These days, my heart is very blocked.
It's the kind of resentment and sadness that can't be explained at all.
Liu Xuezhou, a 15-year-old teenager who committed suicide because he was abandoned by his parents for the second time, many people only knew him from various media and self-media after he died.
But I knew his story while he was alive and went to his Weibo to read almost all of his speeches.
See him post a wall of awards; see him find his biological parents and then be turned away by them; see his indignation after being smeared by the media; see him fighting to get justice.
At that time, his Weibo followers were less than 10,000 people.
Two days ago, I suddenly heard that he had committed suicide. A living life bid farewell to this world in such a resolute way.
Now his Weibo has nearly 300,000 followers, but I have never dared to read his last Weibo, which is his suicide note.
He was a child full of expectations for the future, this society, but did not leave him a way to live.
Being abandoned is the most painful wound in the heart.
This kind of pain, I am afraid, will be difficult to heal for the rest of my life.
I was recently doing wishlist stories for American adoptive families. These families have adopted abandoned children from China, most of them with disabilities.
These children, in the United States, are warmed by their families, cared for, treated, go to school, and grow up.
Many people say they are lucky, but the struggles they experience, the entanglements in their hearts, their mental pain, are rarely seen.
I've sent a few stories of adopting children today, some of which are inspirational and some of which are real and sighing.
These children, from the moment they are abandoned, are destined to take a much more difficult path than the rest of the world.
I hope that from their stories, you can learn a little about their heart world.
First, the story of Abigail
My name is Abigail Holcomb. I was adopted to the United States on May 6, 2003 from Tuanfeng County, Hubei Province. I was 13 months old at the time.
My parents never hid the fact that I was adopted, so I always knew where I was. I was malnourished when I was adopted, and I had rope marks on my legs. My adoptive parents don't know why I have strangulation marks on the back of my legs. The welfare home also did not tell them why.
At the age of three, I was diagnosed with a learning disability, specifically a holistic movement disorder. The disorder is neurotic and affects my language and motor skills. So I started therapy, which included sports therapy, functional therapy, and language training.
At school, I was bullied because of these problems. This situation is getting worse in middle and high school. Being bullied because of my adoption has a big impact on my mental health.
In the summer of my junior high school graduation, I began to face many mental and psychological problems. All summer, I had to be hospitalized every half a month. The doctors couldn't figure out why I had those psychological problems. My father remembers yelling at the doctors and asking them to test my lymphatic immune system. It turned out that my lymphatic level was six times that of normal people.
I thought I had finally found the reason. In fact, that is just the beginning.
I was in and out of the psychiatric hospital all year of my freshman year of high school. The first hospitalization was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. That was also the beginning of my antidepressant medication. I vaguely remember crying out to the doctors every time and asking them to increase the dose. My body always had adverse drug reactions, and they gave me a different medicine.
Sophomore year of high school I went to another psychiatric hospital, and the doctor's diagnosis was traumatic stress response problems plus depression and anxiety. The stress response problem was because of my experience of being hurt in infancy. The doctor gave me an antidepressant medication.
But no one knows that this drug has made me suicidal.
After Christmas of the year I graduated from high school, I actually tried to kill myself, and as a result, I ended up in a third mental hospital. This hospital is the best place for me to treat. During the month I was there, the doctor helped me slowly stop the previous medication and gave me a new one.
During my hospitalization, I received condolence cards from many families in the church, cared about my health, greeted me, and prayed for me. During this time, I was also experiencing a crisis of personal identity, and all kinds of feelings about adoption, and being bullied in school was also among them.
I started looking for a sense of identity on Facebook. I found several groups of adopted children. In the group I found other people who shared my feelings. I gradually drifted away from my friends at school and became closer to my friends on Facebook. None of my friends at school shared a hobby with me. The reason I'm teased by a lot of people is that I love to read. I'm an introvert and like to read all day long.
When I was 18 years old and in my senior year of high school, the new crown epidemic began. I found myself unaccustomed to online classes and didn't learn anything for months. My mom got COVID-19 and we had to quarantine. I have four siblings and a family of 7 living in a house in isolation.
And just like that, I graduated with my brother. The school's graduation ceremony was amazing.
After graduation, I procrastinated and refused to apply to college. Finally, I told my parents that I wanted to stop for a year and go to college. They just want me to work well and help with the housework. I got a job watching my kids and made some money. I left some to prepare for college, and the rest was my pocket money.
In the fall of 2021, I started my freshman year at SUNY (State University of New York) at Adirondack.
I wanted to be a veterinarian first, then I switched to liberal arts plus math and science, and then to humanities and sociology, so that I could become a history teacher in the future.
Translator: Zhang Wen
Second, the story of Kooper
I'm Connie Darnell Johnson. My family has a total of 14 children, 11 of whom were adopted from China. Kooper is the fourth of 11 Chinese children to be adopted, and he is the third oldest of our 14 children.
When my husband Clayton and I gave our lives to the Lord Christ in 2001, the Lord quickly opened our eyes and hearts to adopt children. He eventually led us to adopt children from China.
In 2004, we were blessed to adopt our first daughter, Kayden Faith, from China.
We returned to China in 2007 and 2008 and adopted our daughter Kambry Hope and son Kaeleb.
In late 2008 we launched the adoption process again, asking for the adoption of a girl with special needs. While we were still waiting for such a little girl, the Lord broke our hearts for a teenager in China. The orphan was over 13 years old and was about to lose the opportunity to be adopted.
We prayed and prayed, and in May 2009, we called our adoption agency to ask if China would allow us to adopt two children at the same time: a little girl with special needs, plus a teenager who was on the verge of losing her eligibility for adoption.
At 7:30 a.m. the next morning, our prayers were answered. We received the teenager's information and we immediately agreed.
In November 2009 we flew to Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, and adopted our son, Kooper. Two months later, he would lose his eligibility for adoption.
Because we were going to adopt two children at the same time, we stayed in China for three weeks. This time was very helpful for Kooper. Because of his special needs, he was very inferior, had little education, and had no dreams for the future.
When Kooper and we arrived in the United States, he lost everything: his native family, his language, the foods he loved, and the original culture.
We promise to love Him, to care for Him, and we will do our best to meet all His needs. We work hard to show Kooper the unconditional love of a family and try to gain his trust.
His understanding of Chinese is very simple, but we have made a lot of Chinese friends and helped him communicate with people. At one point, we chose to attend classes at home to strengthen the bond with his feelings and start his educational path.
We found a psychotherapist to help Kooper overcome depression, overcome low self-esteem, and continue to earn his trust.
He didn't have any dreams in the past, he didn't have a real plan for the future, but when he turned 17, he gave his life to the Lord Christ!
Through his faith in Jesus Christ and his acceptance of his new family, he has overcome all the frustration and gloom of an orphan. He got a full-time job with benefits, had his own apartment, and his own car, which he had always dreamed of!
The teenager who had low self-esteem has just celebrated his 26th birthday!
We are proud of our son and we thank God for allowing us to be His family.
Translator: Li Lilin Proofreader: Laura Luo
Three, Joshua's story
(I asked Joshua today and he said he would write his story to all of you if you needed it.) We told him that there were a lot of people in China who wanted to know his story, wanted to know about his adoption and his thoughts, how to write and what to write and we let him decide for himself. He actually wrote it today. He wrote it all by hand, and I typed it out. I kept all his sentences, grammar, spelling, etc. and just deleted the "Hey! The word, and then he mentioned the first time he saw someone "shaking." I changed it to "epileptic seizures." He then said he began to wonder if he would "get this disease." For the sake of clarity, I changed it to start wondering if he would have a "seizure." Except for these small changes, everything else was written by him. We were very touched by his words. We hope this is a blessing to everyone who reads it. Grace Reddy）
Here's the story Joshua wrote:
My name is Joshua and I am an orphan. I have been in an orphanage since I was one year old. I was in an orphanage with a group of other children. We watched TV all day and didn't hang out much.
I was on the third floor with my older kids. Some people have seizures. When I first saw someone having a seizure, I felt scared and terrified. I started to wonder if I would have seizures myself.
Even though we were older kids, we still had to take a nap every day.
Before I was adopted, I had never seen how food was cooked. The people at the orphanage would bring us food that had already been cooked, but I had never seen anyone cook anything while I was there.
They told me I would be adopted in October 2016. I was surprised and excited. A year later, I met my parents for the first time. I met them in July 2017. I'm so glad we're finally home.
When we got home, I had a lot to learn because I wasn't educated or went to school when I was in China. Because I didn't speak English, my mom spent years teaching me how to read, spell, write, and english. She also taught me math and other aspects of life that I needed to know. She helped me learn how to walk on my own. Mom also taught me good manners. She's the best mom anyone could wish to have, she loves us and doesn't care about anything. I am very grateful to her.
My dad taught me how to learn from my mistakes. He also helped me learn how to use the bathroom myself and how to take care of myself. He even taught me how Americans shower.
I have six sisters and one brother. One of the benefits of having siblings is that you have people who can talk and laugh together. They always make you smile.
One of the things I found out when I came to the U.S. was that people cook. Another discovery I found was the feeling of seeing snow and falling snow. I had never seen snow before and had no feelings for it. I was very surprised by this. Other new discoveries include seeing animals. I was scared when I first saw the animals. I've never seen a fire or sat on a swing.
When I grow up, I want to be a chef. I knew God had planned for me, and He had given me a family that loved me and cared for me. Before I came to the United States, when I was in an orphanage, no one asked me what I wanted to do or anything like that in the future.
My goal is to go to school until graduate school, as well as to be able to walk better. Another goal for me is to be able to take care of myself and get a good job. When I got a good job and worked hard, I wanted to own a house and a good car.
I hope I can have a big family in the future.
I have too many kindnesses to reciprocate.
I am grateful to my family. I thank my brothers and sisters. I am thankful to have a warm house. I thank God for putting me in a family. I thank my parents for their unconditional love for me. I am grateful for everything my parents have done for me.
Translation: Feng Bin
4. Levi's story
One day in 2002, in the cornfield of Langfang, Hebei Province, an old man found a yellow silk bag, and a small cry came out of the bag. He had the audacity to open the baggage and was immediately frightened by the sight in front of him. It was a bloody, black limbs, burned like charcoal- a baby. Yellow silk is the burial of the local dead, and the child must be abandoned in the field because the family thinks that he cannot live.
The kind old man packed up the child and rode to the hospital. The Public Security Bureau informed the children's welfare home that another abandoned baby needed to be accepted immediately.
At that time, no one expected that an adventure was about to happen.
A few months ago, across the ocean in the United States, a housewife followed her lawyer husband and four children to volunteer at a private orphan foster care institution in China, Shepherdland.
The founder of the shepherd's land is the American Bei Tianmu, a Christian. He came to China in the 1990s with his wife and three daughters to teach English, and they adopted four orphans. He later quit his job and established this idyllic foster care center in Langfang, Hebei Province. They picked up seriously ill children from welfare homes in various places that were overcrowded because of the large number of abandoned babies and the burden of not bearing the burden, and came to Beijing for treatment and recovered in the shepherdland. And it is completely self-financing to raise all the costs, which relieves a lot of the burden for the welfare home.
Lisa and her husband, John, who are also Christians, were deeply touched by the needs of Chinese orphans in the church, and because of their calling, they resolutely decided to leave their comfortable lives and come to the shepherding of their families to do perennial volunteer work.
On the day that the child found in this field was sent to the Langfang Welfare Institute, Pei Tianmu and his assistant Xiao Wei received a call from the welfare dean, saying that there was another abandoned baby, can you help? Pei Tianmu and Xiao Wei immediately went. There, they were shocked to see the child's black, dead branches and small bodies stained with blood and bodily fluids.
The people in the welfare home felt that this child, who was only six weeks old, would definitely not survive. Is hesitating whether to give this child unnecessary treatment, the child is likely to not be able to save, the cost of the final treatment who is responsible. Bei Tianmu looked at the baby and said without hesitation that he was willing to take charge. He saw a tenacious little life expecting help. Even if there is only a 20% chance of survival, plus 100% effort, it must save him.
The child entered the hospital in Langfang and was put into an incubator for emergency treatment.
Lisa rushed to the hospital and looked at the small child in the incubator who could no longer be small, and trembled with pain. She put her finger into the incubator and inserted the pacifier for the child. Then she began to accompany him for a moment, afraid that as soon as she walked away, the child's weak life would be gone.
Miracles soon appeared. Thanks to the efforts of Lisa and Shepherd, the Public Security Bureau issued a hukou and passport for the child to speed; the U.S. Embassy made an exception for a one-day U.S. visa; United Airlines provided a plane ticket; and The Shriners Hospital, a charity hospital in Boston, was willing to undergo surgery.
Lisa and the child she had already named Levi boarded the plane for three weeks and flew to Boston.
Years later, Lisa said she took care of everything she had in her pocket to get Levi to the United States for treatment as soon as possible, and she had only $50 in her pocket when she got on the plane. When she arrived in Boston and saw Levi being put into a sterile "big bubble" room, she finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Levi's adoption was officially completed in 2007. Lisa and her husband at the time adopted a daughter while living in China, a girl with a leg disability, a small size, and a drag when walking. But like Levi, the whole family regarded her as a treasure. The return rate of their family of 8 people traveling on the streets of Beijing is quite high.
Levi has since undergone more than 20 surgeries in his short life at the age of 19. His left arm is missing below the shoulder, his right hand has only a few broken fingers, one foot has no toes, one leg is full of scars, and his chin is also covered with scars.
He was a miracle of life, when almost everyone, including his own parents, picked up his kind old man, and the doctors at the hospital should not have expected that 19 years later, he was alive!
Not only alive, Levi and his mom siblings have endured extraordinary hardships and challenges together. After living in China for many years, Lisa became a single mom, and in 2010, she had no choice but to leave her beloved China with 6 children and return to the United States from scratch.
At the beginning, when it was the most difficult, even the homeless shelter was not easy to accept them, because there were too many children to be resettled. But for more than a decade, the children and their mothers have stubbornly persevered. One by one, they all graduated from high school, and the eldest sister is now a single mother, taking her children to college, still very enthusiastic about public welfare and concerned about the survival of Muslim women. Chinese sister Orly is also in college. The brothers have moved out independently. At the age of 55, her mother, Lisa, received a full scholarship and received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Southern California. She studied non-profit organization management.
Levi is the youngest child in the family and will also graduate from high school in 2021. At school, he was a basketball player on the court, and he also worked part-time as a model. Some time ago he was selected as an advertising model for the Olympics.
Levi is a very confident big boy, he drives first-class and makes a good hand.
His ideal was to go to university to study sports medicine and psychology.
On the day he was modeling for an advertisement, he saw a girl with an arm, her prosthesis was very realistic, and the function was also very similar to a real arm. Levi wants to have a new arm like this girl!
Levi grew up helping orphans in China with his parents. Their siblings spent their childhood with Chinese orphans. Their hearts are connected to China. Several of the children have returned to China separately, returning to Langfang where they lived in their childhood, or volunteering to help take care of orphans.
Her mother wrote a book called "Rescue Levi", so Levi has always been very clear about her origins. Recently, a reporter asked Levi if he hated his own parents, and he replied: I don't. A few years ago he had returned to the village where he had been abandoned. At that moment, he saw a radical change in the trajectory of his life. "They must be poor." "What can they do?"
Her mother, Lisa, treasured a small yellow silk shoe from that year. It was originally Levi's biological parents who gave him a funeral, and it was a testimony to the miracle of his life.
In 19 years, this child named Levi walked out of the cornfield in Langfang, China.
May this miracle of love accompany him far!
Author: Zhang Wen
Everyone has an ultimate question in life: Where did I come from?
When a weak life is abandoned, no matter how superior the living conditions after him, I am afraid that deep down, I want to understand his origin.
Many children adopted by American families say they want to find their biological parents. In their minds, their biological parents loved them and only gave them up because they couldn't afford to pay for the treatment.
This may be part of the truth, maybe another part of the truth, cruel and unbearable to think about.
Children with mothers are like treasures. The trauma of abandonment is far more severe than all of us think.
Liu Xuezhou, who is healthy, cannot face the fact of being abandoned for the second time. All the way to find the love of his parents, and he was fiercely hurt, he has no attachment to the world.
And how can a disabled child, abandoned, live with hope and enthusiasm?
Thank you to these Loving American parents for giving these abandoned children a warm home and giving them all their hearts and minds when they encounter all kinds of problems.
Although the life path of these children is difficult, someone will accompany them, guide them, and help them.
Abandoned wounds take a lifetime to heal.
With support, there is hope.
With hope, there is a beginning to life.