A Grandma’s Joy

It is Thanksgiving time 2009. I am sitting in church holding my first grandson, Aidan, on my lap, with tears streaming down my face as we are singing “How great is our God”. I am reminded how faithful God is. He is a generational God.

When I was 29 years old, I had a face off with cancer. Because I am now telling you this story, you know who won. That battle, however, left me unable to bear children. Although we already had a son, my husband and I decided that we would adopt more children and as our hope was to have a family of three children. This was the time of the Vietnam War during which many refugees came to the USA. We put the word out that we were looking to adopt a child. One of the persons involved in placing Vietnamese children called us because he had a couple who preferred to have their child adopted into an Asian family and we were the only Asian family he knew. Would we take this child? Of course we would. James was born in September 1975 and became ours.

A few years later, we wanted a daughter. By that time, the Asian countries stopped allowing their children to be adopted out of their native land. To find another Asian child would be difficult and would take perhaps 5 years, so we were told. We submitted our application and settled in for the wait. Within 30 days, we got a call asking us if we would like to adopt a Korean girl age 2 ½ . She was brought to the USA before Korea closed its doors to foreign adoptions. The adopting mother had fallen very ill and would not be able to care for her so she was to be placed again. The former family had two young boys like we had so the agency thought we would be the perfect match. Within a week we had a new daughter. This young girl grew up and married, and now is the mother of Aidan, my grandson sitting on my lap.

When I was 29, the joy of being a grandmother was not even on my radar screen. Intellectually I figured it would happen one day far into the future with no inkling of the joy that came with it. The enemy tried to steal a grandmother’s joy from me but God had it in store for me. He kept his word that “he makes the barren woman a mother of many children” and his blessings will be for a thousand generations.