Focus on the Family

Jim Daly: Hi, I'm Jim Daly. We're getting ready to celebrate 50 years of ministry at Focus on the Family, but the celebration wouldn't be complete without hearing from you. Maybe Focus helped you survive the toddler years, navigate the teen years, or reminded you that you're not alone. If God has used this ministry to encourage you, we'd love to hear your story. Call now to share it with us at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Guest (Female): This program is sponsored by Focus on the Family, a listener-supported ministry helping families thrive in Christ.

John Fuller: This is John Fuller and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs, on a podcast, app, or website. Today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, you're going to hear about God's redemptive work through adoption. Thanks for joining us.

Jim Daly: John, the one thing here at Focus on the Family that we want to be about is helping families to do the best job they can do in their marriage, in their parenting. That also means then those families that have adopted or are doing foster care. They have really unique challenges as well.

Today, we're going to spend time talking about how the Lord is using you in that context or maybe how He wants to use you in that context of foster care or adoption. You and I have both done a portion of that, John. Jean and I fostered for about 15 years. In fact, we're about to swoop in with our Tennessee foster kids, who are now eight years older or 10 years older than when we had them at our home, and we're going to take them on a little vacation together. So we're still involved with many of those kids.

John Fuller: That's really fun to see because you didn't plan that. No, we're like the new grandparents. That's awesome. And of course, we adopted back in the early 2000s, and that remains a very interesting, always, always interesting journey for us.

Jim Daly: And there are so many benefits that come from that. It is what the Lord calls us to do and to consider. We are adopted into His family. It's been not always an easy journey. It takes some unique loving on these kids because they're coming from such brokenness many times. So we're going to discuss that today and tomorrow, actually, and give you some of the insights just in case the Lord might be nudging you.

John Fuller: We have a great panel of guests today. We have Lisa C. Qualls, Jody Jackson Tucker, and Betsy Kilstra. Together, from very different perspectives and different experiences, they've written a terrific book called *Healing for Every Heart in Adoption: Redemptive Prayers and Strategies for Adoptive Parents, Adoptees, and Birth Parents*. It's a terrific resource and you can find out more about our guests and this book and all the help we have here at the ministry at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Ladies, welcome to Focus on the Family. Good to have you. There can be a diverse range of experiences surrounding adoption. I think I've heard those stories and John, you have too. But these wounds are often going to be a factor. It is not because of a flaw in those adoptive parents; these kids are coming in with great needs.

I can remember filling out the foster form. It is: are you able and willing to have a child in your home that is a head-banger, a food hoarder? There isn't a normal box to check because most of these kids are trying to cope somehow with their environment. So in that regard, what does research show about child development that explains these wounds that adoption is both causing and helping?

Lisa C. Qualls: Well, we know from research that the bond between the mother and the baby begins prenatally. It's already happening. They're already experiencing their mother's movements and her voice, and she begins to experience the baby as well because the baby is moving. There's this beautiful communication that they experience together that's very special and very sacred.

And so when a baby is born, they are looking for that mother, for her voice, they're looking for her touch. So if a baby is separated from their mother, even just shortly after birth, that is a trauma. Change in primary caregiver is a trauma. When we're talking about children in foster care, they have often been with their parents for a period of time and they've experienced a wide range of things, probably neglect, abuse, things like that. So there are significant wounds that happen with abandonment and sometimes a sense of rejection. Why would someone give me away?

Jim Daly: It makes me a little uncomfortable that way because with our Wait No More program, we're encouraging parents to adopt and think about adoption, but we're talking about acknowledging the wounds that can be caused by adoption. Why is naming those wounds so important?

Jody Jackson Tucker: I think it's important for our families and for our children that we recognize that for adoption to be possible, a loss has taken place for the child. Now, many adopted children do beautifully, grow up and do amazing things, and are incredible overcomers, but we still need to acknowledge that God's design was not for a family to be broken. He has a redemptive story in adoption, but in God's perfect design, the family remains together. And so we need to acknowledge that loss if we're going to move towards a redemption story.

Jim Daly: Betsy, you're the adopted person. So in that context, I think going back, it was a few years ago that you were in that situation, but those feelings of something's not quite right—speak to the hope people affected by adoption can have in healing through Christ.

Betsy Kilstra: I think what you said, the feeling that something's not quite right, has many faces. It has many pieces to it: many fears, anger, rejection, shame, so much. And yet we have a God of redemption who begins very early, if we are in a Christian home, to restore that brokenness that we were all just talking about.

And so many things happened for me. I was two months when I was adopted and I remember the first six years as being pretty peaceful. But I had an experience of two little neighbor children saying to me one day, "Well, your parents are not your real parents. You don't have any real parents. We have real parents." It was like all of a sudden something that was deep, deep inside just came to the surface with this wham-mo kind of feeling and kind of knocked me off my pathway.

It began to bring to the surface the feelings of abandonment, loneliness, separation. I'm different in some kind of bad way. I remember the first time I heard that He knit you together in your mother's womb. It wasn't this random egg and sperm that came together that was meaningless and chaotic. It was God's hand was on me even before I appeared.

And as those things came, they began to fill that dark place in my soul. But this was also there. It was like a war was going on inside of me because I felt the depth of that abandonment and that brokenness, but I was also hearing God's word and God's truth. And I guess the abandonment was like a stomach ulcer. Sometimes it was just oozing and not too painful, and other times it was bleeding and it felt just like I don't know if I can stand this pain.

Jim Daly: In that context though, you're in a good environment, you're in a Christian home. This is why Christians should be involved. But even with all that, buckets of identity and love and trust, you still had doubts and you still had those sense of shame, I would imagine.

Betsy Kilstra: I still had doubts. And I think if I could say one thing to the adoptive parents is that the issues are not yours. That you can pour so much love, pour scripture, pour everything you have into a child, but that child still has to struggle with that basic feeling of loss, that basic feeling of abandonment. And that's parents, you need to release yourself from all that weight of "I haven't done enough, I haven't done it well enough," and just face the fact that your child has to go through that struggle.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and today we're talking about healing from the wounds of adoption. Our guests are Lisa C. Qualls, Jody Jackson Tucker, and Betsy Kilstra. And the book is called *Healing for Every Heart in Adoption: Redemptive Prayers and Strategies for Adoptive Parents, Adoptees, and Birth Parents*. Get a copy of the book from us here when you stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jody, I think one of your adopted children struggled. It was a college story I think you had in the book about ongoing abandonment issues despite having a Christian foundation in the home. Tell us about that.

Jody Jackson Tucker: Yes, our daughter was older when she was adopted and she is a lovely child. She was an excellent student and we had a close relationship, or so I felt. And it was just such a gift being her parents. When it came time for her to go to college, our relationship started to struggle. And even each year around the time that she would leave for college, things would get very difficult.

It actually took her three years of college to admit to me one day on the drive there—it was about two hours from our home—it makes me emotional to think that she went through this. She was worried that we would never come back and pick her up. The dorm actually reminded her of the orphanage that she grew up in. Because of some things that had happened to her in her childhood and experiences that she had had, it had deposited that fear of abandonment in her soul.

So while there was no evidence that we would ever just leave her there, that was a struggle that she had to overcome. I was so grateful when she finally shared that with me so that we could make the extra effort to remind her, of course we're coming back, this is when we're coming back, we will always come back for you. Jesus said that to His disciples, "I will not leave you as orphans," and there's a beautiful scripture in Psalm 27 that says, "Though my mother and father abandon me, the Lord will care for me." I was already an adoptive mom when I heard that scripture and I just thought that is so magnificent and that's what I need to be telling my children. No matter what they went through, no matter what any of us goes through, Jesus was always there. He was always there in those moments, even when we felt lost and abandoned.

Jim Daly: And it's such a normal thing to feel when you're abandoned, to feel abandoned. I mean, that's completely normal and all those things that can happen. But we're not really alone. No, we're not, but it feels that way. So it's tough and just acknowledging that for that child and being able to talk that through—this is probably why you're feeling that way, but we're going to be here for you—man, what a great message that had to be and that sense of security that she had after that, even with lingering doubts. Maybe they won't show up, right? But it gets lesser and lesser. Lisa, let me ask you as a birth mother, you dealt with a lot of emotional wounds. Tell us about your story and what happened for you.

Lisa C. Qualls: I became pregnant sort of in this era between maternity homes and a lot of young women keeping their babies. And so my parents did not know what to do and they ended up putting me in foster care, which is sort of stunning. I think they had really no idea what they were doing, but they put me in foster care and I was removed from everybody I knew and loved and moved from a small town to a big city. And it was I felt very, very deeply abandoned.

Jim Daly: Let me just clarify that for the listener, the viewer. Again, you're 17 and pregnant?

Lisa C. Qualls: I was a little younger.

Jim Daly: A teen pregnancy. And your parents got advice that the best option here would be to put you into foster care, which you know that just kind of is amazing when we think about it today. It was like move the problem outside of your home. I mean, did you ever come back to reconcile that with your parents?

Lisa C. Qualls: Yes, we have reconciled over the years. The Lord has done so much healing. I think it took me a long time to realize that, honestly, I think they were trying to protect me. They were removing me far away from my boyfriend, for one, moving me out of our community, and protecting themselves a little bit too. There was a lot of shame there.

Jim Daly: Well, that's true. And you had the child and you put the child up for adoption.

Lisa C. Qualls: Yes, not because I wanted to, but because I had truly no other option. Even my foster mother was told she could not offer to help me.

Jim Daly: Under that banner of grief and loss, how did you cope with that decision? I mean, this is big.

Lisa C. Qualls: It was very, very big. The only thing that got me through was the Lord. I was not a believer when I became pregnant and I came to know Jesus. I kept hearing more about Him. I kind of thought my foster mother and her friends were a little strange because they were really, really into Jesus. But I feel like the Lord captured me. I think the Holy Spirit was preparing my heart.

But it wasn't until I was actually in labor and the most profoundly alone that I'd ever been in my life and so desperate. I was scared, I was in pain, my foster mother was sleeping, and I cried out to the Lord and I just said, "I can't do this alone." I feel like I was truly lost and then found. I felt the presence of the Lord with me. It was powerful and it changed my life forever, all eternity and future generations. So I'm very, very grateful for God showing up so powerfully for me.

Jim Daly: So for that teen girl who's pregnant right now, she may be listening, may not, but her mom might be listening. What advice would you give both of them?

Lisa C. Qualls: I would say if I were that mom, I would surround my daughter with so much love and so much support. No mother should be separated from her baby out of desperation. No mother should be abandoned. So I think whenever possible, we help that young mother parent her baby. I always think to myself, I lost my son because of my age and my youth. And you know what? I overcame that because I got older. I just needed some help right then to have been able to parent my son. But sometimes circumstances don't allow that and then I think in that case, we need to be prepared for the grief and be ready to support her through it.

Jim Daly: Again, a question I'm sure people are wanting me to ask is did you ever connect with your son?

Lisa C. Qualls: I did. He found me when he was 16. And we had, I would say, a fairly rocky reunion because he was young and his parents were not prepared for it. I wasn't quite prepared yet either. It was definitely the longing of my heart to know my son again. But he also didn't know his story. He had no idea why I had given him up for adoption. It was very healing for him to learn that I loved him so much and that I never, never forgot him. It was also great for him to learn his heritage and so it was beautiful. He also reunited with his birth father.

Jim Daly: Betsy, in the book you share prayers for healing. What are the key parts of those prayers to heal a broken heart?

Betsy Kilstra: Well, there's repentance of what has gone wrong and how we've responded wrong. There is forgiveness because so much forgiveness is needed, including forgiveness of ourselves. And there's also a place to just release the heaviness and the burdens that we've carried to the Lord. And so those are essential parts of the prayer.

Jim Daly: I think just generally for all three of you to give a perspective on this. All of this is gradation. What I mean by that is some children will respond well with a light, loving touch that have come out of this situation. I feel like I was in that spot. I didn't really own my dad's bad decisions. I never felt like that was my fault that he and my mother divorced.

And of course my mom died when I was nine, my dad when I was 11. I ended up in foster care—not a very good, positive foster experience. But there was something in me that really put the blame in the right place. I never felt like I owned it as a child. I just thank the Lord for that grace. How does an adult in that child's life help them get there so that they're not feeling all the guilt and the "sins of your fathers" and that kind of thing? What do you say? What do you do?

Jody Jackson Tucker: I think this is a central theme that all of us have come to in our journey, which is the most important thing we need to communicate in our families is an identity in Christ. As an adoptive mom, I was very focused on am I doing enough to make sure my children feel their cultural identity, the identity of their birth family, letting them feel that connection, making sure they felt connected to our family, to their new family.

But ultimately, Jim, at the end of the day, we've all come to realize it's that identity in Christ that is the central healing issue. That's why all three of us, I think, are so focused in our respective ministries on this idea of healing. We've all gone through therapy, we've all read books, we've all listened to wonderful Focus on the Family materials and podcasts and all the fantastic things that you all provide. But in the end, it's being with Jesus, rooting our identity in Him that is the most significant. That's where the healing ultimately comes.

Jim Daly: Would you say that that can be a progressive kind of thing where you're getting healthier day by day? And then other people might have that experience where it just hits them, where it's a monumental moment. Is that a fair description?

Betsy Kilstra: Could I bring in a monumental moment that I had? And I of course I was in the context of a Christian family, but when I was about nine, it was Easter. We were in a little town and we all went to the football field and we had an Easter sunrise service. I just asked my parents would it be heart—all right if I just walked home?

Well, this was 1950 and it was safe to walk three blocks for a little child. And so they said, "Sure honey, oatmeal will be ready when you get back." And I was walking along and all of a sudden, superimposed on the neighborhood scene, was this picture of Jesus on the cross. He looked at me with tears in His eyes and just said, "I did this for you and I love you so much."

I just had this overwhelming sense of belonging to Him and that He knew right where I was in my little neighborhood. It just began to let me know that not only was I think that I was learning to know Him, but that He already knew me. The whole thing of being taught that He knew me from the foundation of the world just hit. It's like it was a life-changing moment. I felt received, I felt understood, I felt loved. I just felt like Jesus, you're really there for me. There's a lot I don't understand, there's a lot I struggle with, but you're there for me. And that was a turning point in my life.

Jim Daly: That is beautifully said. I think that's it. The scripture says that He's a father to the fatherless. There's something about the Lord's heart for people in that spot, the parents and the children. Lisa, I'm thinking of you and that teenager who's pregnant and scared. What do I do? Now I'm being shipped off to a foster family to hide my thing, my sin. I mean just powerful, but the Lord's in it all. And He wants to heal our hearts and that's what's so central.

Jody Jackson Tucker: I wore this necklace today. I had a similar experience. I was at my lowest point as an adoptive mom because of the brokenness and challenges with my children. And I found myself in a very dark, low place spiritually. And then one day I actually was in a very dark, low place physically. I was swimming underwater and I was deep in the water.

In that moment, I just cried out to God. I said, "Lord, you have to heal me. I cannot continue to live with my heart this broken. Either take me now, take me home with you, or heal me." When the Lord was speaking through Ezekiel, He said, "I will take your heart of stone and I will give you a heart of flesh." And in that moment, I felt the Lord reach toward me and heal my heart.

As I came up out of the water, I knew I was starting on a healing journey. So I had that moment like you described, Jim, and like Betsy and Lisa have both described, that were the turning point. When I came up out of the water, I encountered this lady who was selling these necklaces that she makes. This is a stone heart and it's covered with the tree of life. There's no way that I could not believe that that was a wink from God that He had taken my stone heart, but He was putting the tree of life over it and that our family could thrive in the future and that we could bring fruit. I was so excited when you said a key moment because I still needed a lot of support, I still went through a lot of counseling, there was a lot that still needed to heal, but that was the moment where I realized helping people heal needs to be the central message of what we do.

Jim Daly: Oh, that is so good and unfortunately we've got to land here. But let's come back next time, continue the discussion, and learn more about loving these kids, loving these moms, and really doing what we need to do to be the body of Christ. Can we do that? All right, let's do it.

This has been such a moving conversation and I hope you've been encouraged today and that you feel empowered to pursue the healing that Christ offers for your entire family. As I mentioned earlier, we help foster and adoptive families thrive in Christ through Wait No More. It's a wonderful program. John will tell you where to find that link in a minute.

I also want to recommend that you get a copy of the book *Healing for Every Heart in Adoption*. When you make a gift of any amount to Focus on the Family, we'll send it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. We are a nonprofit ministry, and so everything you donate goes right back into helping others. If you aren't called to foster care but still want to support foster families, you can help meet their needs by partnering with us in ministry. Last year we helped 480,000 families who were engaged in some way with foster care. Maybe they are the foster parent or they're providing respite care, that wrap-around family, or somehow they're engaged at a church, etc. But that's a big number and we want to continue to encourage people to get engaged. You can do that through Wait No More and with your help we can make that number even bigger next year.

John Fuller: Find resources, ways to plug in, donate, and get a copy of the book when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY, or stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Plan to be with us again next time as we continue the conversation with our guests and once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.