Fat Chance Read online

  I consider it a gift that I was able to see the actual moment when Jillian Michaels saw the fruit of all her hard work and smiled. If there was one person whose approval I sought in the end, it was hers.

  Her hands flew to her face, and her eyes lighted up with pride. “Oh. My. Gosh!” she mouthed. I blew kisses her way and then readied myself to finally take the stage.

  THE ONE WHO WAS MEANT TO BE OURS

  Once Mike and I were allowed by the show’s producers to have phone conversations and write letters back and forth, I noticed a theme in his correspondence. Evidently God impressed upon Mike that he and I should consider adoption as a way to expand our family. I’m not really used to hearing audible voices from the heavens, but Mike says on this issue, “God really did speak.” I was more than a little skeptical.

  As soon as I returned home from LA, amid the whirlwind of activity that accompanied returning to normal life after being gone for four months, Mike and I talked further about his adoption idea. That weekend we had a conversation about our possible interest in adoption with our friend Haley, who is part of our church family and who, along with her husband, had recently adopted a child through the Angelic Adoptions agency. Was this really the path we also should take? My heart was definitely growing tender toward the thought.

  The very next day Haley went to the agency to complete her last batch of paperwork and overheard a pregnant woman talking to a counselor about her preferences for the type of family that would adopt her baby. She wanted her son to be part of a Christian family. She wanted him to have an older sibling who was already in the home. She wanted to know that his new grandparents lived close by and that cousins and extended family would be present to help him to grow and mature. She wanted him to have a stay-at-home mom. On and on went her list.

  Haley was still there when the woman left, and she overheard the counselor say to another staff member, “I don’t think we have any families that fit that profile …”

  “I think I know just the one,” Haley said.

  One week after I was home from The Biggest Loser, in addition to implementing my new diet, my new exercise program and my entirely new lease on life, I found myself in the middle of another area of newness for me: I was filling out a profile to become an adoptive parent. Mike and I took that profile, along with a fifteen-hundred-dollar application fee and a boatload of faith, and met with the social worker who had been assigned to our case. An attorney had advised us that if “things didn’t work out” with this particular baby, there were plenty of others in the system, but Mike and I shared a different perspective. We wanted to be screened to be this baby’s parents, not any baby’s parents. Something—or Someone—told us that it was this little boy who was meant to be ours.

  On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in January my husband and I stepped into an attorney’s office and shook hands with Emily, the birth mother of our new son. Despite my swirling thoughts and anxious tummy, as soon as I caught sight of Emily, everything in me relaxed. I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that she was wearing a sweater-set—that, and a genuine, soulful smile.

  When we were asked to submit a profile to the adoption agency, Mike took the lead. I read through it and offered a few suggestions and changes that only a mother’s heart could muster, and then later found out that some of my additions were the very reasons that our baby’s birth mother chose us. Mike was equal parts elated and annoyed. Well, maybe a bit more elated than annoyed.

  I don’t know what I expected we’d find in our baby’s birth mother. A wayward teen? A drug addict? Someone with distant eyes, a sordid past and a hopeless situation on her hands? I don’t know where I picked up my assumptions about the sort of woman who places her baby for adoption, but upon meeting Emily, I was ashamed of my preconceptions. She was so pretty and so … normal. She looked like someone who I’d find sitting next to me at church. Immediately I felt honored to be in her presence, and humbled to have been selected from all of the other profiles she’d reviewed.

  With our attorney looking on, the three of us talked most of the afternoon, asking questions of each other, working hard to give earnest answers in reply. We left the office feeling clueless about the decision she would make, and simultaneously at peace that we had done everything we could do.

  Later that day Mike’s cell phone rang. “She selected you,” our attorney said. “Without reservation, she chose you.” Mike ended the call, turned toward me, and with tears in his eyes said, “She said that we’re ‘the ones,’ honey. We have a baby boy!”

  As Mike and I rushed out the door to get to a dinner party we’d agreed to attend, we had no idea that Emily would have an eventful evening as well. A few hours after she left the attorney’s office, she went into labor with our son. Mike would receive a call the next morning at work to tell him that Jaxon had been born at 7:35 AM.

  WHEN LONG-HELD DREAMS COME TRUE

  When I first called my mom to tell her that Mike and I were thinking about adopting a son, I remember sounding doubtful as the words came off my lips. In my heart of hearts I just wasn’t sure it really would pan out. Maybe Mike hadn’t heard from God. Maybe we were just chasing a wild, unfounded dream. But we were moving forward with the adoption—and fast—and I thought it best that I tell my mom before showing up at the next family dinner with a new baby boy in tow. Despite all of my doubts, my mom was ecstatic over our news. Instead of questioning Mike’s prompting, she asked, “Are you sure God doesn’t want you to adopt twins?”

  I wanted to say, “Easy, woman. One child at a time.” But I knew it would do no good. For years my mom had been on my case to have another child. Or six. Truth be told she would love it if Mike and I had a truckload of little ones, and if I homeschooled each and every kid. But some things just aren’t going to happen, no matter how much harassment occurs.

  For the following few days it was my mom who believed in the adoption dream even when I did not. And when I received word that the adoption was, in fact, going to go through, I knew exactly who I wanted standing by my side when that long-held dream came true.

  It wasn’t just for my sake that my mom accompanied me to pick up Jaxon. I knew how important it was to Emily that this baby would grow up in the presence of extended family, and I wanted her to see firsthand the kind of grandmother he would have. For two days straight Mike and I had been visiting Emily and Jaxon, but Mom had never come along. On one of those visits Emily’s mother was also in the room. I had never met her before, and as I approached her I noticed that her eyes were so puffy from crying that they were nearly swollen shut. Her words to me were kind, but her heart was understandably breaking. She was being asked to welcome a grandbaby into the world and at the same time bid him farewell. I asked if I could give her a hug, and after we embraced I explained to her that I would love that little boy as though I had birthed him myself, every single day of his life.

  She would be there, Emily’s dear mother, on the day when Jaxon was placed in my care. It only furthered my desire to have my own mom there too.

  We arrived at Emily’s room and as I took her in, I noticed that this time hers were the eyes that were nearly swollen shut. It would be more than an hour before she would admit to me that she had changed her mind that very morning about giving up her son, but that after praying for wisdom she determined it was still the right thing to do. “I truly believe that he is your child,” she would say through held-back tears. “I know this baby is yours.”

  En route to the hospital my mom and I stopped at Wal-Mart to purchase a car seat. Why think ahead, I figured, when you can just pack all of life into one little day? It had been seven years since we had had babyish things around the house, and I suddenly felt wobbly and insecure. Would I remember how to do the infant drill?

  As a mother myself, my heart was breaking for her. But I had already fallen in love with this little boy. To think of losing him now was a shuddering thought. Still, I knew what needed to be done. “Would you like some time with him alone
?” I asked, knowing full well that I might be inviting a disastrous turn of events.

  My mom and I stepped into the hall and then made our way to the waiting room, where other mothers held freshly born babies as they sat ready to be released. My stomach flipped over inside of me. Would I be taking home a baby soon too?

  After what seemed hours, a nurse walked toward me, swaddled child in her arms, and said, “Mrs. Hadden? Here is your son.” For the first time since he’d been born I kissed every square inch of my baby, feeling at last like he was mine.

  A PERFECT PLOT IN THE END

  If you’d asked me even three years ago if I would ever adopt a child, my answer would have been no. Not in my wildest dreams. Mike and I had watched our closest friends adopt a child from Vietnam, and it was a long, drawn-out, gut-wrenching experience that cost them a small fortune in fees and wound up devastating them in the end. The baby they were to adopt would never make it into their care.

  Mike and I had supported them every step of the way as they endured that agonizing process, and after countless 4:00 AM phone calls and buckets of tears, there was a bitter taste in my mouth regarding all things adoption.

  In addition to fearing the process itself, I was concerned about issues of the heart. Would I be able to love an adopted child the same as one I had birthed? I remember driving down the road one day during those weeks when God impressed on Mike’s heart the desire to adopt. I was talking to God about how these “impressions” were infringing on my plan. “I want to have another biological baby,” I explained, sure that he was grateful for this helpful clarification.

  I kept driving, waiting for his response.

  Silence. More silence. Still more silence.

  And then this: Have you forgotten that you are adopted?

  In a divine flash of insight I recalled all of the Bible verses I had learned as a kid, testifying to the truth of those words. I had been adopted into the family of God. I had become a joint-heir with Christ, which meant that I had all of the privileges and power that he enjoyed, just as if I were his kin.

  I love you so much, Julie, I sensed God saying. I love you so much that I gave my one and only Son for you, I adopted you, and I call you my own.

  It was truth I needed to hear. And truth I reflected on as I brought Jaxon home. It was as if God were saying, “Go love your new son the same way that I love you.” And that’s exactly what I did. It’s exactly what we did, Mike and Noah and me.

  As my mom and I stepped through my front door, a brand-new baby in my arms, I waded through oohing and aahing friends and family members who had been eagerly awaiting our arrival and made a beeline for my husband. And with as much pride as a man can manifest, he reached down to receive his three-day-old son. “I can’t believe he’s finally ours.” Mike beamed.

  Noah was equally elated. “That baby needs us, and we need him,” Noah said when he first was told that Mike and I would be adopting a child who would become his little brother. The night of Jaxon’s homecoming, after our living room had cleared out and our shoes had come off, Noah ran into his bedroom with a grin on his face. He has always been an avid collector of the brightly colored long-armed monkeys they sell in toy stores and airport kiosks, and as soon as he reappeared with an especially tiny one in hand and laid it beside his brother who was sleeping in our borrowed bassinette, I knew that all things really do come together for good for those who love God. Finally, even if in the most unexpected way, we four were family.

  In that moment I felt filled up—filled up and fully present. It occurred to me that had I won the Season 4 The Biggest Loser title, I never would have met this baby boy. My schedule would have been a tangle of contractual media-tour commitments—appearances on morning talk shows, interviews with magazine editors, conversations with radio-program hosts, shoots for fitness DVDs and more.

  When I burst through the paper photo of the old me and took the stage at the Season 4 finale, the only thing on my mind was winning it all. No sane person on the planet would endure months and months of torture and be content with second place. But now as I stared down at Jaxon’s sweet, sleepy face, I saw how the plot that God had been writing made absolute, perfect sense.

  The Season 4 weigh-in had come down to my teammate Bill and me. As I stepped onto the scale for one final time my heart almost went into overdrive. The numbers rolled around, taunting me while I waited for my total to appear. Seconds later, it did: ninety-seven pounds. Which meant that 44.5 percent of my body was officially gone. Whew. Even as I surveyed the buff and muscular Bill, I felt confident in the fact that I had actually done enough to win.

  My palms were sweaty as I watched Bill take the scale. “Man,” I said to myself, “how did he get so strong?” The numbers started rolling around, along with my stomach, and when they stopped, so did my heart. He needed to lose more than one hundred and forty-eight pounds to take the victory, and based on the bright yellow number that flashed on the screen, it was obvious he had done just that. One hundred and sixty-four pounds, that man lost. He lost a whole me … and then some!

  It wouldn’t be until months later that I would do the math on that finale night. In terms of percentages I had lost the first-place position by a measly eight pounds, which is exactly what Jaxon weighed the day we brought him home. The eight pounds I had begrudged, I now rejoiced in. They’re eight pounds I’m so glad I gained.

  Throughout Scripture God proves that he is a God of numbers. Really. He even has a book in there with that very name—Numbers. God says that he knows his children so well that he counts the number of hairs on their heads. He counts every tear that they cry. He counts the number of days they will live. He counts everything, it seems, and I happen to believe that he counted exactly how many pounds I would drop between my first day on campus and the finale, and that the number I’d wind up losing by would be exactly eight perfect pounds.

  BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT AND STRONG

  Jaxon turned one on January 23, 2009, and in honor of his young life our entire family drove to the Christian counseling center that had made our little addition possible. His birth mother would be there, along with her family and the staff of the center, where Emily now worked. As we walked inside, we noticed banners with first-birthday best wishes, streamers, balloons and a delicious-looking cake complete with an icing-version picture of Jaxon that Mike had snapped the month before.

  In case you’re wondering, I did indulge in a piece of chocolate cake at Jaxon’s first birthday party. But it was a very, very small piece. And I worked out later that day. So there.

  It was a precious time of celebration for us and for our boy—who was surrounded by so many people who adored him with the purest form of love.

  The last time I had seen Emily was when Jaxon was three days old. I was a bundle of nerves on that day, wondering if she would really let him go. Would she keep her commitment? Would she let me see him, touch him, love him as my own?

  But now the tables were turned. As I entered the room with Jaxon in my arms, I noticed tears welling up in her eyes. The expression on her face told me exactly what she had been wondering. Would I really show up? Would I keep my commitment? Would I let her see Jaxon and touch him and love him as though he were hers?

  How amazing it is to me that today Emily—Jaxon’s birth mother—helps women make the same laudable decision that she herself found the courage to make just one year ago.

  In the hospital room all those months ago she had been the one to say, “Isn’t he beautiful and perfect and strong? Hold him—you’ll see what I mean.” But now it was my turn to extend the same tenderness that I had been shown. “Isn’t he beautiful?” I said to her amid the banners and balloons. “Isn’t he perfect and strong? Here, you hold him—you’ll see exactly what I mean.”

  For a moment in time I was able to return the gift that had so graciously been given to me. And something about that experience felt very, very right.

  Jaxon has changed the Hadden home in a thousand ways since his
arrival. The other night Mike asked me, “What are all of the good things that have come from adopting Jaxon?” I thought about it for a second and said with a smile, “Hmm … do they have to be good? I mean, let’s be honest … babies are tough!”

  And it’s true—babies are tough. In the past year I have enjoyed no more than two decent nights’ sleep. I have vacuumed up more Cheerios than should be allowable by law. I have scrounged pennies from underneath couch cushions to fund his hundred-dollar-a-week formula habit. I have felt a perpetual pulling on my leg. I have organized kitchen cabinets at least six times a day. I have wiped tiny fingerprints from every conceivable surface in our home. I have had to secure the dog-food dish so that one especially curious human doesn’t dine on Puppy Chow each night. I have forsaken my beloved Kelly Clarkson CD in favor of one more round of “Wheels on the Bus.” I have increased my laundry duty by five loads a week. I have never finished a conversation. I have changed sixteen thousand dirty diapers. And I have not sat down even once.

  But even in spite of that list—which is far from complete, as you know if you have kids—I wouldn’t trade Jaxon for the world. Because of him I awaken every morning to a bright and cheery smile. Because of him Noah has a brother to share life with. Because of him I hear the two best syllables in the English language no fewer than two hundred times a day—“Ma-maaa!” Because of him I know that God still answers prayers.

  As a parent I thought a lot about what I hoped to teach Jaxon during his first year of life. In that timeframe he would learn to talk and to walk and to sing and to dance. He would learn the names of his family members and the location of his toes. He would learn of God’s love, even if he doesn’t yet fully know all that it means.