Today’s guest blogger is the Reverend Denise Tracy who is the president of the Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders (CERL) and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister. She has consulted with the Alban Institute and is active in many local social justice causes. However, her greatest joy came from the first meeting of each of her children. Here is her story:

I have traveled to:

•  Egypt, where I climbed one of the small sister pyramids and did Tai Chi as the sun rose and the moon set,
• Israel, where hidden in waving grasses of Capernaum, the foundation of an ancient church hid in the meadow,
• Delphi, where the mist rose as we climbed and temples appeared and disappeared in a hush of mystery.

But of all the mountains I have climbed and countries I have visited, I have found unending joy in the meetings of the three creatures who became my children.

Our first child was born in Thailand and we had to wait two and half years to travel to fetch her.  Our gestation was longer than that of a whale. When we went into the adoption agency to meet her for the first time, after years of pictures and reports, they led us down a flight of stairs, and there she was, dark hair shining, playing with a set of plastic vegetables, placing them on a pink plate ready to feed her baby doll. I stood on the stairs, quietly, viewing the child that I had waited so impatiently to meet. I realized in that moment that for this I had hungered my entire life.  I was to be her mother.  When I sat next to her and she climbed into my lap, I breathed in her hair, my spirit rejoiced. When she turned the crank on the little music box that played “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and I began to sing to her, her eyes opened wide and she hugged me, I thought I would never again feel such joy.

Our second child was waiting for us in a crippled children’s home. She was 14. Hands, feet and legs crippled by DDT ingested by her field worker mother.   Beautiful face and the report said adaptive skills- excellent.  We went to Thailand to meet her and bring her home.  She had 600 brothers and sisters, in the orphanage that had been her home for 12 years. When we arrived at the Crippled Children’s home, all 600 children were gathered in the courtyard to see the people who were taking their sister away to America. 600 children. Some were missing arms, legs, faces. Some were lying on little wheeled platforms, using stumps of arms to support themselves. Crutches, wheel chairs, all varieties of handicaps. When we entered the doorway, all of the children rose as high as they could, if they could and each one bowed to us, showing us tender respect. We were adopting one of their family, giving a home to their sister. I started to cry. Our daughter stepped into the courtyard across from us and shyly walked toward us, as the other children bowed and watched. When our daughter reached us, she placed her hands together and bowed. We bowed in return. Love abounds. Alleluia!

Our third child was a relative’s child. The mother was a crack addict and prostitute, who had given birth to a crack addicted baby boy.  She failed drug tests and lost custody. We received a call asking if we would like to adopt him.  We said yes and asked if we could meet him, before making the final commitment. We put our daughters on the school bus and drove three hours to meet this13 month old boy.  We played with him, fed him green beans. He was woefully behind developmentally. Hardly crawling, no words, hands crunched into fists because of the cocaine in his system.  He was all blond hair and blue eyes…After three hours the social worker was to take him back to his foster placement. As she reached for him, he shrugged her off, grabbed my husband’s pant leg, pulled himself to almost standing, let go with one hand, reached up, looked at my husband and said in a voice clear as a bell, “DaDa”.  In the silence our tears fell. “Looks like he is yours.” And he was. Whoopee!

The moments of meeting our children are those minutes that imprinted in me a sense of unending wonder and joy.  When they were teenagers or when we were called to school for some disciplinary issue or when we were creating some plan for each of them to overcome their unique handicaps (for they all were considered special needs), I would remember the moment of meeting, that wellspring of wonder and my heart would ease.

There is so much to be happy about. But true joy sits quietly in the heart and waits until the weight of the world can be born no more. Then it quietly rises like the light of the sun at dawn.  Joy appears from the corners of our lives and heals us and gives us hope.

There is so much to be happy about. But true joy sits quietly in the heart and waits until the weight of the world can be born no more. Then it quietly rises like the light of the sun at dawn.  Joy appears from the corners of our lives and heals us and gives us hope.