Maybe this was the plan all along ― to die in a loving family and not alone.
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Megan Miller could scarcely believe the thought barreling through her tired mind. Yet there it was, poking quietly yet incessantly amidst the mental fog of just having returned from Ukraine with two new daughters ― after giving birth to her sixth child just three weeks earlier.
Now here she was, at a South Carolina hospital with Elsie, her freshly-adopted two-year-old. The pair had headed straight to the medical facility from the airport; Elsie’s fragile grip on life necessitated it. The girl once known as Rae Ann on Reece’s Rainbow was a scant 14 pounds, despite her toddler age, and size three- to six-months onesies swallowed her emaciated frame.
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“Her poor little eyes were sunken in, and she barely had the strength to sit up,” Miller recalls. “I remember putting newborn socks on her feet at pickup trip, and they just slid right off, with our three-week-old almost bigger than her.”
Doctors noted Elsie’s refeeding syndrome, infections and airway concerns. If a Ukrainian judge hadn’t waived the Miller’s typical 30-day wait, they said, Elsie surely would have passed.
And maybe she still would now, Miller somberly thought. Would Elsie even get a chance to flourish alongside “Perla,” the girl from her orphanage now known as Lottie, whom the Millers had also adopted? Both had Down Syndrome, but Lottie was in far better shape than her new little sister.
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“I knew they were ours. I knew from the beginning,” Miller insists. “I had a sense of peace just coming over me, knowing God was going to take care of them for us and we would be there soon to get them.”
After a few weeks in the hospital, Miller and her husband Christian were indeed there to take Elsie home in late summer of 2021. Besides Lottie, six other little Millers waited for their sister’s arrival: from 11-year-old Bentley down to brand-new Gaines. Death would not be coming for Elsie just then ― not if they had anything to say about it.
Four-year-old Lottie, meanwhile, was undergoing her own baptism-by-family-fire.
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“All while Elsie was getting medical attention, Lottie was learning what being a little girl was all about it,” explained Miller, a 34-year-old stay-at-home mom. “She was learning to love and be loved, and for her that was a very foreign and difficult process.”
Yet Lottie wasn’t the only one being challenged. Miller herself ― despite being an experienced biological and foster mother ― wondered whether she and Christian, a paramedic and National Guardsmen, had unintentionally hurt their biological children by bringing Elsie and Lottie into the fold.
That was certainly the opinion of the “outspokens” when the Millers had announced their double adoption. “It’s selfish to adopt children with so many needs,” they had intimated. “Think of all you’re taking from your real kids.”
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Perhaps they were right. Perhaps Megan and Christian had gotten their wires crossed when they had been inspired by their friends’ Ukraine adoption?
“I remember crying and asking myself if we made the best decision, and if we screwed up our kids’ lives,” Miller admits. “People may have thought I was crazy because I was very open with how I felt, but to be able to know that feeling now ― I share it with new adoptive families. It's ok to feel that way; sometimes it just takes time, and that's what it did for me.”
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Time, yes, alongside watching her biological children bond with her adopted. It was a much more enjoyable experience than when they had traveled home from Ukraine. The airport had been sweltering; Miller was only three weeks postpartum; Elsie was glassy-eyed, drugged and lost; Christian’s pants were falling off as he struggled to put on his belt while wrangling a feral Lottie; his fanny pack containing their money and passports were in danger of her wrath.
“On top of this, Lottie was ripping his mask off, then plucking every single nose and mustache hair,” Miller says. “We looked at each other and thought, ‘Did we just make a mistake?’”
But after a year of hard work, a thousand doctors’ appointments and what feels like a lifetime chauffeuring a gaggle of children, that memory has lost its sharpness. It has been replaced by a lovely montage of Lottie’s hugs and kisses and Elsie’s request for just one more graham cracker ― and another episode of the original Beverly Hillbillies.
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”When it comes to the girls, we have found that there is so much more to teach them than we could have ever imagined,” Miller says. “Every day is about changing their lives, giving them the best chance at doing whatever it is they will learn to love.”
That includes a relationship with their biological families, both of whom Miller found on social media. Lottie is five and Elsie is three now, two thriving packages of growth, trauma leftovers, nurturing, challenges and social butterfly flitting.
“I love it so much, and adopting has made our life so much more intentional in love,” Miller says. “The girls were definitely what we needed ― and because of that, our entire family has a new look on life and love.”
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That, it turns out, was the plan all along.
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Crystal Kupper is a freelance writer specializing in magazines and special projects. Since earning her journalism degree, she has written for clients such as Zondervan, Focus on the Family and the Salvation Army, among many others. |
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REECE'S RAINBOW • www.reecesrainbow.org |
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