Murder, Motherhood, and Miraculous Grace by Debra Moerke & Cindy Lambert

Author:Debra Moerke & Cindy Lambert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Living / Personal Memoirs, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2019-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

“We might adopt the baby? I’m in!” fourteen-year-old Helen said, wiggling with excitement. Helen, the baby-lover. We’d known what her answer would be before we even sat down with our kids to get their opinions on the adoption. Charles and Sadie? We were about to find out.

“It isn’t fair. She wouldn’t let us have Hannah, then she killed her,” Charles said, resentment dripping from his words. “Now we’re going to take care of her new baby?”

I understood my twelve-year-old’s anger. Would he ever be able to see the baby as ours and not hers?

“Karen won’t be allowed to keep this baby, no matter what,” I explained. “Either she’ll spend the rest of her life in prison or she’ll get the death penalty. We didn’t have the power to save Hannah. But if this baby becomes legally ours, we could protect it from Karen and the foster care system.”

I watched his thinking shift. “Karen won’t have anything to do with raising her?” he asked. “It would come home to us right from the hospital? It would be our baby and not hers?”

“That’s right, Charles,” Al assured him. “The baby would be a Moerke, not a Bower.”

“Then yes,” Charles announced.

Sadie, now sixteen, was clearly struggling with the pros and cons. As she mulled over the idea, she seemed hesitant. Finally, she spoke. “I give my approval, too,” she said.

Our son Jason was still stationed in Germany with the air force, and our oldest, Elizabeth, was still away at college. They hadn’t been living at home during our time with Hannah, though they’d been caring and supportive from a distance. They said they’d support us in whatever decision we made.

So now we knew how the Moerkes felt about adopting the baby. But what would Karen say? She hadn’t offered us the option to adopt; she’d only asked us to take guardianship. Unless someone else stepped forward, which didn’t seem likely, Karen would have to choose us as the adoptive parents or relinquish the child to DFS.

I sent Karen a letter telling her we could talk about the baby the next time she was in Casper. I would present the options and leave the outcome in God’s hands.

As days passed, however, I realized with surprise that I still felt conflicted over the matter. Had Al and I made the right decision? Wouldn’t this tie us forever to Hannah’s murderer? Would we be able to celebrate this child without a cloud of grief always hovering? My ache for Hannah haunted me, and I realized that I still had a lot of grieving to do. I cried. I cried in the bathtub and when alone in the car. I cried when Al was at work and the kids were out of the house. I cried often, and I always cried alone. I knew I needed those tears to grieve Hannah, but I had to be selective of when and where I released that grief.

I decided not to discuss this with my local friends. They wanted to

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