Sunday, January 5, 2020 -
Today is my daughter Victoria’s 33rd birthday, and how she became our daughter is one of God’s amazing miracles, one which Kathie enjoys repeating often.
You see, Victoria is William’s natural born sister. William had been adopted as an infant after his birth mother brought him to an attorney in Guatemala who did foreign adoptions. He was slowly starving to death, completely emaciated at a month old, and weighing around 3 pounds, having only sugar-water to eat because his birth mom could not produce breast milk and formula was not available. William could not even take a bottle of milk at the time because milk is thicker than water and water is all he had for 1 ½ months. So a foster family force-fed him ground-up solid food, pushing it with their fingers down his throat as his only nourishment, hoping to nurse him back to health. He obviously survived, and we were able to pick up a very happy and healthy baby at 4 months old to the day and bring him home a few days later. By this time he was drinking from a bottle.
But 13 months later, on January 1, 1987, Kathie called the attorney in Guatemala, explaining that unless we were able to adopt another child, poor William would be spoiled rotten! Mrs. Morales replied that she doubted that would be possible at all because she had a list of 300 couples who had no children at all waiting to adopt. We were extremely heartbroken.
However, a mere seven days later, exactly one week, Kathie gets a call from Mrs. Morales in Guatemala. She says, “Kathie, William’s got a baby sister, would you like to have her?” Of course Kathie screamed YES, and Mrs. Morales told her she’d just been born and needed a name for the birth certificate. And so Kathie excitedly yells, “We have a baby daughter! Would you like to name her Maria Carol or Victoria Lee?” I said Victoria Lee, and three months later the three of us were able to fly to Guatemala to pick up our new baby girl. William kept saying, “My baby, Mommie, my baby.”
Mrs. Morales told us of the miraculous way she was forced to offer Victoria to us first for adoption. Because the next couple on her list to adopt was a couple in France. Well, as it happens, part of the requirements of the Guatemalan government is that the adoptive families send photographs that represent the child’s new life on a periodic basis for the Office of the Family to review. It turns out, though, somehow William’s birth mother had seen those photos of William, his home, and his family, and when she gave birth to Victoria just 13 months after William, she was adamant that this new child must go to the very same young couple who took the little boy!
It is unheard of for siblings to be adopted by the same family unless they are adopted simultaneously, we found out. But God had a plan mankind could not thwart. And we are grateful for our daughter Victoria. Happy Birthday, our 33-year old miracle daughter! We still love you just as much today as January 5, 1987!