Posted August 3, 2003

On July 13, 2003, the Cincinnati Church of Christ celebrated another special service in honor of those who have sacrificed to adopt a child. The welcome was given by Bob and Vicki Craycraft, and their new daughter Tabitha. Their story appears below. BOB: Good morning and welcome to the Sunday morning worship service of the Cincinnati Church of Christ. My name is Bob Craycraft, this is my wife Vicki, and our daughter Tabitha. This morning’s worship service has a special focus – adoption. Not adoption in the sense that all Christians are adopted into God’s family through Jesus Christ, but adoption in the sense of a child who needs parents being adopted by an individual or couple who fulfills those roles for that child. As Vicki and I and others who will follow us this morning share their adoption stories, we hope you’ll be better informed, encouraged, and perhaps even inspired. In James 1:27 it says that “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” And now Vicki will talk about how this Scripture impacted us and helped us in our decision to pursue adopting Tabitha. VICKI: Bob and I were both at a point where we were so aware of how much we’d been blessed by God. Our marriage had grown to a new level; we had great friends who cared about us; we had traveled to places we’d dreamed of seeing; we had our education and solid careers. We were of like-mind about sharing our home and our money with the church, the poor, and the mission fields, but we were still felt a need to do something radical to glorify God. Beth Bruns had visited China and India (with her job) and had bowled me over with her passion for the children she saw living in extreme poverty, many even on the streets. She scared me when she said that I needed to do something to help. (I didn’t know until much later that she prayed every day for a year that Bob and I would become foster parents.) About a year after Beth’s plea, Micki Novak emailed me, asking Bob and I to consider becoming foster parents. I told her that my marriage was the best it had ever been, and I didn’t want to rock the boat. A few months later I saw a poster at the YMCA that moved my heart. There was a great need for foster parents. Around the same time Bob saw a commercial featuring the song “Through the Eyes of an Angel”, asking for foster parents. He was moved to respond. We both came to each other to talk about becoming foster parents. He said, “I have something to talk to you about.” I said, “I have something to talk to you about.” And it was the same something. It was obvious that God’s hand was moving. It took almost a year for us to get certified, which is unusual. We had many hurdles to jump. And if it weren’t for the continual encouragement from the Bruns and others, we would have quit the process. We continued to work for what we knew would be good in God’s eyes, and in late November of 2001, we received our license. Our first baby was 5-day-old Devon. We loved him immediately. Much to our surprise, he was returned to his family (to be raised by his aunt) after only two weeks, and we both were broken-hearted. He took a piece of my heart with him; I missed him every day. It took 5 months for us to get our next placement. Tabitha was delivered to our home on May 9th, 2002. She was 4 ½ months old, and she filled that hole in my heart immediately. In early June of 2002, our social worker told me that she was going to be adoptable. I was ready, but Bob had a lot of soul-searching to do. This had not been our plan; we were just going to help out some families. But God had a bigger plan in mind. On August 1st (2002), after much prayer, we started the paperwork. We officially adopted Tabitha on June 24th of this year (2003). BOB: The thing I marvel over most in this process is how God has changed my heart with respect to children. A few years ago, Eve and Marie McKinnon were at our house for Bible Talk. During the Bible Talk, Marie was acting like a typical kid, and I had been visibly frustrated through all of it. When they were walking out the door, Marie looked at her mom and asked, “Why doesn’t Bob like kids?” I’ve never forgotten that – and I decided right then and there that I wanted that to change – because I knew she was right – I didn’t like kids. At our celebration party two weeks ago, our house was packed with people and their children. Even though the air conditioning was going full bore, the kids were going in and out and leaving the door open. Too many of them were crowded into Tabitha’s playhouse in the playroom (formerly our formal living room). They were taking food and drink into “prohibited places”. Some were running through the house. A couple even ventured upstairs into “major forbidden territory”. And I was downstairs, calmly drinking a diet coke, talking with Micki Novak, who was visiting that weekend from Atlanta. As we talked, she looked around at all of this activity, and said, “If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. Bob, you’ve changed. And all I can say, is that it’s God”. I don’t think that there will ever be a single moment in time what Vicki or I will be a “perfect parent”. But this I do know – we will never be the same as we were before. We’ll never be the same because we’ve adopted Tabitha. And we wouldn’t want it any other way. For more information on HOPE for Children Adoption Programs, visit them at http://hopeforchildren.org or cal 1-800-522-2913