The Loud and Messy House by Carole Towriss
I have four wacky, zany children. They are 18, 13, 11 and 11, and share not a shred of DNA among them. I’m thankful for that.
Perhaps I should explain.
We spent eight years trying to get pregnant. We finally did. Emma, our oldest, was born on Christmas Eve after ten years of marriage and a lot of medical intervention. She is in her freshman year of college earning her BFA in photography.
We tried a couple times after that, but it didn’t work. We thought about adoption, but my husband was reluctant. He wasn’t sure he could love someone else’s baby like he could his own. But like they say: a woman becomes a mom when she gets pregnant; a man becomes a father when he sees the baby. We went to Bosnia on a humanitarian mission a few years later. An orphanage filled with babies, toddlers and children whom no one could ever adopt changed his mind. We came home and started filling out paperwork.
We eventually adopted three children from Kazakhstan. The first was three months old when we got her. He admits he still wondered about it on the plane trip over. We drove an hour outside of the capital to a tiny snow-covered building, and waited in the director’s office while they went to get the baby. When they brought her out, she was wrapped in so many blankets we could only see her dark eyes and nose. He says as soon as he saw her face, all his questions just “went away.” They weren’t even answered—they just went away. We went back eighteen months later and brought home a seven-month-old girl and a six-month-old boy.
Our house is loud and messy and sometimes out of control. But for that I am grateful. Because I remember the times I stood crying in the shower begging God for a baby. We wanted six kids when we got married. Had God answered our prayers, they all be grown and gone by now. Instead, we have this mix-and-match collection that fills our home with love and laughter, and yes, sometimes fights and crying. But He also brought three children to us that otherwise likely would never have heard the name of Jesus. What He could do with that in the future, only He knows. For now, I just try to enjoy it, and be thankful every day for my incredible family.
Bio:Carole Towriss grew up in beautiful San Diego, California. Now she and her husband live just north of Washington, DC. In between making tacos and telling her four children to pick up their shoes for the third time, she reads, watches chick flicks, writes and waits for summertime to return to the beach. Her first novel, In the Shadow of Sinai, released November 1. You can find her at www.CaroleTowriss.com.
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