For This Child I Prayed

By S. R. Daniel

S. R. Daniel was always ambitious. She started her own gymnastics business at the age of fifteen. Directly after high school, she married her sweetheart, William, and not only continued with her business but also continued her education. Still, there was something missing. Remembering the joy of her own childhood, Sharon knew she wanted kids.

At the time, Sharon and William were very young and had limited financial resources. They were not deterred. Despite the odds, they adopted their first two sons. Their family eventually continued to grow as the happy couple added two African American kids, one biracial daughter, and three more, totaling eight adopted children under one roof.

In the United States, there are over 690,000 children in custody who are eligible for adoption. The path isn’t always easy. Sharon encountered difficulties with the system and foster care and faced trauma of her own. Yet she carried on and now she shares one family’s story of life, love, and tragedy, and the incredibly unique adoption stories of eight amazing kids.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532088827

S. R. Daniel

S. R. Daniel opened and ran her own business as a gymnastics instructor at the age of fifteen. After finishing high school, she continued running her business while pursuing additional education. She now lives with her husband of thirty-four years and five of their children in the Los Angeles area.

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Copyright © 2020 S. R. Daniel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-8881-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8883-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-8882-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020903814

iUniverse rev. date: 03/17/2020

Contents

Chapter 1    The Early Years in Greeley, Colorado

Chapter 2    Leaving Greeley

Chapter 3    William

Chapter 4    Fertility Issues

Chapter 5    Learning about Adoption

Chapter 6    Michael’s Birth

Chapter 7    Michael’s Accident

Chapter 8    Adoption

Chapter 9    Brenda’s Baby

Chapter 10  Madison

Chapter 11  New Experiences

Chapter 12  Moving On

Chapter 13  Londyn

Chapter 14  Tragic Times and Brighter Days

Chapter 15  Taytum

Chapter 16  Foster Care

Chapter 17  Paige and Patton

Chapter 18  Holidays

Chapter 19  Losing John

Chapter 20  The Funeral

Chapter 21  Adoption Party and Londyn’s Training

Chapter 22  Hayley’s Birth Mom

Chapter 23  Share Your Love with the Baby God Has Chosen for You

Afterword

CHAPTER 1

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The Early Years in

Greeley, Colorado

My family moved to Greeley, Colorado, in the summer of 1975, when I was eight years old, into a beautiful house and neighborhood in the suburbs. It was a time when kids played outside until dinner and drank from a water hose. We made friends quickly and had a blast riding bikes and skateboards.

By the time I started middle school, I had long brown hair and thought a lot of myself. I also had a tendency to run my mouth when silence would have been better. On one of those occasions, I turned an entire group of girls against me. One day, I was walking home with my friend Jennifer, and that group of girls caught us in an alley. They circled around me, and one held a knife, threatening to cut my face and hair. I didn’t have the sense to keep my mouth shut. I hurled sarcastic remarks and insults at them. Jennifer, who feared they would hurt me, ran for help. I was scared to walk to school after that. My mom took me and picked me up until the end of sixth grade.

One day we got out of school early, and I was allowed to walk to the local pizza parlor with some friends. While we were eating, that same group of girls showed up. They spat in our pizza and started making threats. It was a big enough scene that the manager called the police and my mother to ensure my safety. This group of girls tormented me at various places for the next six months.

My younger brothers, Ryan and Bradley, and I spent most of the summer with our dad, who lived across town. Our stepbrother and stepsister, David and Kari, spent the entire summer with their mom and our dad, so altogether there were five kids. Our dad and stepmom experienced severe alcohol problems during those years. This meant that we five kids took care of ourselves when we visited. We swam, rode motorcycles, and sneaked into drive-in movies.

David was sixteen and had his driver’s license. Our money was limited, but David would invite a friend, and the two of them would pay for the drive-in movie. The rest of us would lie down under blankets in the back of the car until we were parked. We then would throw the blankets off and take our seats.

We usually had enough money for one large tub of popcorn. The concession workers were kind enough to give us a refill at no charge—free refills weren’t common in those days. I think they all knew we had sneaked into the movies and had no money or supervision. They either liked us or pitied us. Either way, we got lots of popcorn. We always brought our own Pepsi from the house.

I’m pretty sure we saw every drive-in movie that was released every summer. One that sticks in my memory was The Blue Lagoon. At the time—I was thirteen—I thought the movie was scandalous. I also thought that Brooke Shields, who starred in The Blue Lagoon, was the bomb, and I wanted to be her. She also was appearing in ads for Calvin Klein jeans, and I just had to have a pair of those jeans. Money was tight, but I begged my mom, and she finally bought me those coveted Calvin Klein jeans. I thought I was something special when I wore them.

It’s a real miracle we survived those summers. My stepsister, Kari, and I were only six weeks apart in age. We had been best friends even before my dad and her mom broke up two marriages and married each other.

Kari and I looked nothing alike—she was blonde, freckled, and fair and had a stocky build, and I had brown hair and a thinner, muscular body, and I tanned easily—but we decided to tell people we were twins. Kari said her name was Wendy, and I was Tracey. We also said we had a giant pet tarantula named Waldo. No one was allowed to see Waldo. (Funny thing: I’m terrified of spiders.) We continued with this twin story through junior high. When people asked why we looked nothing alike, I would say, Wendy looks like our mom, and I look like our dad.

David was an excellent motorcyclist and did lots of jumps. He made several ramps and would lay a lot of brick to use for his jumps. Kari and I would lie at the end of the bricks to give him incentive to make the jump. We would lie on our backs so we could see the motorcycle go over the top of us. I know now that if he had missed, we would be dead. We were not the brightest humans at that age.

I have always had a love of children and began babysitting when I was little more than a child myself—I took care of a set of six-month-old triplets when I was a sixth grader. They lived nearby, so I could call my mom if I needed help. I also cared for a group of six boys and an infant girl all summer after my seventh-grade year.

Kari said I was the only high school girl she ever knew who had two children’s car seats in her car and would stay home from a date or a girl’s trip to babysit. I knew at the age of thirteen that I wanted a large family.

CHAPTER 2

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Leaving Greeley

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It was a beautiful, early summer day in Greeley, Colorado, in 1982. All our friends were at the movies seeing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the summer’s most talked-about film, but my two younger brothers, Ryan and Bradley, and I were busy packing up our house to move. My mother, Flo Jean, had been a stay-at-home mom for years and had done ironing and sewing for the public to earn a living.

She had a bachelor’s degree in home economics, so once we three kids were all in school, she felt it was time to transition back into her career and get a job in her field. Teaching jobs were very hard to come by in Colorado, especially in Greeley, home of the University of Northern Colorado, which has a long history in teacher education. My mom, being from the Midwest, added those states to her list of options. After months of searching, she found a job fifty miles from where she grew up, in a small farming community.

My mother had promised us that we could see E.T. as soon as we were moved. Little did we know it would be six months before the local theater in that small town would show the movie.

The day we left Greeley was a hard day for all of us. My grandparents were very excited that we would be