Dani's Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love Read Online Free Page A

baby from China. The wife and I talked about it frequently. She already knew that I was interested in adoption but that Bernie was reluctant. Maybe she thought it was something that would be easier to do with another couple. I talked to Bernie about it, and he said that if we adopted, there were probably plenty of kids in Florida who needed a home. That “if” gave me hope, and I sensed that he was softening.
     
    Our church had a retreat center on the beach, and if it wasn’t being used by the church or rented out to another group, the pastor invited the Florida Baptist Children’s Home to bring out some of its children for the weekend. It was such a fun thing for them and a break in their routine; they got to swim in the ocean, play on the beach. The retreat has a kitchen and a dorm and is very simple.
     
    When the kids from the home were there for a weekend, families from the church would send out food for them, so that when the kids got there, everything was taken care of. Usually, we’d just drive the food over and drop it off, but Steven volunteered to go and teach the kids to skim board. He is really good at it, and lots of those kids had never been to the ocean, much less on a skim board. Steven ended up staying all day and had a blast, but I noticed that he was really quiet on the drive home.
     
    That night at dinner, Steven talked about how sad it was, all of those great kids without families, and how he wished he could take them home with him. I think Bernie was really touched by these kind words coming out of the mouth of a teenager! I could see tears in his eyes and sensed another stone being laid on his path.
     
    I didn’t want to push it, but I couldn’t resist a nudge every now and then. With all of the four older boys except Steven moved out and his exit right around the corner, I pointed out to Bernie how quiet it was getting around the house. That didn’t seem to bother him a bit, although when I added that Steven’s departure would leave Willie an only child for at least the next decade, it hit a nerve, as Bernie remembered the loneliness of having no siblings.
     
    Not long afterward, we were visiting with the preacher and his wife after church, and she filled us in on their adoption quest. As we walked away, Bernie turned and looked at me and asked, “Do you still want to adopt a child?” I couldn’t believe it. I searched his face to see if he was serious. He took me by the shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said he was ready.
     
    So, I was ready, he was ready, and Willie loved the idea of having a brother or a sister closer to his age whom he could play with.
     
    We may have been ready, but we had a lot to learn. Knowing how many children are in the world waiting for adoption, lots of people think that once you decide to adopt, you call an agency and children start arriving on your doorstep. In Miami-Dade County alone, there were about four hundred boys and four hundred girls ready and available to be adopted. In one county! That didn’t count the kids in foster care who, for various reasons, were not available for adoption.
     
    We did it all backward. First, we searched for a child, then we found out that we couldn’t even be considered for adoption until we had our Home Study done by an agency and completed our MAPP (Model Approach to Partnership & Parenting) classes.
     
    We wanted to move quickly—and I didn’t want to give Bernie too much time or a reason to change his mind—so we went through a private agency to have our Home Study done. If we had gone through the county, it could have taken two or three years; instead, we paid $1,200 to have it done privately, and it took about three months.
     
    While we were waiting for the Home Study to be done, we started our MAPP classes, ten weeks of weekly classes. People get discouraged because they don’t want to wait three years, they don’t have $1,200, or they have a hard time fitting in the MAPP classes. It is hard, and it