Adoption a journey of faith

Keene Sentinel, November 15, 2008

Just after 7 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 6, 2006, a baby was born in western Louisiana. The tiny bracelet around the child's wrist listed his weight as 6 pounds, 7 ounces. But the bracelet did not give the boy's name.

He didn't have one, yet.

Forty-eight hours later, Craig and Elizabeth Waterman of Rindge received a phone call. "You've been matched."

For the Watermans, the ringing phone was the culmination of a difficult journey - one they couldn't have made it through without their faith. For the Watermans, it was their Quaker beliefs that provided them the courage and guidance to find their son Elijah.

The decision to adopt

Although Elizabeth suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes the body to create "auto-antibodies" that attack healthy cells and tissues, she still planned on having children.

Though the lupus didn't directly prevent the Watermans from conceiving, it was ravaging Elizabeth's kidneys. To prevent damage, she was required to take a medication that would harm a growing fetus.

The hope, Craig explained, was to wait until Elizabeth could stop taking the medication and then try to get pregnant. At the time, Craig was 33 and Elizabeth was 34.

In December 2004 the Watermans had a meeting with one of the their doctors, and the results were clear: Having a child, biologically, was not an option.

The news came as a blow to them both, but especially to Elizabeth. "I was picturing pregnancy and the birth process and really didn't want to give that up. I was never one of those people who said they wanted to adopt," she said.

Craig took the news slightly better. Many of his co-workers at the Jaffrey Grade School had adopted. In an effort to learn more about the adoption process, Elizabeth and Craig had dinner with a family that had adopted a child from China.

Watching Craig interacting with the child, Elizabeth said, "A door was opened."

Both Craig and Elizabeth began to feel "called" to adopt.

"When we finally decided to adopt, I felt the baby very close by, like he was waiting to come to us," said Elizabeth.

The long road to adoption

In February 2005, Craig and Elizabeth were working at The Meeting School in Rindge, a coed boarding high school that embraces a Quaker philosophy and is led by a Quaker board of directors.

Each February the school closes for intersession, a time when students are required to leave the campus to pursue hands-on projects such as working, travel or volunteering. Faculty members use that time to rest and reflect, Elizabeth said.

The Watermans used the time to pray and talk about adoption.

"We went into the month with (adoption) not on the horizon, but by the end of it we had started the process," Elizabeth said.

During their intersession the Watermans chose Wide Horizons adoption agency and began filling out the paperwork, providing background information and completing the required interviews and home studies.

"We thought of adopting from China first, but I really didn't want to give up the newborn stage," Elizabeth said.

So the Watermans chose a domestic adoption, which would allow them to adopt a child still in infancy. But it also meant grappling with some new issues. Couples going through a domestic adoption must be open in terms of race and health.

The Watermans were willing.

In late September 2005, Craig and Elizabeth received news that a woman in Springfield, Mass., had selected them as the family for her unborn child.

The Watermans were thrilled. They decorated the baby's room and met the new mother and her family.

"We got the call in October that she was going into labor and we grabbed our bags and headed to the hospital," Elizabeth said.

But almost immediately the attending social worker noticed a red flag: The biological mother wanted to nurse the child.

For two days the Watermans waited in Springfield, visiting the mother and baby. Then they received the news: The mother had chosen to keep her child.

"To say we were destroyed might be too dramatic, but it was in that scale," Craig said.

"It felt like maybe it was too much to ask someone to give up their child. It didn't feel like it was really ever going to happen," said Elizabeth.

Neither Elizabeth nor Craig felt ready to draw a large spiritual lesson from the experience. For both, it was a dark time that seemed to last forever.

Part of worship at the Meeting School is the practice of sitting in silence.

"I could feel the baby sitting on my chest. I couldn't experience anything in the silence except that the baby wasn't there," Elizabeth said.

Social workers sympathetic to the Watermans' situation tried to help. There was a baby in Arizona with sickle cell anemia. There was a child addicted to methadone in Connecticut. There was a drug-addicted child whose mother had psychological issues.

"We would do research and ask ourselves, 'Are we up for this?' " Craig said.

"Every time it breaks your heart, but you come back to faith. You have to trust that there is a place for that baby, that there's a home for each of those children," said Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, the baby room in the Watermans' home sat cold and unused. And every time the phone rang, the Watermans would rush to answer it. "You keep thinking that could be the social worker," Elizabeth said. "That could be your baby."

By January 2006 the roller coaster of emotions that the adoption process had become was beginning to take its toll. The Watermans decided they needed a break.

"I needed to do something good that wasn't all about obsessing about the baby," said Elizabeth.

Craig's mother, Betsy Waters, a pastor at Marlborough Congregational Church in Marlborough, Mass., was leading a group to New Orleans to help with the rebuilding efforts following Hurricane Katrina. The plan was for the group to stay with an affiliated church in New Orleans, The Church of the Good Shepherd.

The Watermans volunteered to lead a group of students and join Waters.

Elijah

On Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2006, while packing for that Saturday's fight to New Orleans, Elizabeth and Craig received unexpected news. "The social worker said, 'We have a baby boy. He's healthy. But he's in Louisiana. How fast can you get there?', " Elizabeth said.

The timing was perfect. By that Friday, the Watermans were driving a rented car to western Louisiana, near the Texas border.

Craig and Elizabeth arrived at the appointed hotel just before dinner. "The social worker came with this baby and says, 'Here you go.' She didn't even check our ID. It was surreal," said Craig.

On the following Wednesday the Watermans reconnected with Craig's mother and The Meeting School students.

Stepping out of the car into a section of New Orleans where musicians had helped rebuild the homes - painting them all different colors, turquoise and pink - the same social worker informed the Watermans that the birth mother had signed the paperwork.

They now had a son and they named him Elijah.

"It was this amazing intersection of hope, and the story of New Orleans and Elijah," Elizabeth said.

The Watermans - now a threesome - spent the next month in the care of members of The Church of the Good Shepherd in New Orleans.

"We didn't know when we could leave. So the congregation took us in. They fed us. Gave us a baby shower. We ended up living in a FEMA trailer on a man's lawn," said Craig, who likened the experience to that of Mary and Joseph.

"We had this new baby. We had to sleep on the floor and rely on other people's hospitality. We were in a place we didn't know," he said.

Looking back on it all

Both Craig and Elizabeth agree the adoption process tore them down spiritually so they could be "regrown."

"I really didn't think everything was going to be okay. It was a time we had to say, 'Your will, God - not mine,' " Elizabeth said.

"Getting that low is intensely spiritual because there is nothing you can do to get yourself out of it," Craig agreed.

And adoption, Craig added, begins with a tragedy. "It's really weird. You are essentially waiting for something bad to happen to someone else."

Faith, Elizabeth added, allowed "me to hold that thought and our love for Elijah at the same time. Life is a combination of tragedy and glory. Those two things are happening at the same time."

"The logistics of how we found Elijah make a great story of inevitability, but there's more to him than that, his personality fits us perfectly," Elizabeth said.

Both Elizabeth and Craig describe Elijah as a verbal extrovert, who loves to explore the world around him. "I love sports and so does he," Craig said. At 21 months, Elijah loves playing basketball and riding a bike with his father.

"We've just been amazed that already he is showing strongly his own preferences - what he likes and doesn't like," Elizabeth said.