by Loves Editor | Featured
Shannon had a tough choice to make. She was eighteen, already a single mom, and pregnant. She knew she couldn’t provide the home or the opportunities she wanted for her baby girl.
Della had been diagnosed with a disease that gave her very high-risk pregnancies. Although she was able to give birth to two sons, Della and her husband knew they had more than enough room in their hearts and their home for more children.
Shannon had chosen three families to interview from an adoption agency portfolio, and Della had started the process for an international adoption, when Shannon’s parents, who were old friends of Della and her husband, told the couple over dinner that their daughter was pregnant and wanted to place her baby in an adoptive home. Just a few days and phone calls later, both Shannon and Della knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Shannon’s baby belonged in Della’s family.
Before dawn on Christmas morning, Della got the call she had been waiting for: baby Elizabeth was coming soon. Shannon was on her way to the hospital. It was time for Della and her husband to meet their daughter.
As soon as the grandparents arrived to take care of their sons, Della and her husband took off for the hospital. Shannon invited Della to be in the delivery room during the birth, a moment Della will treasure for the rest of her life.
After Della and her family met and held their baby girl, it was Shannon’s turn. Shannon spent one precious day alone with little Elizabeth, more certain than ever that she loved this little life with all her heart and wanted the very best for her. Then their day was over, and everyone came back to sign the adoption papers. It was time for baby Elizabeth to go home.
Shannon, Della and Elizabeth enjoy a very open adoption. Shannon does not share parenting duties, and Elizabeth has never called her “mom,” but she is involved in Elizabeth’s life, and she shares both good times and hard times with the family. Shannon has been able to see her baby girl grow and thrive, and, though it is still painful at times, she knows she made the best decision for everyone.
by Loves Editor | Celebs
Bo was abandoned on a train in China soon after he was born. He was raised in an orphanage until he was five years old and told that he never had a mommy – he came from dirt. A large, visible brain tumor threatened his young life and took away any real hope of love or family.
A challenge from a friend led Jim Caviezel, the actor best known for portraying Jesus in The Passion of the Christ and currently starring in the CBS crime drama Person of Interest, into Bo’s life. In an interview with the Christophers, a Christian media organization, Caviezel said, “This guy I know said, ‘You’re pro-life. Tell you what, if you really believe in what you speak, adopt a child — not any child, he’s got to have a serious deficiency.’” Caviezel was “completely terrified” at the possibility of adopting a child with a disability, but deep within his soul, he knew that God wanted him to do it.
When Caviezel first met Bo in that Chinese orphanage, he knew that adopting Bo would mean a life of doctors and surgeries and worry and heartbreak. But, in an interview for Catholic Digest, Caviezel said, “I saw his eyes and — this sounds like such sentimental hogwash, but I’m telling you the truth — in my heart I heard this boy calling to me, saying, ‘Will you love me?’”
Later, Caviezel and his wife, Kerri, decided to adopt another child, a healthy newborn girl. However, before the adoption took place, they met a five year-old girl – also with a brain tumor. “The couple stated that they knew the healthy baby would find a good home,” reports Catholic News Agency, “however it was likely that the sick girl would not. They decided to adopt the five year-old and have been blessed ever since.”
Caviezel told Catholic Digest that he has become a new man since adopting his children. “Dennis Quaid told me a long time ago when he had his son Jack, ‘You’ll have emotions in you that you didn’t even know existed before you had a child,’” Caviezel said. “I now know what that feels like. Even though they’re adopted, it’s as strong as any instinct. That’s what blew me away. I always thought if I adopted that I wouldn’t have the same feeling [as I would] if they were genetically my own children. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Both Bo and his sister LeLe have required several surgeries, and Bo’s cancerous tumor has been particularly challenging, but Caviezel and his wife have felt blessed by their family above everything else. “The other day my little girl jumped in my lap, put her hand on my face, and whispered in my ear, ‘Papa, I love you so much,’” Caviezel told Catholic Digest. “It pulls on your heartstrings. When you come home and the kids run to you, come up and grab your leg. We have a little thing. They stand on my feet and I walk them into thekitchen and we just laugh.”
In seeking to actively live out his faith, Caviezel has seen his life fulfilled more than he ever thought was possible. “We took the harder road,” the actor said in a Catholic.org article. “That is what faith is to me; it’s action. It’s the Samaritan. It’s not the one who says he is; it’s the one who does – and does without bringing attention to himself. I’m saying this because I want to encourage other people.”
When Bo, now 13, won All Star of the Month at the Victory Gymnastics Academy in March 2011, he said his future goals include being “a policeman, a fireman, and, of course, a Dad.” He said he enjoys playing the piano, traveling to different countries with his family, and “putting things together.” He lives with his “Mom, Dad, and sister, LeLe, who is a ballerina.”
by Loves Editor | Celebs
In his commencement address to Stanford University’s graduating class of 2005, Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Joanne Simpson, Jobs’ birthmother, can now connect the dots and see that her decision to place her baby boy in an adoptive home helped form him into one of most innovative and charismatic men in the business world. But as a pregnant unmarried graduate student in the 1950’s, she simply had to trust that she was making the best choices available to her for her child’s future.
Jobs’ adoption was not perfectly smooth or easy. As an educated woman, Simpson felt very strongly that her son should be adopted by college graduates. She arranged for a lawyer and his wife to adopt her baby, but they really wanted a girl. When Simpson gave birth to a son, the parents she had chosen for him backed out. Paul and Clara Jobs, who were on a waiting list, received a call that night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They answered: “Of course!”
Unfortunately for Joanne Simpson, this lower middle class couple did not fulfill her vision of the parents she wanted to raise her baby. Clara, an accountant, had never graduated from college, and Paul, a machinist, had never even graduated from high school. Simpson refused to sign the final adoption papers for several months, only relenting when they promised her that they would someday send little Steven Paul Jobs to college. Just like his birthmother, they wanted the very best for their son.
In an interview for New York Times Magazine, Steve Jobs remembers Paul as a “genius with his hands.” In addition to working as a machinist for a laser company, Paul bought cheap junkyard cars, fixed them up and sold them to students for a profit. “That was my college fund,” Jobs says. Asked what he wants to pass on to his children, Jobs answered: “Just to try to be as good a father to them as my father was to me. I think about that every day of my life.”
Since his resignation as the CEO of Apple, Inc. on August 24, 2011, Jobs has been described by many as a visionary, an innovator, a creative force, and even “the world’s magic man.” Among his many achievements, Jobs created the first truly personal computer, pioneered the ipod, iphone, ipad, etc., and helped establish Pixar. This great man began his journey to greatness by starting up a computer company in his parents’ garage. And he got to that garage because his birthmother made the difficult decision to place her son in the home of Paul and Clara Jobs. The rest of the “dots” in Jobs’ life connect back to that point.
by Loves Editor | Featured
“I thought about what I would say to my birth mom if I ever had a chance to meet her. Tears started running down my face and the only words I could come up with were, ‘Thank you for this life that you have given me.’”
by Loves Editor | Featured
“I saw his eyes and —this sounds like such sentimental hogwash, but I’m telling you the truth — in my heart I heard this boy calling to me, saying, ‘Will you love me?’”
