Adopting a child brings a sense of belonging

Interview by Claire Brine

WHEN nurse Lucinda Smith left her home in the UK to work in a Christian missionary hospital in Pakistan, she expected to stay in the country for the rest of her life. Inspired by her faith in God, the young nurse wanted to provide medical care to people in need, while sharing the good news about Jesus. But less than a year into her new role, Lucinda was hit by depression. She felt God had left her. And when she made the difficult decision to return home, feelings of failure proved overwhelming.

‘I had taken it for granted that being a Christian missionary would be my life’s work,’ says Lucinda, who now runs a church in Preston along with her husband, Steve. ‘I thought I’d end my days in whichever country I went to. But when Steve and I got to Pakistan, life wasn’t how I imagined it would be.

‘Before I became a missionary, I suppose my thoughts had been along the lines of: “Right, God, I’m doing all this for you and giving up my home, so in return we will have this amazing spiritual relationship.” On an unconscious level, that was the deal I made with him. But the reality was that I was at home a lot with our children, so my nursing was put on hold. And while Steve, who was a surgeon, became quite fluent in Urdu, I couldn’t communicate very well, which meant I wasn’t confident. I began comparing myself with other missionaries, and my self-esteem dropped. I felt isolated and vulnerable. Looking back, I was very hard on myself.

‘In all the difficulties that I was facing, I felt that God didn’t show up for me in the way I expected him to. Every time I tried praying and reading my Bible, it was as though I was hitting a brick wall. Eventually, I became so low that I felt I couldn’t do anything any more. I ended up on anti depressants and continued to take them for the next 10 years.’

In 1997, after spending six years as missionaries in Pakistan, Lucinda and Steve and their three children returned home to the UK. Steve started work as a GP, while Lucinda balanced motherhood with a part-time role as a nurse in a hospice.

‘I loved my new job, but I couldn’t connect my life with all its uncertainty and depression with the hope, love and peace

I saw in the Gospels,’ she says. ‘Although I never stopped going to church, I had a deep sense of disconnection from God. I felt that I’d let him down because of what happened in Pakistan –and I thought that he’d let me down as well.’

Desperate to rebuild her relationship with God, Lucinda turned to some trusted Christians who ran a prayer ministry, and she asked them to pray with her. Together, they asked God for help.

‘My heart was broken,’ Lucinda says. ‘It was as though there was a deep wound in my life which needed healing. And that wound – which God revealed to me – was abandonment. It went back to when I was a child. My parents lived in Mexico and so, at the age of 11, I had flown to boarding school in England. Although I was happy at my school, the notion of spiritual abandonment had somehow become lodged in my brain. It took a long time for me to resolve it.’

Through prayer, Bible reading and the counsel of other Christians, Lucinda was able to address the pain of her abandonment and, slowly, find peace once more in her relationship with God.

‘The issue wasn’t that I went to boarding school – the issue was the lie I had picked up along the way that I had been abandoned,’ she explains. ‘And lies like that can easily take hold when we believe them. But through prayer, I came to understand that I didn’t need to believe that lie any more. I wasn’t abandoned. God says he will never leave us. I decided to stand on the truth that God was always with me, and since then I have found it possible to live a life of peace, joy and love, even amidst the chaos of the world.’

As the years passed and Lucinda became stronger in her faith, a conversation with some missionary friends back in Pakistan began to play on her mind. The friends had revealed that they were adopting a child from China, and Lucinda couldn’t get the thought out of her head that she and Steve should do the same.

‘It seemed absurd, because we weren’t looking to extend our family, but the thought of adoption just wouldn’t go away,’ she says. ‘So Steve and I talked about it and decided to push the door, trusting that God would close it if it wasn’t right.

‘During the adoption process, which took three years, I had a dream in which God told me that we would collect our child on 29 November. It was so clear to me. But the months passed by and nothing happened, so I forgot all about it.

‘Then, in the September of the third year, we received a letter in the post and a small photograph of a little girl, saying that we had finally been matched with a child in China. We were told to go to China and collect Phoebe on 29 November 2004. Suddenly, I remembered my dream.’

In a huge room, surrounded by other adoptive families, Lucinda and Steve were handed their new daughter. Phoebe was just 21 months old.

‘We knew nothing about her, other than that she had been abandoned,’ says Lucinda. ‘For her first three days with us, she was very distressed. She clung on to Steve. But eventually she came to me, and by the time we were ready to fly home a week later, she didn’t want to let either of us out of her sight.’

Lucinda, Steve and their three children were overjoyed to welcome Phoebe into their family. From time to time, as she grew up, she asked questions about her heritage and birth parents, and Lucinda did her best to answer them.

‘Right from the start, we told Phoebe that we didn’t know anything about her birth parents but would always support her if she wanted to search for them,’ she says. ‘I remember how on one occasion when she was quite young and feeling upset, we prayed for her birth mum and dad, asking God to let them know that she was safe and loved. It was a prayer that we prayed a lot together, over the years.’

Adopting a child, Lucinda says, has been one of the greatest joys of her life.

‘Although we didn’t have Phoebe from birth, I loved her instantly. The whole family loved her as much as we loved each other. I felt an enormous sense of needing to protect her and to give her a sense of belonging.

‘And I believe that’s how God the Father feels about us. He’s a Father who adores us, as his children, and roots for us. He won’t ever abandon us.’