Finding Home

By Tina Reiman

Home... A word that can be a noun, an adjective, a verb, or an adverb, but all suggesting a sense of where one originated and where one belongs. This word can be used to describe a position in a game, instincts in the animal kingdom, a location on a computer screen, or the place where family gathers to support and celebrate one another. However, in our fractured world, filled with addiction, violence, illness, and broken relationships, too many are just wandering, lost, with no home, even when they find a roof over their heads. They look for a sense of belonging in groups and gangs where they hope for acceptance and support. Too many turn to drugs and alcohol to medicate their loneliness, some being drawn into the most sweeping opioid epidemic we have ever seen. What if we could find ways to create a stronger sense of "home" in our circles of influence? What if we learned how to open up the doors of our lives and bring people into the warmth and shelter that they have been looking for? What if we knew how to start conversations that would bring the issues of "finding home" to the forefront and help us find tools to assist those around us in building their own place of belonging? In the wake of losing her twenty-four-year-old son Nicolai to a fentanyl overdose, Tina Reiman began a journey to understand his struggle to find home. This path led her to reexamine what she believed about addiction, parenting, and love. One result was her establishment of a nonprofit dedicated to reducing addiction, homelessness, and suicide among the young men of her community through the coaching of those who understand "home."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644683361

Book preview

Chapter 1

Nicolai’s Story

I first met Nicolai in Ukraine when the Stroganovka Children’s Home Director introduced him to our family as the best child in the orphanage. He was paraded into the room to perform a song and a poem for us, then answered the director’s questions about his favorite things—foods, activities, and preschool subjects. He was all smiles and giggles, shining his little jack-o-lantern smile full of the gaps common to seven-year-old boys. We were assured that Nicolai, known then by his given name Appas, was amazingly capable and independent with great intellect and many friends. While the orphanage staff discouraged us from considering another boy, Vlad, who would become our son Mikhail, they endorsed Nicolai without reservation. In the end our family adopted both boys, believing Mikhail needed our family desperately and that Nicolai had potential that would be swallowed up and lost in the orphanage system. We believed that making Mikhail and Nicolai brothers in our family would allow them to carry some connection and history with them and ease the transition into another culture and language. So, on August 15, 2000, we became the parents of Nicolai Appas and Mikhail Vladislav, and embarked on our family’s greatest adventure and biggest challenge.

I often say that our adoption fell out of the sky on us. My husband, Brock, and I had never discussed or planned on adopting. When friends who had started a ministry to Eastern European orphanages invited us to join them as prayer and logistical support, we were happy to involve ourselves. And when they announced that they were beginning the paperwork process for adoption from Ukraine, we strongly voiced our support to them and then whispered secretly to one another, Better them than us. But through our involvement with this ministry and having our eyes opened to the need, we soon found ourselves joining in with the adoption journey.

It was Brock who first felt the call to adoption. And when he approached me with his sense that God was asking us to open our home to one of these needy children, my response was probably common to godly wives the world over. I said, "When God says something to me about it, I’ll let you know." Frankly, I was pretty sure most of the work of this undertaking would fall on me, and I wasn’t too excited about it. Brock had been in school for most of our marriage securing first his bachelor’s degree, then completing a master’s program, going on to complete his PhD and then taking the coursework necessary to get licensure as a psychologist. I had been juggling our three children and caring for our home while continuing to work part-time as a medical technologist in order to keep health insurance for our family. I had been pacing myself, believing that one day soon Brock would be finished with school and settle into his role as husband and father the way I had pictured it in my head—tossing the ball to our son in the backyard, helping our daughters with their homework, and joining me regularly in the household chores. Adding another kid to the mix was not part of my plan.

So after Brock mentioned adoption for the third or fourth time, stressing that he did not want to push me or talk me into it, I decided I would give God His chance to provide insight and guidance. (Big of me, right?) I sat in my favorite reflective place for half a day inviting God to speak to me…cricket…cricket. Am I the only one who has this experience? God always seems to speak to me when I’m driving in my car, standing in the shower, or on my knees scrubbing a floor. Perhaps I am too guarded in those moments when I see myself face-to-face with the God of the universe. He waits until I have let that guard down, then His voice pierces through, and there is no denying the truth of it. Sitting in my chair, I got nothing. But in the days following, God brought to mind all of the blessings I had enjoyed…easy pregnancies, healthy children, financial resources. I reflected on the fact that Brock was trained in psychology and counseling and that I had been trained as a medical technologist and then certified as a science teacher, and I recognized how many informational and educational resources we had at our disposal. Brock was teaching at a university that would give our children a tuition waiver, so we literally could offer a child a free college education. My arguments began to crumble as I recognized they were mostly a case against moving outside of what had become comfortable for me. Eventually, I agreed to file the initial adoption paperwork and see what happened…

Six months later, Nicolai and Mikhail were living in our home. God used those six months to get my heart on board with His plan. There were, as in every adoption, paperwork snafus and logistical challenges that required extra effort, and I was the one with the schedule flexible enough to attend to them. So, I found myself fighting for this child whom I did not yet know. I imagined him sitting in an orphanage, frail and hungry, longing for the love and care of a family, and it motivated me. This was the beginning of a process of reshaping my heart that would completely break me and then put me back together