Stahlke Adoption

Our Story Goes Public

Last fall, Darlene of LSS-New England visited Chicago to attend a LAN conference--the Lutheran Adoption Network, which is a group of Lutheran social work agencies and organizations. Darlene received a big award and was featured as a speaker. Before her talk, she met all seven of us for breakfast. While we had spoken with her by phone countless times, it was our first time to meet her in person. She was wonderful with the kids, and we had a great time with her. When we drove her back to the hotel, right before her speech, several of her colleagues were hanging out, hoping to catch a glimpse of the kids. She had been talking about us, and later we found out it wasn't just informally, but also in the text of her speech.

LAN picked up our story from this contact and put it on their website (which I've given in a previous post). They also contacted the Lutheran Witness, which is the national magazine for laypeople of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (analogous to the Lutheran in the ELCA). On March 16, one of the Lutheran Witness editors flew to Chicago for the day to interview us. Paula Ross was so warm and inviting with us and the children that it took away my anxieties about being interviewed. She and Chicago photographer Jamie Wier, who is a personal friend of ours, were great people with whom to work.

We had planned to surprise Jonathan's family, who have been LCMS members and clergy for generations, by having them receive their May copy of the Lutheran Witness in the mail and open it to see us. But just days ago, Paula called to ask us if we'd speak this morning for a Lutheran radio show in St. Louis. We waited until this morning, hoping the Lutheran Witness would arrive in the Austin mailboxes. When we hadn't heard, we had to scrap the surprise angle, because we wanted to give the family the chance to hear us on the radio.

Jonathan and I met in the phonathon room at Concordia, in the basement of a men's dormitory. Luckily, since the sememster is over, it was very quiet. We each had a separate telephone and telephone line on opposite ends of the room, and we worked out a signal system (raise your hand to speak, point at the other person to pass). At 9:00 am, our phones each rang to get set up, and five minutes later we were on the air live. I was nervous (Jonathan is the public speaker, while my strengths are more in writing), but we've answered a lot of questions about the adoption over the last many years, and so we prayed about it and then just dove in. The twenty-five minutes seemed to fly by until suddenly the closing music came on to signal the time to wrap up.

I hope that telling our story gives other people the courage to consider adoption, if that is the path they feel called to take. It's been a great blessing for us, and the joys have outbalanced the fears.

A trailer for the Lutheran Witness article can be found at:
lcms.org/pages/witness.asp
The article is titled "Full House, Full Hearts."
FYI, the photo on the home page was taken on August 18, 2005, just minutes after we became a family and also on our fifteenth wedding anniversary.

I've been told that the radio show will be archived, probably by tomorrow:
kfuo.org
You may have to install some media software on your computer to hear it, but I did so this afternoon, and it didn't take too long.

posted by Stahlkes @ 1:40 PM