God has woven our story.

When we were preparing to move to Thailand, we told many people the story of how God had been working in our lives for nearly twenty years to bring us to this calling and prepare us for this work. I shared about my hesitation to accept that God would be calling us to move to the other side of the world right when it felt to me that it was time to move into a more settled season for our family.

You see, it was just as we were finishing up on renovations of our first home (a fixer-upper in Colorado) that it was time for Rod to move from his job in law enforcement in CO to work on the family ranch in North Central Nebraska, so we moved to a new home that had recently suffered significant flood damage (an even bigger fixer-upper). It was just about when we were finishing up renovations on the ranch home that we needed to move to town to pour our energy into a new business venture that we were struggling to get off the ground. This move came with another new home: the biggest fixer-upper project yet. I told anyone who came to listen to our story that, as we neared the completion of our latest and greatest home renovation project, I had started to really dig my feet in. “Don’t make me move” became a mantra I repeated in contexts that hardly warranted such “drama.” So when Rod told me he was feeling called to move—not just to a new house and a new job—but to the other side of the world, I did not respond with the ready “Here I am LORD; Send me.” that my 10 year old self had longed for an opportunity to say. 

When sharing our story, I admitted that I could see how the hand of God had been preparing my husband for this next adventure in every place he had sent us. Rod’s criminal justice degree, elite police academy training, and work in law enforcement had prepared him for the work he was being called to do in rescuing victims of child trafficking. When managing the family ranch in Nebraska, he had gained expertise in land management that would prove useful in helping to establish self-sustainable practices at the ZOE Child Rescue Center and Children’s Home. The knowledge and skills he developed while operating our own small businesses would also be instrumental in other projects ZOE is currently pursuing. It was not hard to see God’s hand at work in beautiful ways in my husband’s story, and I am sincerely honored that his story is my story, too. Of course we would follow God in this next adventure!

That story I told was true. All of it. But it wasn’t the whole story. There is another very important thread woven into each of those homes we lived in, loved, and left. You see, there was another calling on my life that, in the midst of all our pursuits, sometimes seemed to take the back seat. Relying on God’s sovereignty, I trusted it would all come together in His time…which often seems to be a bit slower than we expect it will be. But this last, biggest move felt like so many doors closing on my own truest calling…and it was difficult for me to make sense of why God would want to do that.  

Another Thread

Let me back up a bit. Early in our marriage, we lived in a one bedroom of a house we shared with three of Rod’s fraternity brothers. After that, we spent a few months in a rented house while preparing to move to Thailand for some missions/relief work we were doing. We stayed in too many places throughout our year in Thailand to even count: but none of them were home. When we moved back to America, we rented a great apartment from which we could invest our time in my seminary studies and Rod’s academy training. It was only when we were pregnant with our first child that we moved into our first home. Building each home, for me, was always—really—about building our family. 

Let me back up a bit further. When I was a girl, maybe 10 or 11 years old, I read an article in a “Focus on the Family” newsletter that was sitting on our kitchen counter. It was about a large family that had grown with a mix of biological and adopted children. I told God I wanted to have a family like that someday. He told me that is what HE wanted for me as well. I had such confidence in my call to be the mother of a large family that I always struggled to figure out what other kind of career I might pursue or what other dreams or ambitions might be worth pouring my time, energy, and talents into. In an age where little girls were taught to dream big and shoot for the stars, my heart was inescapably drawn to visions of home and family. In the deepest part of my being, I carried around a picture that God gave me of the family I would have one day: The faces were blurry, but there were a lot of them. In case I have not yet made it clear: the truest calling on my life since I was a girl, and the deepest longing of my heart, has been to have a home filled with a big, beautiful family. That desire and calling is the backdrop of every other story my life might tell. 

Growing our family according to God’s timing.

While living in our first home in Colorado, we had our first two children. Honestly, compared to stories others tell, those pregnancies were easy. I was made to do that. Because the picture of my family I carried around in my head included many children that did not look like me, however, we pursued adoption next. We saved up and jumped in as soon as we were allowed (based on rules about the ages of other children in the home). Adoption from Thailand is a long, slow process. It wasn’t until 2015 (over three years after moving to our home at the ranch) that we finally brought Jeremiah home. That same year, we completed all the training and home certification to become licensed foster parents. We said “yes” each time we were asked about a placement, but each time another family was found closer to the children’s home or school district. We inquired about children on adoption advocacy lists who were in foster care waiting for a chance for permanency (usually sibling sets and older children). For one reason or another, we never received any of those placements either. 

Doors Closing

When we moved to town, we moved into a home that I knew would not pass all the licensing standards without significant work, so we let our foster care license lapse. That move meant closing some doors in the process of growing our family. However, it was also at that time we were in the beginning stages of our next international adoption process. We saw Tallulah and Elijah in an advocacy post on Facebook and agreed they would be the next children we would pursue for adoption into our family. They were living in a special needs orphanage in China and China’s strict adoption policy stated they could be adopted only one at a time. Tallulah came home to our home in Atkinson in May of 2019. We would have to wait a full year (until May of 2020) to submit our application and dossier to adopt Eli. However, COVID shut the world down beginning in February of that year. Since then, we’ve been stalled in our adoption process as one of many waiting families longing to bring their children home from China. 

Honestly, every day that passed with no word from China it seemed less likely the program would never re-open. For years, it has seemed unlikely that our adoption of Eli would ever be completed. Still, hope dies hard, so we did what we could to keep that door open. While we prayed that we would see Eli again on the day he became our son, we also prayed about how else God might desire to grow our family and fulfill this calling on my life. 

We knew that our move to Thailand would mean we could no longer adopt children through Nebraska foster care. We knew that we would no longer qualify to adopt a child from Thailand as our family is too large for their international adoption program policies. We also knew that, as missionaries, our income would no longer qualify us for many other international adoption programs, even if we were able to figure our way through the red tape of the immigration process for adopting internationally while living in a different foreign country. We also knew that if we would ever have more children biologically, the clock was ticking, as I am now 40 years old. It seemed we were facing so many closed doors.

Our Plans In God’s Hand 

We decided to leave both our stalled Chinese adoption and our chance at having more biological children in God’s hands. A pregnancy would disrupt the adoption of Eli but if we waited too much longer, we might no longer be able to have children biologically. We figured that, even if China DID re-open the program, there were so many families “in line” ahead of us (farther along in the process when it shut down), we might even be able to have a baby while waiting. When it came to be our turn to complete the adoption of Eli, that baby might already be a year old and cause no big complication.

It was just days after scheduling Rod’s scout trip to Thailand for the final stage of his interview and employment process with ZOE that I learned I was pregnant! This felt like a confirmation not only of the calling I received as a girl longing for a large family (my family was not done growing!), it also felt like confirmation that both Rod and I were walking into callings that God had prepared in advance for us. 

Later, while Rod was in Thailand gaining confirmation and excitement for the journey we were soon to embark on with our family, the newest baby I’d wrapped my whole heart around died inside me. 

We moved forward in the hope that God desired to knit another child together in my womb just as much as I desired him to do so. A few months after moving to Thailand, and almost exactly one year after we lost that baby, I visited the doctor for some health issues I was having. I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling was just the result of a drastic change in our diet, the severely polluted air we were breathing, or something else…but I knew something was wrong. Some tests revealed an infection, and when I went in for treatment, the doctor did some further testing and examination. When I left the hospital that day, it was with a diagnosis of Endometriosis: the most common form of infertility in women today. 

The only treatments for the symptoms I’d been experiencing were hormonal and would close my womb. I decided instead to deal with the symptoms so that what seemed to be our final opportunity to grow our family would not turn out to be yet another closed door. I also worked to accept the fact that IF the door could still be considered open, it was barely a crack: there was a chance I could still get pregnant naturally, but it was very slim. 

Hope and Loss

Over the next several months, I talked to God about what he was doing in my life. I asked if I misheard him when I was a girl, or if I had gotten off-course in pursuing and prioritizing his calling on my life. I felt reassurance of his love for me about all things past, and we talked about what he might desire of me next. While my longing to continue to grow my family did not go away, I decided it would be trumped by the deep gratitude I feel for the blessings already in my life, and somehow my unsettled seeking was balanced equally with the peace that surpasses understanding. Thinking about what else God might have in store for me, if it was not more children, even started to feel fun and exciting. He has already proven time and time again in my life that he has good things in store. The journey is always onward and upward.

It was when we were in Taipei, the day the big earthquake hit, that I discovered I was pregnant. The hope and excitement I had to grow my family felt new all over again. In some ways, I wanted to shout it from the mountaintops: look what God has done! However, I also felt a very real need to keep it quiet. The moment our pregnancy became public, it felt to me our adoption process would be ending…and I wasn’t ready for that. If we ended the adoption process and then lost the baby, like we’d lost the last one, we would be losing both of our boys in one fell swoop… and since walking beside a dear friend when she lost her beloved child at 34 weeks, it still never really felt “safe” to make such an announcement given what was at stake for our family.

While we anticipated the news for years, it was only a little over three months ago that China officially, permanently, closed their adoption program. Our Elijah is now 12 years old and will never be able to come home. The grief of this knowledge was admittedly tempered with the joy of the boy growing in my womb…and the comfort that we had not somehow made the wrong choice in praying for a baby while also praying to bring Eli home. But I still was not ready to make “Facebook official” the news of the little boy growing in my womb while that joy was still intertwined with sadness surrounding the other son we had loved and lost.

Unto us a Child is Born

On November 20, 2024, Noah William Keim entered this world. The next day, I am sure many of my stateside Facebook friends who were on the other side of the world while I was growing enormous, were surprised by our Facebook posts announcing his arrival. 

While the news of the arrival of a new baby is easily met with joy, my joy is undeniably magnified in the context of the whole story. God is weaving a masterpiece, and I am right in the middle of it! 

This child is so very deeply loved and undeniably wanted. This thread of our story bears the fingerprint of God as surely any other part. Carrying this child in my womb, bringing him into this world, and nurturing him each day is such an immense privilege. He is my hearts’ deepest longing, an answer to countless prayers, the preservation of a promise, and an embodiment of my truest calling. God has done this, and I am forever grateful.

For this child I have prayed, and the LORD has granted me that which I asked of him.

1 Samuel 1:27