s requirements as well. Each country has its own set of documentation that must be filled out, submitted, and approved.
I had to fill out an application for an I-600 Petition that permits a person to classify an orphan as an immediate relative, allowing the adoptive parents to bring the child into the country. I had to complete a notarized affidavit of support and provide a copy of
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