Kim Green - Finding Home: Walking Surrendered Through Terminal Cancer and Failed Adoption

Finding Home

Walking Surrendered
Through Terminal Cancer
and Failed Adoption

KIM GREEN

NASHVILLE

NEW YORKLONDONMELBOURNEVANCOUVER

Finding Home

Walking Surrendered Through Terminal Cancer and Failed Adoption

2020 Kim Green

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing. Morgan James is a trademark of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

ISBN 9781642798043 case laminate

ISBN 9781642798050 eBook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019949873

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Rachel Lopez

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Interior Design by:

Chris Treccani

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To you, Jodie, Jackson, and Noel! May God be glorified through your stories on finding your ways home.

I m deeply grateful to my Author relations manager, Tiffany Gibson, and the entire publishing team at Morgan James for helping me get this story in the hands of the readers. Your passion for the written word shines brightly!

Many thanks also to my wonderful editor Angie Kiesling and her team for their patience and fine editing suggestions.

And special thanks to my husband, friends and family who gave me the encouragement and time needed to write.

I t was December 26, 2014, when our extended family gathered to celebrate Christmas. Ben, our twelve kids, my mom and dad, Jodie and her two kids were present. Jodie had been cancer free for six months since a small tumor was last removed and fifteen months since she finished chemo and radiation after her initial small cell cervical cancer diagnosis in April 2013. The previous month of that year, she had begun having a lot of pain and peeing on herself. After ultrasounds, exams, and ultimately a PET scan, the oncologist told her that she had stage four small cell cervical cancer. Its a cancer so rare that little is known about it, let alone how to treat it and certainly not how to beat it.

I was in the room with my mom and Jodie with the cross of Christ hanging on the wall behind the doctor as she said these words: I cant cure this, but we can try to slow it down. Ive never been physically punched in the gut, but those words made me feel that I had. I couldnt breathe. None of us could. How? Why? Jodie was only thirty-eight. She was a single mom with two kids. And how, with the cross hanging above her head, could the doctor say that there was no hope?! With Christ, there is always hope! I was so angry... and sad... and scared at what lay ahead.

After what turned out to be her last family Christmas dinner, we were playing games and Jodie poured herself a glass of Coke. I texted my other sisterwho was out of statethat if I ever saw Jodie again with a glass of Coke, I was going to pour it over her head! Had she learned nothing? Cancer loves sugar. Despite my inward temper tantrum, we enjoyed a great Christmas together.

Later that evening after we both returned to our own homes, Jodie texted me that she had been doing a personal exam and found something that didnt look right. As we chatted, I told her, Weird is better than cancer. I think in her heart though, she knew it was back. Four days later, she felt a big gush and started bleeding again. The day after that, a CAT scan confirmed that cancer was once again ravaging her body. This time skinnier, weaker, and more deflated of the hope that once stood boldly inside her, she would begin the fight again with recommended chemotherapy.

* * * * * *

Jodie had wanted to write a book about her fight with cancer. She was never very good at school, nor did she enjoy it, so between the fear of not being good enough and being exhausted all the time, she never wrote the book on her heart. The closest thing she last came to writing anything was an adoption reference letter. Right before she was diagnosed for the third time in December 2014, Ben and I announced that we were going to adopt two little boys in Tanzania, our fifteenth and sixteenth children. We knew when we said yes to adopting them that there was going to be a bumpy road ahead of us; what we didnt know was how closely Jodies journey to her heavenly home and the hope of the boys journey to a home in America would intertwine.

This is that story.

Please note that the names of the people on the Tanzanian side of this story have been changed so that the authenticity of the story could be told without unintended personal harm. Integrity in all things is something we hold dear. Changing the names allowed the story to be told in its fullness.

L et me introduce myself. Im Kim, daughter of the Most High God, wife for over two decades to an amazing man named Ben, and momma to sixteen kids. Yes, you read that right! Ben and my honeymoon fairy tale plans of a white picket fence, two incomes, and three to four biological blond-haired and blue-eyed children... well, God laughed at that. Im sure He even patted my head and thought, You are so cute Kim, but I have FAR more than that for you .

A year after we were married, my husband and I set out to create a family the old-fashioned way. Ben wanted three kids. I wanted four. We both grew up the oldest of three kids and each had two younger sisters. We had a lot of fun trying, but after a year, I still wasnt pregnant. Several doctor visits later, we were told we were infertile and the chance of us conceiving a biological child was pretty much zero. For several days, I cried my eyes out. I hadnt lost a baby through miscarriage, but it felt like I had lost all four of my hypothetical future children in some sort of horrific plane crash. I was devastated. Ben was numb.

Nine months went by of grasping at a few straws of fruitless infertility treatments and investigating domestic adoption. Neither felt right. Then, one day out of the blue, I asked Ben, What about Korean adoption? I had researched it and several other international countries extensively, ready for every rebuttal that he could throw at me. But he had none. We had unity for the first time since God told us no to biological children.

Well, those nine months of coming to the unity of saying yes to Gods plan became a very fertile spiritual womb! Benjamin came home from Korea at five months old in April 2000. Kya came home from Korea at five months old in September 2001. After Kya, God spoke very clearly to me these words: Not just the lost sheep, but the broken ones too. Before I had become a mom, I was a special education teacher. It seemed very fitting and we were very quickly drawn to a little boy with special needs who became our Parker. He came home a day shy of his second birthday in November 2002. In February 2004, McKenna, also with special needs, joined our family from Korea at eleven months old. Eli, with a few more special needs, made his appearance in our family in February 2005. By all accounts, I had just had five babies in less than five years! I told you I became very fertile... supernaturally so!