Adoption

P. S. Unimaginable Gifts

by Katie Schuermann

I promised in my last post on IVF that I would write more about the unexpected, unimaginable gifts God has given to me in my barren marriage.

First, please understand that this post is not to be read as one, big brag. Nope, this is a “go and tell what He has done” kind of sharing, so please do not compare your own days and vocations with my own. Remember, I am recounting some of God’s unexpected, unimaginable gifts to me in my barrenness, so they are going to be personal and specific to my own existence.

Second, as you celebrate with me, remember that this post does not serve as a promise that God also will give you the same kinds of blessings. This post is simply a blog-psalm, and I am inviting you to sing it with me.

Third, this is not an exhaustive list of gifts, for my finite brain cannot recall all of God’s infinite blessings over the years. (Isn’t that in itself marvelous? to be so blessed amidst trials and tribulations as not to be able to recount all of the blessings?) Though I do hope this list encourages you to consider waiting on the Lord when it comes to receiving the gift of children rather than trying to give yourself children through IVF. For surely He blesses, regardless of the size of our families.

Now that we are clear on the purpose of this post, here are some of the unexpected, unimaginable gifts God has given to me while also withholding the gift of children from my womb:

+ Because I have no children of my own to keep alive from minute to minute, my eyes and hands are free to attend to other people’s children. This means that I am able to make full eye contact with one child at a time and often for longer periods of time than their own mothers. Which also means that the bond between us forms fast and strong. I then nurture that bond over time with music and stories and catechesis and laughter and tears and long conversations and shared experiences. The result? Often, I am a child’s favorite person in the world (or so that child believes in the moment), and I am rarely in a room with that child for long without also receiving the full force of their attention and affection. This is true of hundreds of children — God be praised! (Dear, hardworking mothers, I know that my freedom in life to pour this kind of attention onto your child/ren is a gift, and I do not take this gift lightly. I see you. I am in awe of the ways you die to self every day for the sake of these children who love me. The distribution of affection is not fair, and I thank you for your grace and mercy in sharing your children with me. xo)

+ Whenever I walk out my door, the precious neighbor girl across the street wants to be with me in my yard rather than with her family in her own. I repeatedly have to remind her to ask her parents’ permission before vacating her own home.

+ Children sometimes ask to have their birthday parties at my house instead of their own.

+ I was blessed to spend six months of my life caring for another neighbor’s infant during the majority of her daylight hours. I helped form her brain and her culture and her sense of being through stories and songs and affection while her mommy worked. I was blessed to teach that infant to sleep peacefully in my house, and that was an exercise in trust I thought I would never experience in this life with a baby.

+ Over the years, I’ve driven a niece, a nephew, and a godson to their first days of school as well as picked them up at the end of the day. Their mommies let me be present for these formative experiences, bonding me further to their children.

+ Children often tell me that they wish I was their mom. What they mean is, “I love being with you right now and want it to last as long as possible.” They just don’t have the words, yet.

+ A young boy staying in my home with his family went on to write the following words for a school assignment: “I like the touch of her house because it is like ours … Her house is wonderful.” A young girl visiting my house was silent the entire visit until just before she left. She stopped short of my front door and, without turning to look at me, said, “Your house is both colorful and comfortable. I like to hear you sing.” And yet another little girl calls my guest room “her” room. I cherish the opportunity to be a home-away-from-home to children from all across the world.

+ Michael and I have been blessed to open our home for weeks at a time to sojourning teens in need of rest from trauma in their own homes. This is a kind of formation that supports families and helps them stay together during their weakest seasons, and I am continually stunned how God takes my empty nursery and fills it with other peoples’ children, working my barrenness for their good as well as my own.

+ I’ve been invited to witness the wedding dress shopping of two daughters in the faith. I thought I would miss out on these kinds of experiences in life, but …

+ Another dear daughter in the faith is wearing my wedding dress down the aisle of her own wedding and …

+ Yet another precious daughter in the faith wore a necklace on her wedding day that I gave her. I didn’t know she was going to do that until I showed up at the wedding. These mother-daughter exchanges are small, giant experiences in the heart of a barren woman.

+ On Mother’s Day, I receive more cards and gifts than actual mothers. This is not fair, I know, but I am always deeply moved and comforted to be remembered and appreciated by so many.

+ My own table is filled with the most wonderful, intelligent, gracious graduate students, international students, and sojourners on Thanksgiving and Christmas. This means that their own parents do not get to enjoy their children on these feast days. The loss experienced by these parents at the expense of my gain is something that moves me to prayer every holiday.

+ Thus far, I’ve been blessed to teach eight children to recite the Athanasian Creed from memory, an accomplishment that is always months in the making with each individual child. So much time spent contemplating the faith with any child results in the most extraordinary conversations, memories, and relational trust, and those relationships continue to bear joyous fruit in my daily life.

+ In my own home, I’ve been awakened by two different sick children on two different nights in need of my special attention (read: clean up all the vomit) as well as administered insulin to a sleeping Type I diabetic teen whose blood sugar was spiking. I thank God for these opportunities to 1) give their mommies a break, and 2) to be a mommy in the night for the briefest of spells.

+ Grown-up children in the faith “come home” to me for entire weekends simply to eat my cooking and tell me all the things.

+ I get to be the first one to hear about the first date experiences of so many other mothers’ daughters.

+ After years of teaching Sunday school children to sing their first hymns, I have hordes of hymns memorized. And so do they.

+ I can get practically any baby to fall asleep in my arms at any time. It is because I am special. God gave me a mother-like bosom, but I never smell like mother’s milk. That, and the vibration of my humming carries with it the promise of music in their dreams. But seriously, the real reason is that God is merciful to me in my barrenness. He blesses me in this little, substantial way.

+ In my barrenness, I have written and published eleven books (twelve if you count second editions) in fifteen years. It is the absence of children in my home that enables such an output, and I know it. I grieve it, but I also rejoice in it. It’s complicated.

+ Another one of my neighbors spent over a year of her life crossing the street to enter my front door and write her doctoral thesis beside me. Just because.

+ Instead of setting money aside for our wished-for children’s college educations, my husband and I get the honor of passing that money directly on to other peoples’ children now, specifically to seminarians and missionaries and church building funds and service organizations and whomever and wherever God needs it.

+ I have the time and availability to sit with women whose mothers are absent or have died, and I get to listen to them like a mother. Repeatedly.

I could go on and on and on … Isn’t that wondrous? Isn’t God merciful?

But I’ll end for now with this.

Michael and I have the joy of being a father and a mother in this life, not through pregnancy as we prayed, not through adoption as we hoped, and not through foster care as we tried, but through the simple yet extraordinary means of attending a church, of living on Clark Street, of working as a pastor and a writer, and of being fatherly and motherly to the people God sends our way. It is the most unexpected of blessings, the most unimaginable of joys!

We are barren but blessed. Truly, our cup overflows!

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #9

by Katie Schuermann

To this day, I am barren and resting in the Lord’s will.

Does it surprise you to learn that I have no regrets in resting in the Lord’s will all of these years, even though I have no children?

In fact, I not only have no regrets, I also rejoice in my life! For in waiting on the Lord to give or to withhold the gift of children from me, I have received unexpected, unimaginable blessings from His hand.

I would like to repeat for clarity’s sake: I have received unexpected, unimaginable blessings from God’s hand, not from my own, and the goodness of being on the receiving end of the Creator’s gifts is a joy that is deep and mysterious and difficult for me to express. Still, I keep trying to find words to articulate this profound mystery, for if I remain silent, others may misunderstand that, in my decision not to try to produce my own children through IVF, I am somehow left childless, joyless, comfortless, and purposeless in life.

So let me try to explain it again.

It is good to be a creature. It is restful to have a Creator.

To be a creature with a Creator — to live out my days in a prayerful, expectant posture of receiving gifts from the Creator — means that I get to receive good gifts from God, whatever those gifts may be. I may plead for one gift in particular (read: children), but even not being given children is a receiving of sorts. For in this case, I am receiving from God my Father the gift of “no,” and this gift disciplines me, teaches me, sanctifies me, chastens me, forms me, grows me, and conditions me to look to Him, to pray to Him, to cry out to Him, to wait on Him, to trust in Him, to receive from Him, and, yes, to delight in Him and in what He gives.

Don’t get me wrong. It hurts to be childless, and so I wrestle with God. But as I beat my fists against His chest and rage against His powerful withholding, He succeeds in freeing me from being a slave to my own wishes and desires. In making me childless, He literally breaks the bonds that hold me captive to my own passions, and then He reaches for me and bids me, weary and heavy laden, to come to Him and rest.

God reorders my affections in barrenness, and in doing so, He restores me to Himself.

Which means, in my barrenness, I find rest in the Lord.

How can I fully express the relief that comes, not in being barren but in being made barren? For in laying the cross of barrenness upon my shoulders, God actually relieves me of the heavy burden of producing children for myself. Put another way, since giving children is God’s work, then it is not for me to give them to myself. I simply abide in His giving and withholding, and in looking to the work of His hands rather than my own for value and vocation in this life, I rest from my laboring.

And while I rest, He blesses me.

He blesses me, not with children but with unexpected, unimaginable gifts.

Are you ready to be scandalized?

I would not trade those unexpected, unimaginable gifts from God for any child I might try to make with my own hands.

Why? Because it is so very good to be a creature. God said so in the Garden of Eden, and He continues to prove it to me and to you over and over again in this present age.

Still unclear?

Then I probably need to describe to you some of those unexpected, unimaginable gifts given to me by God in my barrenness. They will blow your mind.

But I’ll leave that for another post.

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.

Reasons We Never Used IVF – #8

by Katie Schuermann

$30,000.00 is the average cost of one fresh IVF cycle.

However, because the average success rate of births associated with IVF is so low, a couple can expect to pay for more than one cycle before achieving a live birth.

The Global Fertility Network explains, “Despite per–cycle savings, be aware that the average total cost to achieve a live birth can range from $30,000 to $63,000+, as multiple cycles (with a median of two in younger patients and three in older patients or those with highly complex infertility cases requiring sophisticated strategies and more medical services to resolve them) [are] often required.”1

My pastor-husband’s salary was not designed to stretch far enough to accommodate even one fresh cycle, so we passed on IVF.

But our budget’s restrictions aside, our consciences were burdened at the thought of purchasing a vocation, especially one that God Himself was actively withholding from us. The more we thought and prayed about it, the more clear it became that our money would be best served supporting the people already born and living — our neighbors — that God was putting directly in our path rather than devoting so much money to trying to produce new neighbors.

  1. https://ovu.com/fertility-insights/ivf-costs-in-the-usa-2026-a-complete-guide-to-pricing-insurance-financing ↩︎

If your conscience is burdened because you used IVF, know that you are not alone in your regrets. The apostle Paul teaches us in his letter to the Romans that “none is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10). He also writes that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Please, talk to your pastor or a trusted Christian friend about your regrets, and put your faith in Jesus’ words from the cross about His work of salvation on our behalf: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Because of Christ’s mercy, we can live our lives looking backward in repentance yet forward in hope.

Holding On and Letting Go

by Kristi Leckband

For so many years, I held onto the hope that God would grow our family of two into a family of many. In His time, He did. We waited four years into our marriage for Joanna to arrive. We then waited seven LONG years for the Lord to add Maria. Two months later, Josiah joined the family. I held onto each of those three children as tightly as I could. I knew that I was not entitled to have them. I did not deserve children. Rather, each of them was a gift from the Lord, and that knowledge was not lost on me.

Fast forward a number of years. Our firstborn goes to college eleven hours away. She marries a wonderful young man. This marriage, though, means she is moving away from me permanently. That’s a really good thing that God has given her — a husband. That last hug, as we parted ways, was one of the hardest times of my life. For so long, I had prayed for this child. She was my firstborn. She was going home with someone else, someone whom God brought into her life. I would no longer be the one she’d come to when she needed comfort. That honor now went to her husband. I held onto my little girl for a really long time.

After twenty-three years in one place, our lives took a slight turn. We packed up and moved to become part of a young classical Lutheran school. The younger two children were now enrolled in our classical school. They were away from me for about eight hours, five days a week. That meant I had to let them go. I had been homeschooling for over twenty years. Again, that was really hard.

And yet, I still get to hold each of them. They are a part of me. They have given me some of the most special memories of my life. I hold onto those days. I also need to let my children go. For you see, Joanna, Maria, and Josiah were never really mine. They were on loan to me from the Lord. They were His children first. In His mercy, He gave these three children to me. They are gifts. Gifts.

I count it pure joy to take care of these precious gifts of God. They need a mom and dad to love them, care for them, and teach them the ways of the Lord. I do hold on to them because they are important to me. They were given into my family by God. While I will not have the privilege of holding their hands throughout their entire lives, I can still let them go. I can do this because God will reunite us again on the Last Day. I hold onto that hope and promise of our loving Lord.

A Blessed Exchange

By Melissa DeGroot

Adam and I are hosting our second exchange student this year, something we decided to do partly at Knox’s request after our first experience hosting five years ago.

Whenever the subject comes up, people sometimes say, “Oh gosh, that’s such a big job. That’s a big responsibility.”

And yes. It is.

But so are a lot of things that involve caring for other human beings.

I’ve been thinking lately about why we said yes in the first place. There wasn’t one main reason. Instead, I think several little things came together that made opening our home to another teenager an open and willing endeavor, knowing full well the ups and downs that can come along the way.

For one thing, it was familiar to me. My family hosted an exchange student when I was in high school, and I grew up in a larger family. There were already plenty of people, personalities, schedules, needs, noise, and activity in our house.

So perhaps there’s still a little bit of that mentality in me:

What’s one more?

There’s also something wonderful about welcoming someone from another country into your home. We may not be able to travel across the world and immerse ourselves in another culture, but suddenly another culture can walk right through our front door.

You learn about someone else’s food, language, family, customs, assumptions, humor, and way of seeing the world. And they learn about yours. It’s a remarkably immersive experience without ever leaving home.

But there was another reason that mattered deeply to us.

Knox is an only child.

Hosting an exchange student gives him, at least temporarily, the experience of having another teenager in the house. Someone his age is suddenly sitting at the dinner table, riding in the car, sharing the bathroom, navigating family schedules, joking around, getting annoyed, helping out, and generally participating in all the ordinary chaos of family life.

In a small way, he gets to experience something resembling a sibling relationship. And, of course, that means it isn’t always sunshine and roses.

There are communication bumps. There are cultural differences. There are parenting moments and misunderstandings. There are house rules and expectations that have to be explained. Sometimes a lot. Adding another person to a family changes the dynamics of the family.

The initial hospitality morphs over the weeks and months into real life, working to understand and care for each other through our worldviews. And perhaps that’s one of the things I appreciate most about the experience.

As Christians, Adam and I are also very aware that when we invite someone into our home while raising our own son in the faith, we are inviting them into our actual life and not some polished version of it.

We aren’t hosting an exchange student in order to convert them. There are appropriate rules and boundaries surrounding these programs, and we respect those. But we have also been intentional and honest about who we are as a family in the application and interview process–while the students also share in their applications how open they are to participate in a host family’s religious practices.

Our Christian faith isn’t something we can simply remove from our household for a year. Church, prayer, conversations about faith, and life together as Christians are part of the rhythm of our home.

Both of our exchange students have happily attended church with us, and when questions or conversations about faith naturally arise, we talk about them.

What an interesting privilege that has been.

By God’s grace, another young person from another part of the world gets a little glimpse of the faith and hope we cling to every day.

But it gets real, y’all.

Christian hospitality doesn’t always look like sitting around the dinner table having profound conversations about Jesus.

Sometimes it sounds like:

“Whose turn is it to empty the dishwasher?”

“Where are you going?”

“What time will you be home?”

“Did you do your homework?”

In other words, it looks a whole lot like family.

And maybe that is precisely the point.

God so often does His greatest work through these ordinary vocations-the mundane, repetitive acts of feeding people, driving them to practice and appointments, washing dishes, setting boundaries, forgiving misunderstandings (especially my own!), sharing meals, going to church, laughing together, and learning how to live with people who aren’t exactly like us–biological or otherwise!

Hospitality isn’t merely entertaining someone in your home.

It is making room.

Room at the table. Room in the schedule. Room in the refrigerator. Room in the car. Room in your patience. And sometimes, by God’s grace, room in your heart for someone you might never otherwise have known.

Yes, hosting an exchange student is a big responsibility.

But so is loving any new neighbor.

It teaches us to love someone new as Christ has loved us.

And after doing this twice now, I think we’re discovering that making room for one more is a gift each time.

So far, it has been a great experience, since other doors like foster care and adoption have closed to us. That’s a post for another time.

In the meantime, this teenage addition to our family has been a blessed exchange.

The Older Mom

By Kristi Leckband

That’s me, the older mom. Our first child was born when I was 30 years old. Yes, 30. By the time we adopted our little girl, I was 40 years old. Yes, 40. Two months later child #3, a newborn, was adopted into our family. I was thrilled to be adding to my family. We had waited a really long time for our daughter to have siblings. And they both came to us, two months apart.

But there are times when it is no cakewalk. I had loads of energy when our firstborn came along. I was in good shape. I could run beside her as she learned to ride a bike. I could keep up with her and her teammates as my husband and I coached their softball teams. I could ski with the high school youth and walk up the long hill after sledding.

When the next two joined our family, I was ten years older. I was also ten years wiser as a parent. I knew what to expect from little children and how to nurture them. I had more patience and could bend a bit more when learning took a while. The physical challenges weren’t so noticeable yet. I could keep up with the “littles” as they toddled around the house and played in the swimming pool. I could get to the softball in the outfield while they ran the bases. Our family also had the added benefit of a sister who was ten years older. She had loads of energy to spend on her siblings, and the laughter in our house proved it.

The physical challenges of being an older parent are coming to light. I’m in my 50’s now, and there are still two teenagers at home. We hike through the woods, but they are content to go off on their own for that. Sleeping on a camp pad is just not fun for my body anymore. I don’t ride all of the water rides because my body can’t handle the motion. I have become more of the cheerleader for my teenagers. I suppose it has helped them become more independent, but I know that I’m not as active with them as I was for our firstborn. Our family worked together to plant 50 tomato plants in the spring. That night, I needed a heating pad to provide relief from the ache of bending over while planting the little seedlings. I can’t even imagine how Sarah of the Bible felt when she birthed Isaac at 90 years of age. Isaac would have been a teenager when she was in her 100’s. How did she do it??

My vanity has taken a hit as an older mom. I don’t have the hour-glass figure that youth provided. When my firstborn wed, the gray hairs were visible. If the Lord should grant spouses to my next two children, gray will be the featured color enveloping my head.

Being the older mom, I have the benefit of being a better listener for my teenagers. I can listen to them lay out their case for something, and I can do so without wanting to interject my opinion immediately (although I still want to do that). I have more patience to let the conversation flow and guide my teens to good resolutions for problems.

As an older mom, I find myself engaged in many conversations with the moms of my children’s friends. I have the added bonus of already sending one off to college and into married life while those moms are just starting to contemplate post-high school life for their children. By the grace of God, I am able to provide some helpful advice and be a sounding board for their thoughts.

It makes me feel pretty good to be running a 100-yard race with the teenagers and other 30-40 year old moms at a track and field event. I don’t win, but I can still compete. I’m so thankful that my body allows me to do that. I can play pickleball much easier than I can play tennis. (Thank goodness for a smaller court.) I’ll still climb on the rocks in the river, but I won’t venture quite so far as the rest of the young moms. God has taught me to recognize my limits in this area.

Do I regret that I’m an older mom? That probably is not the question to ask. Is it okay to be an older mom? Absolutely yes. While the human body is more capable of handling the physical challenges of parenting when in her 20’s, it does not mean that being an active mom in her 50’s and beyond isn’t going to be possible. I know that my teens will be in college when my husband and I near retirement age. That doesn’t bother us. We are blessed with good health and plan to be active participants in our children’s lives, and even our grandchildren’s lives.

I wish our children could have come into our lives sooner. I listened to the cultural pressure to “enjoy marriage without children” for a few years before starting a family. That advice to wait, dear sister, is hogwash. Enjoy the children as soon as you can. Those girls and boys are gifts from God. We should gladly receive them.

Each day, God gives me the privilege of spending time with my children. No matter my age, I have the blessing of being a mom. (And even being a grandma.)

That will never get old.

Our Blended Family

by Kristi Leckband

Our family of two grew to three with the birth of Joanna. She is our only biological child. God added two more children to our family through His gift of adoption. Maria came to us at 18 months old, and Josiah came to us as a newborn two quick months later. It’s not traditional, but it’s not a rarity either.

When we started the adoption process, we told Joanna what we were doing. At the time, she was four years old, so we really didn’t say too much to her. The plan was that she would stay with grandparents while Jerome and I flew to bring Maria home. God had other plans. Joanna was almost ten years old when Maria joined our family. Joanna flew to China with us and was an eyewitness to God’s miracle of adoption. When Josiah joined us from the hospital two months later, Joanna was one of the first to hold him. She had a front row seat to all that was happening. At her age, she could truly comprehend what God was doing in our family.

Jerome and I have always talked openly about adoption. We talked about children as gifts for that is what they are. When Maria and Josiah were quite young, we made a picture book for each of them about their birth, their baptism, their adoption, and family. They looked at the pictures and heard their stories read to them repeatedly. We gave them the language to use when talking about these things. My children saw adoption as a wonderful thing. I know this to be a fact because I can still clearly recall this story…

I was driving Maria and Josiah to the library. They were seated in the second row, chatting about life as four and five year olds do. All of a sudden, one of them said, “Mom, we feel sorry for Joanna.” Surprised, I asked, “Why is that?” A sweet little voice replied, “Because she’s not adopted.” Oh, my heart. They saw adoption as a blessing!

Even today, Maria and Josiah can have fun with adoption. Recently, some of our scholars tested their blood types. It caused a bit of excitement in school. Siblings were tested so as to determine their parents’ blood type. Maria and Josiah laughed to think that their blood types would have nothing to do with big sister Joanna or their parents. They could smile and laugh, confident that they were loved for who they were, not for how they joined our family.

Jerome and I could not have prayed for a better understanding for those two. Adoption is not something to be hidden away in our family. We are adopted into God’s family. He makes us His own and gives to us all good things. We are now blessed to share those good things with others. Our three children are recipients of God’s good gifts. Jerome and I are the vessels through which those blessings flow.

Yes, there is a significant age gap between Joanna and the “littles.” She was an only child for a long time. She did have friends closer to her age, and we made sure she had time with those people. Life changed when she gained a sister and a brother in a short span of time. She relished her role as big sister and took such good care of them. I could see her learning to be a mother at that young age. Joanna, still to this day, is a wonderful big sister. While she lives hours away, she still connects with them and inquires about them. She invites them to be part of her life.

Maria and Josiah have their own trials to bear. Their life history has some gaps, and we’ll never be able to fill in all of them. It makes me sad that they won’t have a complete picture. However, it doesn’t lessen the blessings that they are to our family. I do think it is helpful they have each other to share that burden. It may seem “normal” to them that there are gaps because they both have those holes in their lives. They are best friends, and I thank God for that.

Whether your family grows biologically or through adoption or not at all, you are still blessed. God has given you life. He encourages you to live in His grace. He gives you life and salvation. He gives you His Holy Word and Sacraments, that you might be forgiven of all your sins and be refreshed in His promises of love to you. In the Church, we are one huge, blended family. We love one another and rejoice in being adopted in the family of God.

Tough Love

by Rebecca Mayes

No adopting mother who brings her child home for the very first time would ever in her wildest imagination consider that she might someday ask this same child to leave.

But I did.

And now this child has had two mothers send him away. What must that feel like?

Have you ever seen one of those horror movies where a family realizes they are being targeted by some kind of evil, whether it be aliens, birds, zombies, or whatever, and they do everything they can to secure their home so the evil cannot penetrate? They keep remembering forgotten entrances, like the chimney or the old coal chute, and they keep boarding up every crevice they can find. The mother hovers in the corner with her child, arms clasped tightly, holding fast so no matter what, nothing will take this child from her.

That was me.

I saw, even early on, that this boy was an easy target for the devil and the world and that his own defenses were weak. Knowing this, his father and I planned out every protection and deterrent we could think of. For years I huddled in that metaphorical corner, murmuring assurances to him and to myself, all the while feeling like the evil was getting closer, regardless of all our efforts. I kept repeating the Lord’s promise that “they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28).

But the real horror was not in seeing the invader’s hands reaching out to him. The real horror was in seeing him turn from me – from the Lord’s hand – and reaching out for them.

And so I let go. I let go because if I had kept holding on, the demons would have stayed and threatened us all. Their presence had already taken a toll on our family, and there was just no other way.

Our eviction notice came as no surprise to this adult-child, for he knew our values and our rules, and by his behavior he had chosen to relinquish the privilege of room and board. He was anxious to leave, to be free of our confining rules and evident disappointment. And so on his 19th birthday, after finding another place to stay, he got his wish. He was gone.

I had heard the phrase “tough love” over the years and thought I understood what it meant. I didn’t. My body and soul had been in perpetual motion, providing and protecting, these 19 years. Choosing to stop that momentum was like trying to stop a train.

“For this child I prayed…” said Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:27. I thought this meant that she prayed for his conception and birth. She got was she requested. Mission accomplished.

But no. She then handed her son over to Samuel in the temple. I handed my son over to the world.

For this child I prayed….and prayed…and prayed...and prayed…

This momentum does not stop.

As with Hannah, the Lord answered my prayer, and I had one job to do: “Train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6). But I felt like I had failed. Eventually I realized I could control this child, his choices, his faith, his life, his future no more than I could control my fertility. My job is to remain faithful to the Lord and serve Him in all my daily vocations (albeit imperfectly), and this faithfulness often requires making tough choices – like letting go of the very child you had prayed for for so long.

It felt like I was handing him over to the world to be devoured and spit out, but I was really handing him back to the Lord, for only He can control the future. He redeemed this child by His own blood, brought this child to us, washed him in baptismal waters, surrounded him with a loving family, gave him the opportunity for a Christian education, and continues to move countless friends and family to join us in praying for his return to the faith.

Our heavenly Father has not given up. I have witnessed His pursuit of this child in the years since he left. The boy’s life did not fall apart. He found friends, he found work, he is growing and maturing. Our relationship with him has been strengthened. He sometimes even finds his way to worship. There is hope.

Even though I have seen the Lord’s patience and mercy, again and again, for my child throughout his life, he does not yet see it himself. He seems to be still grasping in some kind of darkness. But just as the Lord can open wombs, He can also open the eyes of the blind.

She Has Her Hands Full

by Katie Schuermann

In twenty-four years of marriage, I have never been pregnant. In that same amount of time, my husband and I have received at least a dozen private adoption queries from five different states, and not a single one has worked out in such a way as to make us parents. And in spite of our multiple foster parent training sessions completed through the states of Texas and Illinois, no child ever has been placed in our home by the government.

Which means, in twenty-four years of marriage, no one has ever said of me, “She has her hands full.”

But do you know what people can say of me? that is, if they are looking closely?

“She has her stairwell and kitchen full.”

For in a plot twist no one saw coming, God called my husband seven years ago to serve as pastor of University Lutheran Church in Champaign, Illinois. “UniLu,” as everyone in the community fondly calls the congregation, is a campus ministry located just one block off the main quad of the University of Illinois, and it exists primarily to serve undergraduate and graduate students attending the University of Illinois.

This means that Michael and I are finally, joyfully foster parents, though not through state certification like we originally thought. Instead, the church equips us to take into our little family of two around sixty children every year, all of them grown-up and sojourning away from home. We get to shelter them, feed them, teach them, sing with them, play with them, love them, and try to assist their parents in raising them in the faith, all the while knowing that these foster children will not be staying with us, that in the end, it is good — best, even — when they return to the families from which they came.

One of these precious foster children said to me the other day, “I could never do what you do.”

She was referring to the fact that every year our family changes. Every semester, we welcome new students into the church and launch graduating students into the world.

As I reflected further upon her comment, I realized something remarkable about our little story of barrenness.

Michael and I are able to endure this kind of transient family life. In fact, we expect it. We thrive in it.

The primary reason for our endurance, I believe, is because God equips us to serve where He sends us and whom He sends us. He prepares specific good works for us to do, and He completes these specific good works in us. It’s that simple.

But something a little less simple and a little less obvious …

When I view our present vocation through the lens of our barren years, I see plainly that God has been training Michael and me for this kind of transient family life our entire marriage. Never have we ever been able to keep the children who come into our home. Always, we must return those we cradle to another’s arms. Every single child we meet and love and welcome into our hearts belongs to some other family. Every single child who loves us calls other people “Dad” and “Mom” and some other house “home.”

What I am trying to confess is that our barren marriage has served as the perfect training ground for being foster parents at UniLu. Welcoming student after student and then blessing each on his way is simply a continuation of the kind of love and care we have always known and shown to other people’s children in our barrenness.

To think that this strange vocation might have been God’s intention all along — “It is high; I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139)!

And here is what really blows my mind.

In making us foster parents to so many college-aged children, God is filling not only our hands but also our hearts and our prayers and our hours and our table and our stairwell and our kitchen.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine such a big, beautiful family, one so plainly created by a God.

All I know to do in response to God’s gift of family life is to thank Him for His abundant mercy and sing a psalm: “Blessed is the man and woman who fill their quiver with college students!”

Family Growth

by Kristi Leckband

The Lord has given me blessing upon blessing. He placed me into a loving family at my birth, and my parents made sure I knew Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I taught in Lutheran schools for several years and married Jerome, who eventually became a pastor.

After four years of marriage, we were blessed with the birth of Joanna. Her arrival brought joy upon joy into our home. While this blog was active, we endured suffering while wanting to grow our family. No children came. Then, in 2013, after seven long years of waiting, Maria joined our family via international adoption. Two brief months after that, Josiah joined us as a newborn via domestic adoption. Oh, the blessings of the Lord!

Fast forward to 2026. Our family picture looks a bit different. Jerome and I have celebrated 28 years of wedded life in Christ, and we are both past the age of 50. Joanna graduated from college, married a Lutheran man, and is now mother to a five-month-old baptized child of God. She and her family live ten hours away from us. Maria and Josiah have both grown into teenagers and will live at home with us for a few more years. We now reside in Arkansas, where Jerome serves as associate pastor and headmaster of our classical Lutheran school. Upon our arrival, we enrolled our children in that school. Gone are the days of homeschooling. I now spend my days preparing music for our church and school. I am blessed to have many interactions with the people in these places on a daily basis.

Our family has seen its share of changes. One of our children developed an autoimmune disease. That was pretty rough. We sent our oldest off to college, nearly twelve hours away. That was a quiet ride home. After twenty-three years in one place, we packed up our belongings and moved south. A lot of memories came with us. We stopped homeschooling so that our children could be part of a classical Lutheran school. That was another huge adjustment for all of us. Throughout all of those changes, though, the Lord has continued to bless our family. He has taken care of each one of us and still continues to do so today. I look forward to sharing the goodness of the Lord with you this month.