Woodland Park: The Graham Posts

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Let me tell you about a Sunday morning when Sandy and I learned we would become parents to someone else’s child.

I hope you’re sitting down because this could take awhile. It’s far more than an adoption story, but I’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s start here.

When it was finally in our power to do so, we named our child “Graham” (after Billy Graham) but the poor lad had to answer to several others. Gra-Gra. Gravy Train. Graham Cracker. Grambo. Bubby. But in the beginning he was simply, in the eyes of the court, “Baby Boy N___________.”

Permit me to give you some background: I wanted five kids – four girls and one ruggedly handsome, rough-and-tumble boy. That dream, however, came to a crashing halt when I was twenty-one. Because of a spinal injury I sustained in college I learned I would more than likely not be able to impregnate my future wife.

Technically speaking, I’m a complete paraplegic, the break of my spine happened at the 7th and 8th vertebrae, thoracic level. Draw a line completely around your torso, just above the middle of the back, and you get the idea as to where all my sensation ends. Everything below that line does not function normally. Sayonara, male potency.

The day I learned this I looked over at my mother. “Well, Mom,” I offered, “I guess you’re going to have to settle for an adopted blue-eyed, blonde-haired granddaughter.”

I remember how her face softened into a tender, doting, couldn’t-be-prouder ‘mom-face’ and how her eyes twinkled when she said, “Oh, I’d love an adopted granddaughter!” She might’ve even clapped, I don’t fully recall.

So when I heard that impossibly young voice say into the phone eight years later, “Congratulations, Dad, you have a son,” my heart, I must confess, gave a momentary whimper. I was pulling for a girl. Now, don’t you just hate me?

But wait, I’ve gotten way ahead of myself and need to back up a few city blocks. I married my college sweetheart, my best friend, and the most selfless person I’ve ever known. Sandy knew everything about me already, so she walked into our marriage with eyes wide, w i d e open.

She knew about catheters, pressure sores, bowel programs, ramps, wheelchairs, dysreflexia, and, of course, impotence. Sandy married me knowing there was a very real chance we’d be childless.

But we prayed. And prayed. Then prayed for six and a half more years.

Fertility clinics. Tests. More tests. Even more disappointments.

Sorry, Mr. Mitchell, you’re less than a man (what I heard, not what they said).

Still we tried. And failed. Then we turned to adoption agencies. We need your hard-earned moolah up front. All of it, if you please. Home studies. A baby abandoned at the hospital. Hope.

Oh, sorry…somebody else got to it first. A teen-aged girl is thinking about giving her child up…nope, the grandparents are going to adopt, sorry…

Hope-less.

So we prayed, and prayed some more. For years.

One Sunday morning in August I awakened to a pretty cool gig for a young preacher. Only twenty-eight, I was going to fill in for a well-known pastor at one of Chattanooga’s largest churches. It was a pretty big deal for me to be there, not to mention given both crowded morning services.

I can’t even recall the sermons I preached that day, but what happened in between those services is easily remembered. A tearful conversation between Sandy and a young woman changed our lives forever.

In between the morning services Sandy and I were asked to share our stories with a large group of single young adults. Our story is a really romantic tale which only deepens with time, and we love to talk about it.

Following our tag team sharing the moderator opened the floor for questions. Among those in the group that morning was a pregnant 17-year old, and as Sandy and I bantered, God was already beginning to write an epic story on her heart. And ours.

She said what?!?

I edged my wheelchair closer to the edge of the platform, completely caught off guard when I saw Sandy standing on the bottom step, unabashedly crying.

Oh no. What’s this? Did I say something wrong? When I left her, she was speaking with a young girl. Did I offend the poor girl somehow?

Sandy climbed up another step. I inched closer. I could see her eyes weren’t just damp, they were shimmering pools.

“Did you see that girl I was talking to just now?”

Her stage whisper seemed strained. I nodded carefully, dread and fear seizing me. She choked back a sob.

“Do you know what she told me?”

Here it comes. Steady, heart, steady.

“She said…she said…”

Her head dropped as she collected herself. Oh, dear Jesus…

“She told me she wants us to have…to have…(more soft sobs)…she said she wants us to have her baby!”

It was right then the dam burst in Sandy’s soul and the floodwaters got free. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.

God bless that petite young vessel with the large blue eyes for being the answer to our prayers. God used an obedient stranger to interrupt the narrative of our lives and, on a single Sunday morning, flipped the script on our roller-coaster razor-thin hopes.

Our blessing with a cute round belly was 17-years old and seven months pregnant. She’d been eyeing another couple for her baby’s placement but couldn’t get a fixed peace in her spirit. She heard one thing in our Q&A and all of a sudden she knew why.

As our time with the young adults drew to a close, someone asked us about children. I thought the inquirer wanted to know if children’s ministry was included in our calling. I said no.

“No,” she pressed, “I mean, do you yourselves have any children?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I answered, slightly embarrassed. “No, unfortunately, we don’t have children…”

Sandy broke in. “But if you’d like to know if we want children…Oh yes! We’ve been praying for over six years and we’re still hoping for a miracle –”

My handlers were already coming through the doors and moving in my direction so that would have to be the final question. Someone prayed a quick benediction and hands gripped my chair’s push handles while another cleared a path. I turned toward Sandy and started to mouth something when I noticed a young lady who was obviously pregnant swoop in and pull my wife aside.

In very short order I’d be exchanging one very puzzled look for quite another when my wife met me at the bottom steps of a church platform on a Sunday morning when everything changed.