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THE PERFECT ADOPTION #24
FROM RUSSIA, WITH
LOVE
It’s one of the most beautiful ironies in the Christian faith. When you
finally learn that badness isn’t going to make you forfeit your salvation,
or get you kicked out of God’s family . . . only THEN does badness and
rebellion begin to fade away.
I think it’s safe to say, if you ask Donny and Karey
Taylor, that sometimes God gives you a whole lot more than you ever bargained
for. You talk about “Be careful what you pray for — you just might get
it”? This couple got married back in 1983; he was in med school, she was
a nurse. Soon four kids came along: Audrey, Shannon, Michael, and then
Elsie. Four years later Michael, who was now 7, began complaining about
his female-dominated life, and that he wanted a little brother. Karey
had always been interested in adopting anyway — she had once joked to
her mom about wanting 25 kids — and so she and Donny began looking into
it.
In January, 1998, after pursuing some orphans-from-Russia possibilities,
they finally got a brother for Michael: an infant Vietnamese boy they
named Isaac. So now there were five, although Michael still complained,
tongue in cheek, that baby Isaac wasn’t much good on a Kawasaki motorcycle;
he was too little to really play with. So the Russia Project began to
revive itself; an agency that worked with Russian children stayed in touch
with them. There was a little boy that badly needed a home; were the Taylors
interested?
Well, with five kids already now, they were afraid they might not have
enough rubles to pull it off, but they said, sure, send us pictures. And
they soon got a photograph of 9-year-old Sergey, but there was a catch.
The kid had siblings. How many of them? The agency kind of coughed and
hemmed and hawed before admitting that this boy had five brothers and
sisters. Wouldn’t Donny and Karey Taylor have a lot of fun adopting all
six of them? Po-zhal’-u-stra? Please please please?
Well, long story short, that’s exactly what this incredible couple did.
The story was recently told in a marvelous article by Bill Knott, one
of the editors of our denomination’s paper, the Adventist Review. These
kids were all holed up in an orphanage 12 hours east of Moscow, and they
needed one kind family willing to take the whole half dozen. It really
needed to be all or nothing.
After a lot of prayer, the Taylors decided to go for it. But the package
deal carried a $45,000 price tag; that’s what all the fees and red tape
were going to cost. Donny was an M.D., but not with that kind of spare
change floating around — especially with five kids already. And he said
to Karey: “We can only do this if God drops at least 25 grand in our laps.”
Exactly one week later, his tax accountant called and said, “Guess what?
Uncle Sam is giving you back fifteen thousand.” That was half a miracle
right there, and when the adoption agency heard about it, its board of
directors offered to charge fees for just one child, not six. That took
care of the other ten grand and the deal was closed just like that.
So in October of that same year, 1998, Donny and Karey flew to Moscow
to pick up Victoria, age 5, Anya, 7, Sergey, 9, Svetlana, 11, Alex, 13,
and Nickolay, 15. In one eye-blink, this Christian couple from Calhoun,
Georgia were one kid short from reliving the classic story, Cheaper By
the Dozen. Speaking of cheaper, they had to completely remodel their house,
adding extra bedrooms, bathrooms, second family room, and more laundry
facilities. Karey was cranking out three hots a day, times thirteen. And
six children who didn’t speak a single word of English had to get on a
crash course of not only picking up a different language, but also learning
how to live in this new, wonderful, exasperating, difficult abundant world.
In a way, this wonderful success story is a microcosm of what we’ve explored
together here on the radio these five weeks. We’ve called this project
THE PERFECT ADOPTION, and the Word of God tells us that we’re even more
blessed than these six immigrant children. God has given us a home with
Him. He’s given us His name. He provides for us. He guarantees our future.
And then . . . what happens? What happens in our lives? How secure can
we be in this new home? Can we know that the KGB won’t come and take us
away?
Author Bill Knott, in telling the story, relates very frankly some of
the challenges the Taylor family had. The six kids from Russia got here
just in time for Thanksgiving, and of course, they had no clue what that
was all about. Then when Christmas came, Karey and Donny excitedly gave
their new children nice gifts: bicycles and clothes and goodies. And the
six kids from Kazan just kind of sat there with blank looks on their faces.
They didn’t “get it.” They simply couldn’t comprehend this kind of generosity.
As time went by, there were discipline problems. The newcomers didn’t
know much about respecting property rights. They didn’t know how to share.
They didn’t know how to keep an orderly bedroom. In Russian you’d call
the resulting chaos smerch, or “The Tornado.” Which led to “The Chart,”
a big daily schedule which dictated what you did and where you did it.
But all this assimilation took time. Growing up to be a Taylor didn’t
happen overnight.
Karey and Donny, strong born-again Christians, wanted for sure to impart
their faith to the six new family members . . . and especially to the
two teenagers, who might not be living at home with them for too many
years. They took the kids to church. They had family worship. They had
all the Christian books lying around the house. They were doing some home-schooling,
and religious materials became a part of that routine. But this dedicated
couple soon learned that their faith could be offered, but not force-fed.
“Our only job is to offer it to them,” said Karey later. “It’s their option
to choose it.”
Here’s the lesson for us today, friend. Victoria, Anya, Sergey, Svetlana,
Alex, and Nickolay were adopted. They became part of the Taylor family.
They got the name, the home, the place at the supper table, the citizenship,
everything. That was given to them. When they were good, they had it.
When they messed up, they had it. When they had a good attitude, they
had it. When they lapsed into a bad attitude, they had it. It was an irrevocable
gift. They were true sons and daughters. And within the security of that
knowledge, that permanent gift, that assurance, their knowing that badness
would not cause them to forfeit adoption, the badness began to fade away.
Sometimes Christians debate this business of assurance, and what we sometimes
call “cheap grace.” And we worry: if people discover that their bad deeds
don’t cause them to be thrown out of the family, won’t they casually and
constantly commit bad deeds? Will “sin abound,” as it says in Romans 5:20?
We’ve been reading through a lot of web sites dealing with this specific
question of assurance. How important is it for the adopted child in God’s
family to know that he or she is safe there while he learns to share his
toys and sweep the kitchen floor and get along with his siblings? A site
located at “withchrist.org” has an essay entitled “Acceptance With God,”
and the writer says this:
“If you judge God’s attitude toward you according to
your day-to-day condition, you are never going to be absolutely sure that
He accepts you, if at all.”
He follows with a discussion of “condition vs. POSITION.”
Our position is that we are adopted! We are God’s children! He loves us
as much as He loves His own Son! “With God, position is everything,” the
writer says. And as the paper moves to the question of assurance of salvation,
he makes this thought-provoking assertion:
“To the extent that your assurance of salvation wavers,
your Christian experience will be crippled. It is much the same,” he adds,
“in the realm of the human family. A child may hear a rumor that he was
adopted, and may begin to doubt that his parents are his real father and
mother. He thereby loses his ‘assurance’; he is no longer sure of his
position in the family. This can have a devastating effect upon a child.
How strengthening and assuring it is when one is sure of his parentage!”
The late Dr. Richard Nies, who wrote a superb booklet
entitled The Assurance of Salvation, once asked whether his wife’s perfect,
unconditional love for him tempted him to abuse the privilege, to sin
against her, to ignore and disdain her love. “Absolutely not!” he protested.
“It is that very love, the steadfast assurance I have in my relationship
with her, that would make me ashamed to do such a thing.”
That’s what assurance and adoption do for us, friend. Late one night,
after a day filled with smerch and emotional tornadoes, Dr. Taylor got
out of bed and went into the living room. Should he and Karey quit this
challenging mess? Throw in the towel? Cancel the deal? Something prompted
him to open up his Bible study quarterly, and his eyes fell on this text:
Jeremiah 29:11:
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the
Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope
AND a future.’”
And Dad relaxed. He went back to sleep, determined
not to quit, knowing that HIS Dad in heaven never would either.
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