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An Unexpected Journey: Whose Am I?
36 Plays5 months ago
Join us as we share our adoption and parenting journeys, lament together, and build a community rooted in encouragement and hope. Your story matters!
For more resources go to: www.whoseami.org
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
We all have a story, and at times we feel we're walking it out alone. Let's pause and think. Join us for honest conversations about adoption and parenting as we lament, encourage, give hope, and explore our true identity and worth in Christ.
Meet Jackie and Aisha
00:00:23
Speaker
Hi, everyone. It's a joy to come to you here in Jackie's
00:00:31
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I don't know. We are the authors of Who's AMI and we think the Lord wants to expand what we're doing through you know our friendship, our sisterhood, our
00:00:52
Speaker
partnership. And we're going to tell you a little bit more about ourselves and how we ended up here and what our heart is behind this effort that we're providing and putting in the Lord's hands. And so
00:01:07
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We're hoping to have real conversations. We talk all the time. We are just changing it up a little bit by putting cameras now in front of us. But we are talking about these things all the time.
Jackie's Missionary Journey
00:01:21
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And so we're inviting you to join us and grab your cup of coffee or your cookies or whatever you want. And we spend a little bit of time together. So we are going to just go ahead and introduce ourselves and tell a little bit about our story.
00:01:36
Speaker
Okay, well, my name is Jackie Darby, and this is such a privilege to be able to talk together and just have real-life conversations about our journey. I know your journey, you're going to talk from the parents' perspective, and I'm going to talk from the adoptee's perspective. But I am a missionary here in Guatemala with my husband, Randall. We've been serving on the mission field for 31 years,
00:02:06
Speaker
And God has opened this huge door for us to be able to co-author a book with Aisha regarding, who's am I? And this is a subject about adoption. We know there's a lot out there about adoption, but we just want to have some real-life conversations. We're not professionals by no means.
00:02:30
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but we can talk about our experience, our personal experience, and our story because of what we both walk through. Not only from the adoptee side, but also from the parent side.
00:02:43
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Yeah.
Aisha's Journey and Friendship with Jackie
00:02:44
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And so I am Aisha De Lopez. I'm Guatemalan and I've lived here all my life. My English is through watching too much cable. So there came something good came out of it. I'm not recommending it, but the Lord redeems all things. So, you know, I watched a lot of cable when I was growing up and go figure Disney channel did something right.
00:03:06
Speaker
Well, your English is great. I always say, I hope my Spanish sounds as great as your English. You flow very well, so I think everybody's going to understand your English just fine. Well, and we've met about, I would say, I don't know, at least 27 years ago, because I was single.
00:03:29
Speaker
when we met. So, you know, it has to be at least 25 years. Yes, because back in that those days were beginning days in Guatemala, and we had a home for orphan and abandoned teenagers, where over the first eight years, 17 teenagers lived with us. And so just during those first eight years, we have a lot of stories to tell.
God's Role in Life Changes
00:03:57
Speaker
But that's how we met because you had a cell group in your home and invited some of the teenagers to come to your cell group. And so that's how we met. You were single, never in a million years. Did we think we would be sitting here today talking about this subject? At all. Our lives have changed tremendously.
00:04:19
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No idea.
Adoption Experience and Guidance
00:04:20
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If you stick around, you'll find out so many stories that the Lord has just demonstrated his power, his love, his provision, his guidance, his tenderness. Each of our stories has so much of God's goodness and fingerprints all over it. And I'm excited to talk about it. So you need to stick around. But just coming around the story of how we join together, join forces,
00:04:48
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uh so yeah i didn't know what what i was doing honestly when i was 18 or 19 and having you know a small group none of us did yeah i didn't know anything about
00:05:01
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know, kids from hard places or trauma or adoption, anything. But I really looked up to you guys and you were like a very real reference of what a sacrificial, missional life looked like. And you opened up your house to us and you demonstrated these
00:05:22
Speaker
fearless acts of just kindness with, you know, through that group of teenagers. And I never knew, you know, the amount of work that went in all of that. But I think it was definitely a stepping stone in my own faith journey. And then lo and behold, I become an adoptive mom years later, twice.
00:05:47
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to a nine-year-old and a six-year-old and I start, you know, sort of seeing, oh my goodness, this is more than I expected. Even though I try to do my homework, it turns out it's not as simple as you think. It's not, you know, you find out your limits real quick. And so it was because Alex, my husband said, you know, call Jackie and say,
00:06:14
Speaker
help. You know, spending time with the girls might be such a good idea. And it turned out to be one of the biggest blessings for our family.
00:06:24
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And so that's how we came to be more than sisters in Christ and good acquaintances, because it happens, you know, and we were at that point at a big church. And so it only allows for so much conversation, whatever. Like, you know each other and we did find each other through the young people that you were mentoring, but.
00:06:44
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the fact that I sought help from you. I really thought that your relationship with my daughters would be a good one, a very beneficial one. Took us to a deeper level. Yes, for sure.
Jackie's Personal Struggles
00:07:01
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And I just want to back up and say that back when we met and we had all those teenagers, I was still processing my journey.
00:07:13
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Even though I was a missionary, God was using us here on the mission field. But so many times in life, you know, we're just walking along and nobody really knows what's going on inside. But
00:07:31
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Just to be vulnerable and honest, I was still working through my issues. And at the same time, taking care of 17 teenagers throughout the first eight years. So I can promise you because of my issues,
00:07:48
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I know that I was not the perfect parent. I had a lot to learn, mainly because I didn't even start having our own biological kids. Wow. And so I was on a journey because
00:08:03
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I myself, I'm an adopted adult child and there was things in my life that the Lord has been working through over the many decades and has been just ministering to my life.
00:08:20
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So the things that we're going to be sharing in this during our time together is real life stuff that we've walked through. And we hope to encourage, we hope to lament together because there's been times that I know
00:08:39
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for myself, there's been hard times. There's been hard times. There's been a lot of tears, maybe tears that nobody has seen, but God's seen them.
Real Conversations on Adoption
00:08:50
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But there's also been great times and times that God has
00:08:57
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Minister to me in places that nobody's even seen and how he's used the church how he's used people like our friendships people like you Aisha who has Just ministered to my life just by being friends being sisters in Christ the body of Christ and so Our hope
00:09:21
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is that we are just able to have real conversations about adoption, about the perspective of children or adult adoptees.
00:09:34
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And bear in mind that we are not professionals, either of us. We're not psychologists. We're not therapists. We're not Bible counselors by any means. But we are women who have walked this road and have walked with others. Exactly. The Lord has allowed us in the past years to volunteer with the Latin American version of Christian Alliance for Orphans.
00:10:02
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And we have seen such beautiful progress with a small group of young, especially women who have come forward and said, I want to process my story of adoption as daughters. And so we've learned so much. So you are not going to have professional advice in this site or in this podcast.
Support and Safe Spaces
00:10:28
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we're hoping to have a window into, we're going to have a commentary, we're going to have informed views. And of course, we've, you know, I've gone through basic trauma, you know, care workshops, and we facilitate a lot of stuff through the ministry that we serve in. But by any means, we don't intend to be a professional voice in certain, and of course, every situation has its own nuance.
00:10:56
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And we want to respect that, but we want to have, well, like the name of the podcast indicates, a space to
00:11:06
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pause and think. Exactly, exactly. And through the support group that we have been able to be a part of, which has been such a huge blessing to my life, especially because God's allowing me to encourage other women that they can, and men too, who have joined in.
00:11:28
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that they can be vulnerable, that we can process together, because we can identify with one another, and it's a space where they can just be real, so through their stories.
00:11:43
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and as they've been vulnerable, sharing what God has done in their hearts and lives, but also their pain that they've walked through. Each person has such a different and unique story, and no story is the same. So we're not going to pretend to say A, B, and C, this is how it is, or just because I feel this way, everybody feels this way. But we want to share openly
00:12:12
Speaker
through other stories that we've heard. And I know both of us have been in counseling, that we've sought out counseling ourselves. I love my therapist. Yes, I've been given such wise counsel as I've journeyed through some of these hard times. And so our heart is simply to share with you, just have simple conversations, real conversations about
00:12:37
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our journey and our story. Yes, definitely. And you'll find in this website a space to share your story. So the intention is for you guys to have a safe spot to land on. And we're praying about what direction to take with your
00:12:58
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participation and you're sharing in your stories and will respect your, you know, your privacy, your boundaries.
Identity in Christ and Community Engagement
00:13:04
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Some of you will want to share more, even if you would like to send pictures or whatever of your story. But we believe that every story has a beautiful, redemptive possibility in it. Yes, for sure. And so we just want to highlight that and we want to we want to say to the world, who am I? I know the answer.
00:13:26
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And maybe you're grappling with the whole concept of identity in Christ because you, like Jackie said, are in the thick of it. You're still working through so many issues. But we are not
00:13:42
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Like we said before, it's not about seeking counseling with us at all. We want to highlight and give you a safe space to share your stories. We love adoption stories and it doesn't have to be neat and tidy because that actually does not exist. So we want to just
00:14:02
Speaker
give you that opportunity. So if you go online to that site that you're seeing pop up right there in the screen, and if you're only listening to us, it's whosemi.org. You'll find there a lot of resources, a recommended reading, other podcasts that we've done. We've been guests in several other podcasts.
00:14:26
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you can share your story. So we're eager to just have, you know, this in the Lord's hands and maybe a community is about to arise. Exactly. Exactly. So we look forward to more conversations and to encourage you and give you hope in the Lord and that you ultimately will come to know whose you are and your identity and worth in Christ.
00:14:55
Speaker
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Pause and Think. For more resources and information, go to WhoseAMI.org.