Birth Grandparents Panel Discussion

Families Supporting Adoption, an organization sponsored by LDS Family Services with sixty chapters worldwide and more than 3,000 members, is an organization which advocates a positive view of adoption and provides support to birth parents, adoptive families, and others through outreach, legislation, media relations, and education. Annually, Families Supporting Adoption holds a national conference where participants join together for educational classes, leadership training, and activities that celebrate adoption.

We’re talking about different aspects of adoption today, and we have two guests with us today who are sharing their experience with us. We have Christina and Bill Christensen, and they’ve been gracious to join us today to talk a little bit about a sensitive issue that involved their life and their involvement with adoption. Welcome with us today; we’re glad to have you here.

: Thank you.

: Why don’t we start out, just tell us a little bit about how you became involved with the issue of adoption. It’s probably something that you’d heard about but hadn’t become intimately involved with until it touched you personally.

: That’s right. We have four children, and our youngest daughter is kind of a straggler--five years younger than the rest of the crew--and so we were doing life as usual. When our youngest daughter got into high school we had a few problems--nothing we were really very concerned about--we were just working with her. But she choose to be sexually active with her boyfriend, and that started the chain of events that introduced us to adoption.

: So you found out that she was pregnant and was going to have a baby. Did it take her some time to bring this to your attention, or--?

: We actually did not find out from our daughter. That was another traumatic event. The whole thing was a major crisis for our family when it hit, but the way it was hard too. Without going into details, we learned from a friend, and then we needed to approach her, and it was all better once--everything was better once we could talk about it. But we were very fortunate that she was willing to talk with us, and we were lucky to have a lot of resources and guidance at our fingertips when this all broke.

: And as a father, it’s not something that you anticipated that you were going to have to deal with.

: No, no, it was a, it was a big disappointment to find this out, but then we’ve been close enough to, you know, situations like this from other circumstances, other people’s experiences, that we knew immediately that the first course of action was we needed to contact her bishop and bring him into the loop, and we did that, made an appointment and actually visited with him that evening. And then we went through some processes there where he recommended that we visit Family Services, and started that process, but it was a long adjustment emotionally, difficult to deal with, a lot of different emotions run through your feelings and your family, and you feel everything from guilt to “Where did I go wrong?” And then you finally come full circle and realize that this was a decision that our daughter made, not us.

: How did this affect your relationship with your daughter?

: We, she stepped out from being a child to immediately being an adult, and we had to treat her as such. And so, virtually instead of being daddy’s little girl, she was, she stepped out into being our daughter who was an immediate adult, and so it was a bit of a challenge, but we put a lot more responsibility back in her lap as a result of that.

: And then when you went and you spoke with the bishop, what kind of advice, what were some of the things that people told you?

: That people--

: Well, your bishop wouldn’t, advice that he gave you--

: Oh, the bishop was wonderful. He was very loving and very caring, and he knowledgably talked to her and let her know that this would not be her mother’s decision. She had to make a choice. She had some very hard decisions to make, and they would be her decisions, not the birth father’s, not the birth grandmother’s. He was wonderful with her.

: How did she react to that, to having that burden placed on her?

: I think, well, the pregnancy itself was the greatest burden. But the burden, I think, was lifted when she was helped and got that counseling and direction. And I--she’s the type of young woman who is going to do it her way, and she’s very aggressive in how she looks at life, and she decided, her personality, she decided that she would handle this. But she needed the help and the guidance; she could not, without options, she could not have made informed choices, the best for her life.

: What were some of the things that were running through her head at the time? Was she thinking, “Oh, I’m going to keep this baby and raise this baby myself?” Or was that ever an option, or--?

: I don’t think she knew what her options were. You know, when this happens in these situations--in my daughter’s situation, it’s almost a paralyzing thing. You know, they stop and they don’t know, she did not know what the options were, and I don’t think she had really considered that until we had started talking with her. But initially she felt that adoption would be a good choice for her, initially, and actually, she never varied from that. When she made the hard decision to do that, we wondered if she would vacillate, but she never did.

: Now, at the same time, she was thinking about, “What are we going to do with this?” Did the two of you ever think, “Well, we’ll raise the child. You know, we’ll keep this baby in our family and we’ll raise this child ourselves”?

: I, to tell you the truth, you know you’re a parent for thirty years, and here’s this young woman--my main concern was for my daughter, and when she chose the decision to adopt, that took a great pressure off of me, because then I could focus my energies on this young woman who needed me, because I knew that baby would be taken care of. And she, once she decided to adopt out, I think she had just the interests of the baby in mind. I’m not sure that answered your question you directly asked me, but she--

: Well, you did answer my question. The two of you really, it sounds like, she made her decision, she was going to put the baby up for adoption, and so it was really never an issue to say, “Well, we’re going to raise the child.” It sounds like from the beginning that--

: Well, yeah, she had taken a class in high school on child development and just completed that class, one term of it, and she has always been just a wonderful daughter and, you know, done a lot of things together as a family, and I as her father, we get a lot of outings, from camping, fishing, different activities. And she realized, especially from taking the class, the confirmation of realizing that two parents are needed to raise a child, and she realized also that marriage wasn’t an option because they were too young, and so she, that’s why she was leaning strongly towards adoption right from the beginning.

: Now outside of your, you know, immediate family, did your extended family members, did they have input on this, or did you get pressure from others outside to make a decision one way or the other?

: We were very fortunate. We have a very close-knit, very tight extended family. They were all very loving and accepting, and we had no--we didn’t--we had a best-case scenario, I think, in that way.

: That’s fortunate.

: And she was young--I don’t think we mentioned that she was seventeen. She was a junior in high school, and she had many, many cousins, and they were, it was a very loving situation in our family, which put her in a good position. And I know all young women do not have that support system.

: So you were fortunate.

: We were very fortunate.

: How did--you know, this situation, as the pregnancy went on and became, you know, known--how did she react to that? Did she continue in school? Did she, was she, did her social life with her other friends continue? Did a lot of those things change?

: We immediately--yeah, I’ll address that; I dealt with that quite a bit. We immediately realized some difficulties she was having with her peers in the school she attended, so we arranged for her to transfer high schools. And not all of the credits transferred across exactly as we had intended, so we wound having to put her into a summer school after, in order that she could graduate on time with her peer group. But it was a big hassle moving her around from one school to another, but we got it done, and she was pleased with her accomplishments, and the main thing that initially we tried to do is to change her, expose to her that she needed to maybe make some new friends and change some of the habits that she had been in and some of the friends that she had been running with. And she recognized that, and so it was a little bit of a difficult challenge getting her in those schools, but it all worked out.

: She was able to do that. I know, probably in many cases, young girls can’t pull away from that influence, but she was very fortunate to--actually, her best friends kind of disappeared, and she was, attended the LDS support group, Family Services support group, which became a lifeline to her.

: Talk about this one in one second. Just one question I want to kind of interject right here. Along that same line, what was the relationship that she had and that you had with the birth father?

: Again, best-case scenario in that this young man, the birth father, was not in a position to get married. He knew it, he was young, he was her age--well, actually a year older in school. The family, it was a hard family situation, and the mother was getting, his mother was getting, going through a second divorce, and so they were encouraging adoption also. They knew they were not in a position to take care of a child, and so they have remained friends. The birth father and our daughter have remained friends, yet not a lot of contact, but it’s been very good for her.

: It’s made it easier.

: It’s made it--um-hmm.

: And your, I imagine, feelings toward him, you probably didn’t want your daughter to continue with him, I’m assuming.

: She thought initially that they would get married someday out there, but not now. But then we were instructed statistically, about 85 or 90 percent of those young men disappear from a young woman’s life, and that was truly the case. And this point, three years later, it’s, they’re just very distant friends. And they’ll keep in touch occasionally, but that’s it.

: Yeah, you mentioned--

: We think a lot of him. We extended a love towards him; he’s welcome in our home anytime, and that’s just how we feel towards him.

: Then you mentioned that you began attending support groups. What were those, and what did you do, and how do you feel they’ve benefited your situation?

: Family Services, in the agency that we attended, which is the Sandy agency in Utah, have a support group that meets, and this is for birth parents and families, and that’s on Thursday evenings, and anyone’s invited, it’s wonderful. They have panels and discussions and sometimes breakout sessions with the birth grandparents, and separately from the birth parents, and it was really a lifeline, it was really an education process that she went through, and her lifeline too, it was her social lifeline too, and she’s a very social person, so very beneficial.

: And you both attended those?

: We both attended several times. It was good for me as a father to kind of observe what was going on, and also to express some of my emotions and my feelings. And I benefited from it. Also on virtually every time we attended, at least one member of our family was there--it was either some of her older siblings often attended, or Christina and myself.

: And so do you feel that your involvement in this benefited your daughter? I’m assuming there were probably other girls there that didn’t have as much family support. Did you observe that your getting involved in this was helpful to your daughter in her decision and her relationship with you?

: Definitely helpful.

: Absolutely.

: Absolutely. It’s that family unit, and the training and the family bond that we already had established that really helped her. And I know all the young women don’t have that, that advantage. We have been told that not very many girls take advantage of this program, and we’ve also--the support group--but we’ve also been told that we kind of stood out among the other families as being extremely there for her.

: A lot of support. And was that difficult to do? I mean, is there, you know, you’ve got the embarrassment factor that’s, you know, was that hard for you to get the, you know, the whole family, to get behind this?

: Not a bit. Again our family situation comes into play. Because she was a straggler, we brought her home from the hospital in a Christmas stocking, and all the other children were old enough, so everyone parented her, her siblings, as a young infant. And that scenario returned in this scenario, where everyone took care of her. Hard situation, harder, much harder it would have been for us as a family and us as parents if she’d have been an older child, one of the older of the family, then we would have had to deal with the repercussions and the ripples with those younger children.

: But the other siblings were supportive, it sounds like.

: Very much.

: Oh, very supportive. In fact, for the birth we were all there as a family and supported her all the way through it. It was a wonderful feeling of camaraderie that we had as a family.

: And in many situations, a birth mom without a husband could feel very much alone going through a pregnancy and delivery of a baby. How were you able to help her through that process?

: Again her personality comes into play. She, the situation is that she said, “Don’t worry.” She soothed my feelings, she calmed my, and I figure, she was telling me not to worry, that she wasn’t going to worry, that she was going to handle this, and I decided that I was not going to inordinately worry. So she was wonderful to work with, but there, I know she did a lot of her own struggles and a lot of her own emotional work alone, outside of the public and outside of her family. She did go through all those struggles and was very prayerful, but a lot of that was done in private. So we were left to support her without it being too horrendous. That’s unusual, maybe.

: Yeah, there’s many aspects that occur during that time of pregnancy before the birth: some emotional, some physical, some spiritual. You know, you have to take care of yourself so the baby’s healthy and things like that, but we talked about this a little bit briefly, the spiritual growth during that time, you can kind of go one way or the other. How spiritually did your daughter react to the situation? How did, you know, how did her relationship with her Father in Heaven change during this time when she was waiting to deliver a child?

: That’s interesting. I know there’s been research done here at BYU, that are show there is a big gap--research of LDS teenagers--and it has been shown that there is a big gap in their, in some of your youth, in the outward appearance and their inward spirituality. Our daughter seemed to fit in that category--in other words, she was kind of living a double standard--and so this really caught her. And she couldn’t do that anymore; she was caught. And she dealt with that, I think, in a wonderful way. She made excellent choices after making some very, very poor choices. Would you agree with me?

: Oh, yeah, yeah, she was, she was caught. That was it. And she was humbled and felt she was, she needed to make some changes.

: So it was a way to, I mean, she came to the realization that your actions have consequences, and so did that, did you see an increase in her daily prayer, in her scripture study, in her attendance at church?

: Definitely did. She actually moved to graduate, she moved into with her cousin in southern Utah and graduated from the high school down there. This was after the baby was born, and during that time, she really worked with the bishop down there, and I know when I would visit her, she would have her charts of things she needed to be doing, and she made her own check-off list to make sure she was doing it correctly. She wanted to go through a repentance process is what she wanted to do, and we were pleased, because I think with her, she could have gone either way. Had she not made the decision, she could have gone either way. So we did see a huge growth in her spiritually. And again that, I don’t know that she struggled as much as some other youth might have.

: Now at the same time, how did this affect your spiritual progression as parents? I mean, was this--a lot of times we grow the most from our adversity--was this a growth period, or did this kind of set you back?

: For me, I believe it was a growth period, because you realize how absolutely vulnerable you are to the sins of the world, and no one escapes these situations, and even though we have led a good life--we’ve raised our kids, we’ve, you know, pretty much done everything by the book--and yet we still had this problem. So it opened to me that, you know, everyone is exposed to some degree of trial in their lives, and this, this was a real growth experience for me, and I think we benefited from it as a family, we’ve drawn close together. Our kids have--all of our older siblings and children--it’s been a real catalyst for our family to grow tighter together. Our oldest daughter and her fiancé, it functioned as a catalyst for them to decide to get married and evaluate--they were having an extended romance without any ties, and it extended, gave them an opportunity to evaluate their, you know, what’s really important.

: Christina, your response.

: As a birth grandmother now, I can see what was very dark and was a very black time, a crisis time, I can now see that anyone in this situation, this kind of a crisis, can in turn really into a journey of renewal and hope eventually. In our case, for me it brought me closer to my daughter; it’s very frightening as a parent to watch your child leave and walk away from what you believe is important, so when they walk back towards you, and they start to embrace again you and listen to you, that was a plus for me. Another aspect of this is my, is my involvement with Family Services, and the volunteer work that I’ve been able to do since has been a wonderful blessing in my life.

: It’s good to hear. Now during this process, when your daughter was pregnant and she was going to give birth, she had a big decision to make. She was going to place this baby with a family, and she had to choose, and so how involved were you with her on that selection process of where she was, because I’m sure there was a lot of things going through her mind as far as what she wanted for her child--how did that process work?

: I know she had her own criteria, her own list, but we met with our counselor at Family Services, and I was there the day that she received her files of prospective adoptive parents and took them home, and she, we pretty much, she let us share those files, but we did not share our feelings about those files, and she made her own decision separate from us, but we all came down to the same decision. It was inspired, and we knew it was inspired.

: And now, inspiration from the Holy Ghost, you feel your daughter felt that in this decision making?

: Yes, I do. Because we all got the same answer, and that’s not unusual, I don’t, that’s not unusual in the case of adoption through the Church. It happens a lot.

: Not unusual, but a very unique situation. You usually aren’t picking a child for another family. What was that like to be involved in that process?

: It was wonderful. I thought it was unique. We had an opportunity to read several files on what adoptive parents would write concerning, exposing their personalities, what type of parents they would be to this child. It was really kind of fun, I thought, to read the various ones, but it was interesting also to me to, when I read the one that I--while reading it, the Spirit just told me this is it, this is, this is totally the person--but I didn’t share that with anyone. My wife read that--later on, a few weeks later, my wife and I were communicating, and both of us were confirming the same family, but we didn’t share that with our daughter until she had come to us and decided that “I think this is the one I’m leaning towards; do you have an opinion?” And then we--

: And I might then interject that I had an interesting spiritual experience reading the file with the birth, with the adoptive mother. I had a spiritual bond with her, reading her file, that I’ve bonded with her in a--I can’t explain it--but it was a wonderful experience, and when we met them face-to-face, I had the same feeling.

: That connection.

: Uh-huh. Um-hmm.

: Now this is, just to explore this a little further, not necessarily how much money they made or what they did or what their background was, but this was something that you were led to spiritually through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

: Yes, I definitely believe that we were blessed. We had attended in December of 1998 an outreach program in our ward--actually, my husband was not in attendance--but in that outreach presentation we learned all about adoption and what pregnancy. It was less than six weeks later that we found out that our daughter was pregnant, and that was inspired. That program was inspired because it planted the seed in my heart to know what direction, to know that the counsel of the Brethren was, that’s very important, that’s why I do my outreach work now, because I know it can have a tremendous impact and influence, before any knowledge of a pregnancy, before the crisis hits.

: There’s other people out there that are, you know, going to face the same thing that you have.

: Oh, every day.

: And so this selection process was made, everyone felt good about it--spiritually, about it. It got to the point that she came, went to the hospital, and was that an--you know, usually the birth of a baby is an exciting time. Was this exciting, or was it frustrating, or--?

: Oh, wonderful. We had the camera going a mile a minute and taking pictures like crazy, and it was fun. We were able to share a few hours with this infant before, you know, with the whole family was there, and it was just a wonderful experience--everybody got a chance to enjoy this little spirit that just came to us.

: We actually had 48 hours with Jared.

: A little boy.

: Uh-huh, a little boy. And my daughter’s experience through it all was just like typical of her--she handled it very well. We all had a confirmation that this was not our baby, that we were a conduit to have him go to another home, so again we were blessed because it’s, I know it’s sometimes a great struggle that way, but the hospital was wonderful. The placement was difficult for my daughter--there were lots of tears, and there was lots of sobbing--but she had anticipated that, and she did fine.

: So after a 48-hour period, it came the decision time of yes, I’m going to do this, or no, I’m not. It came actually right to this time.

: There’s papers to sign after 48 hours.

: Yeah, and so you’ve signed the papers, and it’s, it’s a done deal. And so that was an emotionally difficult thing to do despite all the preparation coming into this, that point sounds like it was still an emotional point.

: For my daughter, very, very emotional. Not that she knew she, she was changing her mind, but there were, there were lots of tears. It was just--she sobbed for hours that day. For myself, knowing that she was doing the right thing, it was doable. It was very doable. And it was a lot of comfort. We left the baby in the arms of the social worker, and then the adoptive parents came and retrieved that child. My daughter wanted it that way because she didn’t want these adoptive parents to have a memory of her. She knew how she would feel, and she didn’t want to leave them with the memory, or mar their day, and so once she knew, later in the day she got a phone call from our social worker, saying, “That baby is in the arms of its parents.” She was, she settled down, and she was fine. Interesting experience.

: It was very comforting for us--and I believe one of the main reasons that it was comforting to us--is we had an opportunity to meet this young adoptive family. We spent about four hours with them, and just exchanging experiences, and we have so much in common with them, that we felt like there couldn’t be any better family to raise this child, and I don’t think, we never really felt any regret. I’ve had people ask me, you know, “I could never give up my own child or grandchild,” and I, you know, to me it is not a matter of giving it up; it’s a matter of letting someone raise the child, that, you know, we are just purely, you know, blood parents, blood grandparents, but that other family, we have the confirmation, are the family that is, that our Heavenly Father wants to raise that child.

: We believe Jared is, got the best opportunity for growth and development in the home, in the environment that he is in. And that’s important to us, that child is of paramount importance, and its future, its future.

: You’ve been married for how many years?

: 32.

: 32 years, so you, you know, you kind of go through transitions in your life, you’re a wife and then you’re parents and then you’re grandparents, and you have three grandchildren right now and a fourth one on the way, but it’s kind of an interesting situation because you have this kind of new title that many people don’t have called “a birth grandparent,” and that’s kind of a different title than most people have. You’re a grandparent, but a birth grandparent has a different meaning, and that means that there’s a child out there that, you know, is related to you, but is not being raised by your family--you don’t even get to see this child. How has that been? Has that been hard?

: It’s been hard in the way that this child looks like my children, looks like his birth mother and my son. And this was the first, our first grandchild; although our daughter was the youngest of our children, this was our first grandchild, and so we realized as we got pictures and letters and there was communication, I will never forget the fact that he is our blood because we have pictures all over our home now, and that baby looks like his now blood cousins that have been born since, and so it’s an interesting experience. Without the confirmation from the Spirit of how right this was for Jared himself, as that adopted child, it would be very, very hard. It would be very hard.

: An ability--you used to do this a different way many, many years ago, where they didn’t have that connection, and you know, you wouldn’t, you just kind of put this behind you. Has it been beneficial for you to have, I mean, is it hard to have those pictures around and see this little grandson that you don’t have access to?

: It’s, we just so look forward to any communication that we get from the adoptive parents, because this is our grandchild. It’s nothing that we put out of our mind; we’re just thrilled to get communication and see what’s happening in his life.

: I know a lot of parents who adopt children, they don’t know exactly what they want, what you want them to do. How much communication, you know, do you want? I mean, is there a point that you feel comfortable with, that you don’t feel comfortable with? You know, most people say, “Well, we want what’s best for the child as far as that communication so they’re not confused,” but it sounds like we’re seeing pictures in the mail and correspondence or things that you welcome, that you openly want to have.

: It worked out good, the process, the form that the Church has now has worked out well, because we receive letters and communication the first year quite a bit, and that’s when my daughter really needed that connection, but now as she’s moved on and is pursuing a college career, she needs to move on with her life, so we have less communication, and it’s really a good program for her. It’s working out well with her life, and I could always use more as a birth grandmother. I haven’t held that child; I would love to someday hold that child. But pictures and letters, when I can, you know, it’s fine.

: But I get the feeling for you that it hurts just a little bit.

: It hurts. It hurts a little bit; there is a longing to hold that child. Without the comfort of knowing the home that he’s raised in, because I, you know, his future and his day-to-day life is of paramount importance, that he’s happy. My needs are really second to that baby’s needs, so again it’s doable for me, but there is, there is some anguish there, there is some hard, hard things.

: That you have to deal with.

: Uh-huh.

: Now looking back on the situation that you’ve gone through, first let’s talk about, what are some of the things that could have gone better? What advice did you give to Family Services; I mean, you’ve got a lot of experience in this, you’ve been through it, what advice could you give to other people? What are some of the things that you see that maybe could have been handled a little bit better?

: In our scenario, in our case, I really don’t have any suggestions in that way. But I know there are those out there who don’t know what direction to take, and I just think it’s really crucial that they take advantage of Family Services and the resources so those girls know their options, and so that they can make an informed choice and the best choice for themselves. But I believe that our daughter made pretty much the right choices.

: I know with Family Services, they do offer counseling. Have you taken advantage of that?

: We did, and our daughter went in for her post-delivery counseling, and she really was fine, so, but had she needed more counseling, it would have been there for her, very loving, and the resources were there for her if she had needed those.

: Bill, any things that you saw that you, you know, it’s a great thing now you can stand back and be a critic.

: Yeah, I think--

: Go ahead.

: Our situation, as my wife indicated, is turned out wonderfully. I see a lot of heartaches in other people, and I think largely those heartaches are a result of not following the counsel given by Family Services, or given by the prophet. Those heartaches come in many forms, largely just not listening to the counsels, the source of it. And I had a lot of struggles initially with trying to realize this birth father, you know, has wronged my daughter, but then I came to realize that that is a two-edged sword. It’s not just him; it’s my daughter as well. And it, you know, coming to that understanding helped me realize that I, I need to be supportive and loving under the circumstances and not vindictive, and that was a challenge for me to overcome, which this experience has given me.

: So it’s that whole forgiveness deal that we all have to struggle with. And I guess that’s kind of a growth thing, too: you learn a lot from--

: Absolutely.

: From those kinds of things. Now taking a look at the other side of it, what are some of the real positive things that you learned from this experience?

: I learned how important family is in this situation, how the family really comes back to really help and give direction, and if that young woman has had a good family experience, they can really be a savior to her in this case, and she doesn’t have to be lost to the world because in many cases these young women are lost to the world, and they make the same mistakes, they repeat the same mistakes over and over, so I think I came to understand the value of a family, first and foremost.

: That’s interesting.

: My daughter experienced what she thought was true friendship in a number of people, watched that vaporize, and understood the shallow friendships that she really had. And it was really family that stuck by her in her time of need, and I think this is what we eventually hope to have with the adoptive couple, and which I feel we do, is this type of a tight family connection.

: Now from the situation you described, it sounds like all of you have been pretty good players in this and looking at what the best interest was for the child. You know, you’re kind of playing your role, saying, “Okay, what’s best for the baby?” They’re playing their role of what’s best for the baby. Your daughter is playing her role as what’s best for the baby, and you know, the statement that they use is “I’m not giving my baby up; I’m giving him more.” Do you see this as a situation, has it evolved into a situation of a more beneficial for the child?

: Definitely. Definitely. Our daughter was a daddy’s girl, and I think she understood that, that the child, she could not give this baby, she could not be both a mother and a father to this baby. She had that reality pretty much ingrained in her because she had a wonderful daddy, and again that isn’t always the situation. But she, there’s no doubt in her mind that she had given the baby more than what she could have given him. She would tell you that, wouldn’t she?

: Absolutely.

: You know, as members of the Church, we have kind of different perspectives, and many people do, of the eternal perspective, the eternal family. What’s your inner feeling about how this thing’s going to work? You know, you’re not able to be around this child now, but eternity’s a long time; where do you think this thing’s going to fit in?

: You know, we don’t live in an ideal world, and we don’t have ideal families; that’s what we strive for, but we don’t. And I have a testimony that if God’s plan is for families, and we don’t live in an ideal world, and we don’t have ideal families, there has to be a plan for these children that come into the world. It’s part of the Lord’s plan for families, and that’s eternal. That’s how I feel.

: Bill, what, what’s your take?

: Well, I feel each of these personalities that come into the world, our Heavenly Father knows them best. Our daughter was chosen to be put into our family because we would be given the opportunity to give her the best scenario in raising her to deal with the circumstances that she will face in her life. I feel our Heavenly Father knew her weaknesses and placed her with us for that reason, and she, as a result of this point in time, come 180 degrees and doing wonderfully, and it’s all a result of following the counsel given to her.

: In other words, he would--the Lord would know a child coming into a situation, would know what home would be best for him, just as he would have known what home our children should come.

: Just came a different way.

: Um-hmm.

: Right.

: Yeah, totally.

: Now just as a final question, because we’re, we’re running out of time here, you’ve been involved with this now, and since then, working with other people who are in, from various aspects of adoption. What advice do you have to give to other parents who would find themselves in the same situation that you were in three years ago?

: I would say, despite the horrendous feelings and circumstance, is to, to find out what your options are, to really be prayerful about it, but to not consider it as a finality, the black cloud that you’re under, know that there’s a way out for both your daughter and the family and just to be prayerful about what that resolution--the best resolution--might be, and to go about it in the manner, without panic, without, without--no fear, if that’s possible. To try and trust in the Lord, to just be trusting and faithful and…

: Yeah, and I would only add that a young couple, a grandparent couple similar to ourselves, needs to understand that the situation at this point--at that point in time when you find out your daughter is pregnant--it is no longer about your feelings or the daughter’s feelings; it’s about what is the best circumstances possible for that child to be raised under.

: And one other note is to not sweep it under the carpet. It’s happened, it’s real life--deal with it. Love that child, love that birth mother, love those involved in this situation, and help them on a road to repentance, and things can work out.

: Well, thank you very much; I appreciate you sharing your experience, and I’m sure it will be beneficial to many other people.

: Thank you.