Chani Barlow: My Life Didn't Turn Out How I Thought
Chani had several life detours including an accident and being unable to have children. She learned to trust God through adoption, foster care, and life.
Episode Discussion Points
How being hit by a car at 15 changed her life dreams of being an Olympic athlete
How a photo of Jesus and a simple saying helped her to keep going
How one phone call from a doctor shattered her dreams for having children
The questions she asked God after finding out she wouldn’t have biological children
How Chantelle grieved for the children she would never have, and how it is totally normal to grieve lost expectations.
What adoption looks like, and the roller-coaster of emotions it brings.
Why waiting in limbo is really hard and the piece of advice that kept her going when they didn’t get picked for adoption.
What it felt like when her son was placed in her arms.
Can adoptive moms have baby blues after adopting a baby?
The things she did to pull out of the blues.
Why it is important to be open and honest when we are struggling.
The dream of having a baby girl that kept recurring, and the different emotions that went with that.
What it is like to be a foster parent.
Find and enjoy the season you are in right now and find the everyday miracles.
Lessons Learned Through Her Trials
Patience--learning to wait for God's timing.
God is there. He cares—even about the little foster care kids she has in her home.
There are miracles everywhere—little messages from God if we can see them.
Let go of the “control” of your life and let God guide you. His path is better. Trust Him.
Remembering and looking back on times in the past when God has helped you through tough situations helps us be okay to trust Him with the issues we are facing today.
Self-care isn’t a luxury it is a necessity to keep us going in a more balanced manner. Some of the things Chani does for self-care are:
A daily devotional where she can connect with God.
Time to meditate and be still and listen. Chani uses the Ten Percent Happier app to help her meditate. https://www.tenpercent.com/
Exercise, moving and getting outside.
Take a break when you need a breather because life is “too much.”
Writing can help you get your thoughts and feelings out—both the positives and the negatives. Writing also helped her see the patterns in her life. Chani used a program https://calliopewritingcoach.com/ to help her write her story into a book.
My Favorite Takeaways
I loved two quotes Chani said that work really well paired together: “Heavenly Father seems to know I grow the most when I’m asked to wait.” She also added to this by saying, "The best way to get there is His way, not mine.” It takes a lot of trust in God to let Him help us navigate the detours in our lives, but it all works out...eventually.
Favorite Bible Verse
Matthew 11:28-30
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Chani loves this verse which the Savior speaks because, “it is an invitation to share that burden together.” And “He can help better than I can do it myself.”
Connect With Chani
#tamarakanderson #storiesofhopeinhardtimes #podcast #hope #God #hardtimes #adoption #fostercare #lifedetour #challenges
Transcription
Chani 0:02
And I remember laying in the bed in the hospital thinking, “There's no point to my life. There really isn't.” Somebody came for my birthday. It was my 16th birthday, and they brought me cakes and they brought me all these lovely things. But somebody brought me a picture of Jesus Christ. It just said, “I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.”
Tamara Anderson 0:35
Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.
Hey, guys, have you started thinking about Mother's Day yet? Every Mother's Day I am looking for a card or something, a gift to give my mom, my sisters, my friends. It's hard for me to sometimes find those gifts. So today I'm so excited to tell you about this booklet, “The Mother's Mite.” It's a perfect, simple, inexpensive gift you can give your friends, your family, your sisters, anyone that you want to share this story with. It will be meaningful. It's not just a little piece of candy that they eat and forget. It's something they can read over and over again. Because so often we as women feel alone, and overwhelmed, and burdened, and like there's so many things weighing upon our shoulders. What I love about this story is that it points us to Jesus Christ in our times of trouble, that He understands us. He loves us, knows what we're going through, and He is more than willing to help us bear that burden. And I love that about this story, that it gives, not only me hope, but it will convey that sense of hope for all of you. So get your copy of it today at tamarakanderson.com/store. you can order one to 1020, however many you want, and we will get those to you so you can get them distributed by Mother's Day. Order your copies today.
After narrowly surviving a terrible auto pedestrian accident as a teenager, my guest today knew that there might be some special purpose to her life, although she's still trying to figure out what that might be. She married her best friend, Keith, when she found out he could sing along to her oldies songs and drop movie quotes into regular conversations. They adopted three active boys and have fostered four additional children with various special needs and backgrounds. She is an author who writes about every day miracles. I'm pleased to present Chantel Barlow. Chani, are you ready to share your story of Hope
Chani 3:15
I am. Thank you for having me.
Tamara Anderson 3:17
Oh, this is gonna be so fun. So one of the interesting icebreaker facts about you is that your thumbs don't line up. One is longer than the other one. How in the world did that happened?
Chani 3:30
I don't know! I have two siblings. One has two long thumbs one has two short and I have one of each. And it's a super strange thing.
Tamara Anderson 3:41
It's one of your superpowers. You have one that you can use for each. That is fun. Oh my goodness. So Chani, your life has been a series of just crazy and amazing incidents that have helped you learn to trust and rely on God. Man, did you learn that very young, right?
Chani 4:07
I did. I did. Starting with my accident, I think was probably the catalyst to…
Tamara Anderson 4:15
How old were you when that happened?
Chani
Unknown Speaker 4:18
It was right before my 16th birthday.
Tamara Anderson 4:21
Oh my goodness. Now describe your life before it, kind of in a nutshell, and how the accident changed your life.
Chani 4:29
Okay. So at about 15 years old, I guess you could describe my life as completely involved in sports. That was what I lived. That's what I breathed. That's what I did every single day. That's what I thought about and I dreamed about. I can remember watching the Olympics. I was, I still am, an avid Olympics fan and I could picture myself on that podium. I would even practice the Star Spangled Banner so that when I got up there I would know all of the words, and I wouldn't look weird in front of the camera. I loved that. That was my goal was to get there and to be a professional athlete. At 15, that was my drive.
My accident happened right before my 16th birthday. I was at school for a school dance. We got there a little bit early. It was just weird standing around with a couple of teachers and nobody was there yet. So we left. I had two other friends with me and we decided we wanted to just go to the store across the street. Problem was there wasn't a crosswalk there. So we decided to just jaywalk across the street. It's been done many times before, right at dusk in the middle of December. We got past the first few lanes of traffic. One of the girls that was with me, we were standing there in that left turn lane. She darted out in front of traffic, and then a car swerved to miss her, and then hit me and my other friend that were standing there. So in a moment, I was hit dead center. I hit off of my arms, which crushed my arms, my elbows, my hands. And I flew up, only to learn later that I had landed on my feet, which crushed everything downwards. My ankle, my heel, my knees, everything went down. So when I woke up on the ground, I knew it was bad, but I didn't know how bad.
Tamara Anderson 6:45
Wow. So what did those next few months and probably years of recovery look like for you, and how did that affect you, and your dreams, and all of that?
Chani 6:58
I remember going to the hospital and trying to just shake it off like any other athletic injury, just walk it off, walk it off. But this wasn't something that I could walk off. I couldn't even walk. And I remember laying in the bed, in the hospital, surrounded by flowers, and balloons, and cards, and all these wonderful things, just thinking, “There's no point to my life. “There really isn't.” At 15, that was my narrow focus. My whole point of my life had been sports and achievement. Now that I didn't have that, the outlook wasn't so good. So I didn't see a point. I remember turning people away from the hospital room, pretending to be asleep. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to be around… Whew, I'm getting emotional.
Somebody came for my birthday. It was my 16th birthday. They brought me cakes, and they brought me all these lovely things. But somebody brought me a picture of Jesus Christ. It's one that I'd seen before. I'd seen it in primary classes in church. It said, “I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.” I'd heard it before. But I felt it. For the very first time in my life, I felt it. I knew why all the primary teachers and church teachers would cry when they talked about the Savior, because I felt it. I felt like somebody knew me, and understood the pain that I was in. The physical pain, the emotional pain, and just how I viewed myself, how low I was, but somebody understood. Looking back, that was such a changing point, a turning point for me in my life. I knew that I wasn't alone, that every time that I had been to church, that it wasn't just something that people say to feel good, that this was real. That there really was a Heavenly Father who cared about me.
Tamara Anderson 9:23
Did you keep that little picture up so that you could look at it in the hospital room? How did that those feelings come? Did you have to remind yourself of it regularly? What did you do?
Chani 9:39
I did, I kept it. I still have it. It came in a plastic wrap and it's almost too special to take out of the plastic. It's still in the plastic wrap. But I take it out and I look at it. In the hospital, I kept it in my bed. I don't know how the nurses thought about that. But I kept it under my pillow in my bed. I'd pull it out in secret and look at it and think about it. But yeah, it helped me to see other things too, that people had brought other pictures and flowers and, see the intent, and the meaning behind those, and to feel the gratitude that people had taken the time to do that for me.
Tamara Anderson 10:27
Wow, that's amazing that having a picture of the Savior with those poignant words was able to shift your perspective from, “My life is over,” to, “I can believe Him. He knows what I'm going through. And I can trust that he's got this figured out.”
Chani 10:47
It sounds strange. It sounds like a good plot point in a movie. I didn't plan it that way. I think Heavenly Father knew that I needed probably a little bit more forceful hit over the head, literally. That my life needed a little bit of a course correction. And that was the way to do it.
Tamara Anderson 11:12
Wow. That's pretty powerful. We wish we could say this was the only hurdle that you've had to get over. So take us to marriage and family.
Chani 11:30
So, how many years later? Let me think. So that was my 16th birthday. About 20 years old, four years later, I met my husband. I met him at work and I knew that we were supposed to be together. We were just a perfect match in every way. We still are. He came from a big family. When we talked about what we wanted to do and what our future life would look like, of course, we talked about kids. He would always say, “I want a fair amount of kids.” Whenever I asked him a number, “I want a fair amount.” I was okay with that. We got married, and we wanted to have a family right away. It didn't happen, and it didn't happen. I went to the doctor a ways after we had been married, and I brought it up. She asked the technical questions, and we began doing tests, and test, after test, after test. We found out that I have some issues with infertility. But we did some more tests. We found out my husband has issues with infertility. So between the two of us, it's a double whammy of infertility. So we are not able to have biological children of our own. I still remember that phone call when the doctor called us. She actually called me at work. So I was good on the phone. But I remember going back to the break room and just crushed, just crushed. This was something that is a good thing. We want a family, we want to raise children, and we want to them to be good people, and to teach them good things. But it wasn't going to happen. No matter how hard we tried, it wasn't going to happen.
Tamara Anderson 13:30
So it almost sounds like a repetition of the lesson learned in the accident. You have a dream, you have what you envision your life is going to be like, and then it’s taken from you. This same scenario playing over. Was it worse, the second time around, or just different?
Chani 13:49
It was different. In some ways worse, but different. Different because I did have that experience with my accident under my belt. I did trust that Heavenly Father was aware of me and knew about my situation, but I just didn't understand though. It felt like had I done something wrong? Was this a punishment?” Was this something that I wasn't doing right and not even something that I was doing wrong but something that I just wasn't doing perfectly? And I questioned that. I didn't question his existence, but I questioned, “Why would you do that to me? Isn't this what you want, is for us to have families and be happy?” And it didn't happen.
Tamara Anderson 14:43
So talk me through what you were thinking, what you were feeling, and your process that eventually led you to adoption, because I'm sure that was a bumpy, rocky road.
Chani 14:55
It was. An adoption is a roller coaster. I think the process that got us there. I have infertility issues. My husband has infertility issues. So some of the options out there weren't options for us. So we skipped a lot of the fertility treatments and that sort of thing. We figured that in order for us to have a child, we would need, basically, a donor woman and a donor, which is what adoption is anyways. So that was a fairly easy transition for us. It did take us a while to come around to the idea of adoption. I think, for people who suffer from infertility, they have to sort of grieve those children that they had in their mind, those biological children that would never come. And it took us a few years to do that, before we finally submitted our paperwork and got that ball rolling.
Tamara Anderson 16:03
Wow. It's interesting that you mentioned the grieving process, because I think that's something that often we associate grief with, is death. But there can also be grief associated with expectations that we thought were going to happen. And then we don't get them. Yeah. So I think it's so important that you pointed out that you can grieve things like, “I'm going to have a family, I'm going to have biological children,” and then finding out it's not going to happen. It's totally normal to go through the anger, the denial, the grief, the sadness, depression, almost, and then finally come around to peace, and it doesn't happen right away. It took a couple of years, right?
Chani 16:52
It took a couple years. It is a process, just like death. It is a process. It's a whole range of emotions that you go through. I remember, I don't know if I told you about this before, but I remember this vision in my head of being in a hospital room and having just given birth. I don't know, I've seen probably too many movies where there's a woman and she's so beautiful. And the husband comes in and he sees how beautiful she is and just the sacrifices that she's made. And there's this newborn child lying next to her and he just falls in love with her all over again. And that scene for whatever reason, still makes me emotional, because I will never have that. I will never have that. And so it's almost like I have to put that to rest, and set it aside, and say, “That's okay, that I won't ever experience that particular scene. Because I have other scenes that are opportunities for me.”
Tamara Anderson 17:59
Wow. So talk me through adoption, because I have several friends who've been through this process. I know that it is not easy. I love how you described it as a roller coaster. Because from what I hear, it really, really is. Talk me through what adoption looks like.
Chani 18:17
Okay, so adoption can take on a whole bunch of different forms. Depends on what type of adoption you do, if it's international, or somewhere local, or if you go through an attorney, or an agency. We chose an agency. Back in the day, we went through a place called the LDS Family Services for my first two children. Most agencies will review your background, they'll do background checks, they'll go through safety checks, they usually do all sorts of interviews to see, emotionally, if you are ready for the changes that adoption will bring. They'll look at your finances. They'll look at all sorts of different aspects of your life. That's a process in and of itself. But when they do that, then they give you the go ahead and you're approved for adoption.
Now each agency's different. Some of them publish things online, little profiles, scrapbooks of sorts for your family, and people can flip through and look through them. Other people encouraged sort of almost a networking perspective, like know somebody, who knows somebody, who knows somebody, send something out with your Christmas cards type of thing. Back then, this was the year 2005, roughly. So the internet, adoption.com, was just brand new. Now it's the biggest website for adoption related things. But we put our profile on adoption.com. We made an actual, physical scrapbook of sorts of our family. The agency began, I guess, marketing us to birth mothers and people who approached them that had unplanned pregnancies. So that's kind of what it looked like back then. And from there, we kind of just waited to see what happened.
Tamara Anderson 20:24
Talk to me about the waiting process. Because often, I tell you, being in limbo is so hard. And I don't know why it is. Maybe it's because you're just waiting for an event, or something to happen to trigger the next way you envision your life. Limbo is hard. So talk to me about waiting.
Chani 20:48
Limbo is hard. You hear all sorts of different perspectives as you go through your paperwork. There's classes associated with it. You hear people say, “Oh, I submitted my paperwork. Then the next day, we got a phone call.” Or its, “Oh, I submitted my paperwork, and then a year and a half later, we got a phone call.” So we don't know. We don't know. I still went to work every day, my husband still went to work every day. Every time that phone rang, we didn't know. It could have been changed in a minute. And we didn't know. That's kind of how it was, for about a year. We had a couple close calls, we had some, “possible scenarios,” is what they called them, I guess, where we had been narrowed down into a pool of just a few families that they were choosing from and they would let us know that we were one of just a few. Then we would get a phone call saying, “Oh, didn't make the cut.” This baby was going to another family. And that's, you know, great. I'm happy for that family. But you know, it's hard to still keep moving on and knowing that you were that close, but didn't make the cut there.
Tamara Anderson 22:08
What would you do to motivate yourself to keep going after a blow like that? Because I can only imagine that, it probably was so challenging to get that phone call. But nope, you're not it. What did you do?
Chani 22:26
I held tight to one of the pieces of advice by the adoption workers, and that is that the right child ends up in the right home, at the right time. And trusting in Heavenly Father, and in God's plan for me. If that wasn't the right child, and my home wasn’t right for that child, then it must not have been right. I still hold on to that, must not have been us. There was somewhere else that that child needed to go. I had an experience in the waiting process where we were given an opportunity for a special needs child. This was severe, severe special needs child, multiple disabilities and expectations. They would have had cystic fibrosis. They would have been a little person. They would’ve been, I don't remember, something with the breathing. We agreed. We said, “Yeah, please consider us.” But as it got down, and they pared it down to, I think, two or three families. We just had this feeling that it wasn’t us. It had nothing to do with the child's circumstances or their needs. It was just that we weren't right. So we withdrew our names from that, knowing that this child had to go to somebody else in that pool.
Tamara Anderson 23:52
Wow. So the adoption process really is a matter of, not only the parent trying to figure out, “Where does my baby belong?” But it's also of you feeling out, “Is this child right for me?”
Chani 24:09
Oh, absolutely. You were always given a choice. You can even narrow that choice down, if you would like a specific gender, or race, or special needs, or anything like that.
Tamara Anderson 24:23
Wow, that's really cool. So how long did the process take for you before you got your first baby?
Chani 24:31
So our process for my first child took almost a year to the date that we were approved for adoption. Like I said, we had some close calls, but it wasn't until I got a phone call one night. We had just been to a family reunion, and were just getting back. These were the days where we didn't have cell phones. So then we stopped at my parent’s house. My parents were with us and we dropped them off. There were messages on my parent’s voicemails at home. While we were at my parent’s house, we got these voicemails that were from our caseworker. It says, “Call me. Call me immediately. Call me right now.”
I’m standing in my parents kitchen and I call the caseworker back and she says, “What are you doing tomorrow?” I'm thinking, “I'm working.” “What are you doing tomorrow? Do you want to meet me at the hospital? Your son is there.” I started crying. The paperwork had already been signed. One of my greatest fears was that I would get into the hospital, or our family would be chosen, and they would change their mind. But I think Heavenly Father knew that, at least for this first go around. Everything was done. All I had to do was say yes or no. This is about nine o'clock at night on a Monday. And she says, “Meet me there first thing in the morning, he's ready to go.” So we did. We ran to Walmart. I hadn't prepared a nursery. It was too hard to walk by an empty nursery every day. So we pretty much cleared the shelves at Walmart with what the baby needed. I don't know what a baby needs. Let's just grab everything in the baby aisle. And so nine o'clock the next morning, I had a son in my arms. Oh
Tamara Anderson 26:37
Oh my goodness. Talk me through getting that baby placed in your arms. What was that like?
Chani 26:43
Surreal, absolutely surreal. The process, at least for us, looked like this: They brought us to an empty hospital room. They brought in one paper, one last paper to sign that said that you agree to this, and that you agree to care for this child. Then they wheel in one of those little food cart looking things with the baby on top, and they hand him right over to me. His hair was wet. They tried to slick it down and style it all like a gentleman and said, “Here we go, mom,” They called me mom. “Here you go, mom.” And I held him. That moment that I wanted in the hospital, that moment that I had dreamed about, having biological children of my own, this was so, so good. So comparable to anything like that. I still have pictures of my husband and I, and we're looking at him for the first time, and it is so surreal. Just amazing. I can't even put words to it.
Tamara Anderson 28:01
Oh, Chani, what a sweet, sweet experience. We're going to take a quick break while we dry our tears here. But when we get back we'll have Chani tell us a little bit more about what the upcoming years after this held for her and her family. Stay tuned.
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And we're back. I've been talking to Chantel Barlow about her amazing journey, not only having a bad accident happen to her when she was a 15 year old and learning to rely on God and His wisdom, but then when she and her husband were unable to have children, and going through the adoption process and what that looked like. We're just to the point in the story where they had their first baby placed in their arms, their sweet little son. Now we're to the point where, Chani, tell me a little bit about what these next few years looked like, the challenges as you had one, but you added more to your family, and what that looked like, the challenges, and the obstacles, and all of that.
Chani 30:41
So when I had my baby, um, where to start? I brought him home from the hospital. I had always promised myself and my husband, we talked about it that if the adoption did go through, if at all possible, I wanted to be at home, raising my children. I didn't want to try to balance work and home after all this stuff that we had gone through to have children. For us, that was what worked best. I had just started a new job. I called them right away. I had actually not even started the job, I'd done the hiring process I got my name tag, my badge, and everything, and I was about to start. I called them back and said, “I'm so sorry, you remember how I told you that we're adopting? Well, I'm a mom now.” So I quit my job.
I was at home and it felt like I was babysitting. It felt like I was babysitting a niece or a nephew for a little bit. It didn't feel like this child was mine. Not immediately, anyways. I still loved him. I knew it was right. But the transition to actually feeling like a mom took a little bit. He had a few medical complications right off the bat. As a first time Mom, I didn't understand that they were actually complications, that they weren't normal. He would spit up often. My thought, “Babies spit up, that's what they do.” But it kept getting worse, and more, and more, and, not to be disgusting, but it would go across the room. I would set up towels behind me whenever I would feed him or burp him. I went into the doctor one day and the doctor took a look at him and said, “This baby needs help,” and sent me on to the hospital. He had a blockage of sorts in his digestive system that was pushing all the food back up. I think he was about six months. No, he wasn't that old. Just a few months old at the time. So he had his first surgery then. I think that was sort of my first realization of what parenthood really is like, the worry, that concern, that helplessness. Just honestly, the complete reliance on Heavenly Father for knowledge that I didn't have. That was challenging. But after the surgery, we were great. There were no problems at all after that. That was our first introduction to parenthood.
Tamara Anderson 33:25
Wonderful. Now tell me and this, this may show a little bit of how little I know about adoption. But do you just keep your name on the list after you've adopted a baby? What does that process look like? Do you have to completely resubmit to adopt a second child? What does that look like?
Chani 33:46
Everything starts all over again if you want to adopt again. I wish. We asked that, if we could keep our names on file. They said, “Well, we can keep your name here. But you still have to start all over with the paperwork.” So we didn't start paperwork immediately. My son was about one year old when we decided that it might be time to start the paperwork again. About that time, I had a dream of a little girl in my head, and it was so real. It was so real. I knew exactly what she looked like. I knew what it felt like to hold her. I knew she was supposed to be ours. So I had this hope. I had this burst of adrenaline that she's the one, so we submitted our paperwork. We went through the process again, and nothing happened. Nothing happened. One of the trends that you'll see in adoption is that the families without children generally get placed with a child before families that already have children. So since we already had a son, I think a lot of people maybe overlooked us, completely understandable, and placed with people who didn't have children yet. so we waited. We waited a long time. We had a couple close calls. We had a woman who had chosen us and ended up having a miscarriage. It was super early on, but she miscarried. So it feels like I miscarried, I guess, in some way, too. I went through all those emotions. But it was about five years later that we didn't hear anything.
Tamara Anderson 35:46
Limbo again? Oh, my goodness. Wow. Did you just keep clinging to that dream, that hope, that there were more children out there for you? What were you thinking? Were you considering foster care at this point? What were you thinking?
Chani 36:08
You know, we had considered foster care. We even went to a couple of the orientations where they just educate you on the process, but it just didn't feel right at the time. So we just kept plugging forward with the adoption. Every year, we’d renew our home study, and, yep, things are the same. Every year, we'd renew our home study. In the meantime, my husband got accepted into law school. We pursued that. In a lot of ways, I'm almost grateful that the wait was as long as it was, because I can't imagine dealing with an adoption process in the middle of law school, in the middle of everything else that we had going on. It wasn't until after we graduated law school. We moved to Las Vegas. We were playing the tourist for two weeks there in Las Vegas, and walking in the Coca Cola store downtown. That's when the phone rang.
Tamara Anderson 37:07
Wow. And did you get your little girl?
Unknown Speaker 37:11
I didn't. I didn't, no. Nope. So we got a phone call from the agency that we worked with before. A woman identified herself, asking for us and wondering if this was still our phone number. She says, “The birth mother of your first son is pregnant again, years later, and she wants to know if you would be willing to adopt your son's sibling.” They said, “No pressure or anything, but she has an abortion scheduled for tomorrow. You tell us what you want to do. But we need an answer fairly soon.” I'm standing in the Coca Cola store saying, “No, no, no, please, please, please tell her to cancel the appointment. We're more than willing to adopt.”
So we go about our life, and that's early in her pregnancy. We were afraid about a miscarriage. We were afraid about her changing her mind. She called us, the birth mom called us a few months later, when she found out the gender. She says, “You're gonna have a boy. Another boy.” I thought, “Oh, that's wonderful. That's not the right gender though. Must not be the one. This must not go through. Something's gonna happen, because I know it's supposed to be a girl.” But time went on, and she went into labor, and she called us and said, “Get in the car and drive up to Salt Lake.” We did, and it was a boy. Kind of some crazy things in the hospital when the birth father showed up. But it went through, and it went through just fine. It was nuts. But it went through.
Tamara Anderson 39:09
Wow. So now you have your two little boys.
Chani 39:12
So I have two little boys.
Tamara Anderson 39:15
Sweet. That's wonderful. Now, I can only imagine the pressures, and the stress, to not only parent, but all the traumatic waiting and all of that. How are you doing emotionally, at this point?
Chani 39:35
If I'm honest, after each baby, I went through a little bit of a depression. I never realized that that could happen for an adoptive parent, sort of a baby blues phase. Looking back, I see it with my first one. I reason that, “Oh, it's just the transition to being a new mom. It's not having the job. It's just the transition to be a stay at home parent.” With my second, I noticed it more with that second one, that I was I was feeling down, and depressed a little bit. I should be happy. We waited years for this to go through and why am I not just exhilarated, shouting from a mountaintop? But I was feeling kind of down. I think it's kind of that after Christmas feeling, just that happy, but kind of bummed. I can't describe it. There’s sort of a bummer aspect, after an adoption happens. It's true. Coupled with the fact that I'm a perfectionist anyways, and I'm not doing things perfectly as a new mom, I just sort of got down a little bit. So what I would do is I would take long walks. I would take long, long walks. That helped clear my head. I did end up seeing a therapist at the time. We talked about just different things, diet wise, and exercise wise, that would help. I did that. That's what helped me at the time, then.
Tamara Anderson 41:21
Oh, so those are actually some really good tips for anybody who's struggling, or maybe is having a down period of their life. Diet, exercise, therapist, someone to talk to, whether it's an official counselor, or sometimes it's even a friend, that you're just completely open and honest with that can really help you if you're feeling down and discouraged. I think probably part of it, too, I would say, is lack of sleep. New moms, you know, something about not getting enough sleep is just overwhelming.
Chani 42:01
It messes with your mental faculties for sure. I remember friends that would reach out to me and ask, “How are you doing? How is it going?” I would put on the face. I would put on just this fake facade this, “No, I'm fine. Things are great.” I wish I would have said, “You know, today's kind of an off day.” I wish I would have been more open because I think keeping that inside is what simmered inside of me and made things worse, by not talking about them. I didn't want to bring anybody else down. When they ask how you're doing, you don't want to hear the worst parts of your life. But I do wish I had answered more honestly, though.
Tamara Anderson 42:49
Well, it's interesting because often at those times, we're praying to God, and we're saying, “Please help me. I'm really not feeling myself. I'm struggling.” And yet, He sends somebody to help us, and we're like, “We’re good!” Sometimes I wonder if God is up there just kind of pounding His head going, “Hello! I’m trying to help you!”
Chani 43:15
I’m sure He feels that way with me. I'm the stubborn one. And He knows that.
Tamara Anderson 43:21
But the cool thing is that He just takes us where we are, and He loves us as we are, and He’ll keep trying to help us as long as we keep asking. Right? Yeah. Oh my goodness. So talk me through your third baby, and then the decision to become foster parents. I don't know what order that came in. So you'll have to clarify.
Chani 43:47
So we went on about our life. We were a family of four it. That's perfect to get on amusement park rides, that's perfect for hotel rooms. We were a family of four. I began to doubt that dream that I had about that little girl. For a while, I wondered if it was just a wish, or a fancy, or something that I had convinced myself about. I went to, it was a women's church activity. We were doing a dinner at the church and there was a speaker there. I remember sitting there. I remember what the table looked like, and the candles that they had there. I just remember having this feeling, “Find her.” I didn't hear an audible word, but just this feeling that I needed to find her. I'm thinking, “Find who? I don't even know who you're talking about.” Everything kind of blurred, the speaker, the other women, and I had this picture in my head again of this little girl, “Find her.”
I excused myself from the table and I went in the bathroom and I got mad. I got really mad. We're a family of four. No, we're happy. We're good. I don't want to go through adoption again. I don't want to do this. I'm sort of a reactor that way. I've described myself as the human version of Mentos and Diet Coke. I react. So I went for a drive. I got in the car, and I just started driving. “Heavenly Father, I don't want to do this again. I don't want to add to my family. I'm not ready for this.” It would only have been, maybe a year, not even that, since we adopted our second child. “I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. You're the one who messed up, you sent me a boy instead of a girl.” And that's how I went on for that evening. That's kind of what simmered inside of me for a few days before I finally got up the guts to talk to my husband. I said, “I wonder, do you think we need to start the process again?” We were up against a brick wall, though. The agency that we had gone with before no longer handled the legal side of adoptions. So we were going to have to start completely from scratch, researching agencies, and now that we're in Nevada, new laws, state laws, and requirements. So that's what it looked like. Finally, I got around to the idea, kind of like a tight pair of pants, that you stretch in them for a little bit like, “Okay, let's at least look into it.” I think we did a couple of foster orientations then, too, still didn't feel right to do foster care. So we did, we found an agency here, a Christian based agency, very similar to the one that we'd done before. We talked it over with them, submitted our paperwork, and it makes it sound like an easy process. It wasn't super easy. But we'd been through it a couple times. So by the third go around, it wasn't difficult at all. And we submitted.
Tamara Anderson 47:17
And how did you get her? Did you find her? You got to tell me the end of the story.
Chani 47:24
That's what my book is about. That's all. You have to find out that way. But actually, so we submitted our paperwork. A few months later, we get a phone call. What they do at this agency, is they tell you the entire situation that they know about this child. We know that this child is this race, we know that these are their test scores, their Apgar scores, or whatever in the hospital. This is how their health is, this is how that mom and dad are doing. They tell you all of that, except for the gender, because they want you to make a decision based on facts, not on just this longing for this little girl. So they give us the scenario of this little child that had been born. We talked about it and we prayed about it. We felt like, “Yeah, this is good. This is what we need to do.” I could have marked on my paperwork that we were only accepting girls. I could have done that. I remember hovering my pen over that part of the paperwork. I could have circled it and I didn't feel like I needed to. I felt like Heavenly Father, if He's gonna send me my little girl that He would know that I didn't need to mark. So when they finally told us that, “Congratulations, you have a boy.” We went, “Are you kidding me?” We're still grateful for this boy. But does this mean another adoption is out there? What is going on? So we have three boys. That's what my life looks like right now. It's three boys. No girls at all.
Tamara Anderson 49:08
Oh, my goodness. But since then you have become foster parents.
Chani 49:13
Yep, still continuing that search of find her. We did with the foster care stuff. We narrowed it down to little girls. We've had one little boy and three girls with us so far.
Tamara Anderson 49:29
Wow. And what is it like to be a foster parent, because I know there's emotional challenges with that as well?
Chani 49:37
There is. In a lot of ways, it's very similar to adoption, at least the process to become a foster parent. There's a few more guidelines, a little bit more rigorous background checks, and things like that, but very similar process wise to be a licensed foster parent. But once you get there, you have far less say in a lot of things. I wasn't ready for that. You can say that, “Yes, I will accept this child into my home.” You have every say in that. But when it comes to their treatment, their day to day, the court determines a lot of that, the biological parents determine a lot of that, the caseworkers determine that. So in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm a babysitter again. But it's an amazing process. It really is.
Tamara Anderson 50:40
Wow. So what are the resounding lessons that you have learned through all your ups and downs of going through the adoption process, of having the accident? What lessons do you feel God has taught you through this process?
Chani 50:58
And still teaching me.
Tamara Anderson 50:59
And still teaching you? Yes, of course.
Chani 51:02
Well, teaching me, the patience one is a big thing. I think Heavenly Father knows that I seem to grow the most when I'm asked to wait. And so naturally, the kids coming into my home, I have to wait for them. I think that patience helps me appreciate them. It helps me trust in Heavenly Father, that they will come to my home at the right time. I don't know, all of these experiences teach me that God is there, just like that very first experience in the hospital after my accident. I know, absolutely, that God is there. I wish I could say that I've seen His face, or met Him personally. But I know, just as surely as I know when somebody else is sitting right next to me, that He is there. I know that He cares. That even if I'm worried about spit up over my shoulder or getting through the day on just an hour or so of sleep, that He cares about that. I know that He cares about these little things. Foster care, I know that He cares about these little ones, even if they're just in my home for a short time. I see how He cares for them. All these lessons. I know that there are miracles all around us and little messages from Heavenly Father that, “No, I see you. I see you. I got you.” But I just have to pay attention to those. It's not Him that's holding back, it’s me not seeing what He's trying to put right in front of me.
Tamara Anderson 52:47
And you blog about that, right? The everyday miracles. Tell me where people can find your blog, because I'm sure just that perspective of actually looking for things and seeing them is a different way to look at life. Right?
Chani 53:06
It is. It is. So you can find my blog, right off of my website at chanibarlow.com, and you have that information to put that on there. Chanibarlow.com, just click on the blog tab. I like talking about miracles because I'm so tired of talking about politics and everything that's going wrong in the world. I would love to hear more about the things that are going right. Those don't get publicized, you know, that there was a woman at the grocery store who was just so super friendly, and she was just bringing smiles to everybody's faces. I gave her a little card afterwards, I thought that she needed to know how much I really appreciated that. They don't broadcast that on the news of how nice your grocery store person was. But it needs to be there. And those miracles are all around us.
Tamara Anderson 54:06
I love that. Now, you mentioned that one of the things you've learned to do in your life is let go. Explain what that means and why that's important.
Chani 54:21
Take it from a perfectionist, I wish I was in control of everything in my life. I had a plan. As a teenager, I had a plan. As a young married mom, I've had plans since then. None of them really seem to pan out the way that I envisioned them. So I think what I've learned is I need to just let go and let Heavenly Father. He's got a plan for me and for my family, the person that He wants me to become, the things that He wants me to do. The best way to get there is His way, not mine. If things had gone according to my plan, I might be a retired professional athlete right now, set up in my own gym, I don't know what it would look like. But I certainly wouldn't be the strong person that I am today. That's from letting Him take the reins, and stepping back and being like, “Okay, show me where we're going. This isn't my call.”
Tamara Anderson 55:27
Wow. So just recognizing that God's got this, and trusting that He's got that?
Chani 55:35
Yeah.
Tamara Anderson 55:37
Which is so much easier to say than it is to do.
Chani 55:42
It takes me going back and looking through. I don't necessarily keep a journal, but I jot down a few ideas every day, and especially thoughts or impressions or, feelings that I have at the time. I jot those down. If I look back through that book, and I see, “Oh, that was a tough time. Look at how God got me through that. Look at what He did for me.” When we moved, we couldn't find a house. Look at how He got us through that impossible situation. Then look at what He did in this circumstance. Why wouldn't He do that in this that I'm going through right now? He knows what I'm going through, He understands it. He knows where He needs me to go. And so I just need to trust.
Tamara Anderson 56:28
So one of the things that's helped you let go and let God be in control of your life is remembering times in the past when He has helped you? Absolutely. That's a powerful thing, remembering. I love that, I really, really do. It's good, especially when we're struggling, to remember to go back and say, “How has He helped me in the past?” and thinking of those things specifically and saying, “Okay, He'll help me again. I have no doubt.”
One other thing you talked about being really important, is self care. Yes. What does that look like for you? And why is it so critical?
Chani 57:16
I think things came to a head for me this last year, probably like a lot of people. One of the things that the pandemic brought to me was sort of this bottling up, this, “Push through, keep going, no matter what.” This perfectionist drive inside me just didn't work this last year. So I began seeing a therapist to help teach me some healthier ways of dealing with that. I guess in my mind, self care was a luxury. That's not something that I do. I do that when I don't have anything else to do, which is never, but that's how I looked at self care. But self care is actually a necessity because for me, I'm sort of the crux. What my household does every day depends on me. So if I'm not doing well, then my household is not doing well. My kids, everything that needs to get done, it doesn't go well. So for me, that looks like in the mornings, I do a little devotional where I pray, and I read scriptures, and I spend time jotting my little notes down. I take some time to meditate. There's all sorts of different apps and stuff that you can use. I use one that talks me through it. I'm not a professional meditator. I've never been to meet a monk to teach me that, the proper way to do so. But just being still. Being still and being able to have that quiet time where I'm not thinking about what goes on the grocery list, or what my boys are doing. But just being still and listening to silence, or to whatever Heavenly Father wants to whisper to me. That's what self care looks like to me. And then throughout the day, moving. Moving a lot, walking a lot, exercising, getting out in the sunm, not staying in my cave of the house. To me, that's what self care looks like, and then stepping away when it is too much, you know, to take a breather.
Tamara Anderson 59:36
Yeah. What is the name of that app that you use? I am curious.
Chani 59:40
I use Ten Percent Happier.
Tamara 59:44
Oh, I've heard of that one.
Chani 59:45
Ten Percent Happier. I like that one because they have different meditation teachers that talk you through what you're trying to accomplish. Like, today we're going to talk about being mindful of other people, or extending kindness to other people, and this is why we're doing that. Then they'll go into the meditation, or something along those lines.
Tamara Anderson 1:00:10
That is really cool. Okay, we'll be sure to put that in the show notes. That's really cool. Favorite Bible verse? Has there been one that has stood out to you through the years that has just resonated with you? That has come to mean something to you, as you've gone through your ups and downs?
Chani 1:00:31
Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite Bible verses is pretty well known actually. It's in Matthew 11. IT says, “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest and to your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” This is the Savior talking. I feel like it's Him talking personally to me. It's such a gentle invitation. It's not saying, “Chani, you’ve got to come over here and work with me,” or, “Chani, drop everything that you're doing and get here right now.” It's, “Come unto me, and take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.” It's an invitation. It's asking me to do something, but it's my choice. It's not saying that I'm doing everything wrong. It's not demeaning. It's not critical. It's an invitation to share that burden together. Because He can help. He can help better than I can just do it by myself.
Tamara Anderson 1:01:44
Yeah, absolutely. And He's strong enough when we aren't, right? Because often, we have days, in fact, weeks, and sometimes years where we feel so weak, overwhelmed, I can't do this. But He's strong enough in those times. So I love that. This has been so much fun. I want you to just take a moment before we close to talk me through one other self-care tip and technique that you have used, and that is writing. You've written a book, it's in the process of being published. It's called “Seeking Solace.” Talk to me about how you writing was therapeutic and helpful in your self-care, and how it also led you to writing a book.
Chani 1:02:44
It's one of those situations where I wouldn't have planned on it, didn’t see it coming. But I had a friend introduce me to her writing coach through Calliope Writing Coach. This is a great program that just draws the stories out of people. Everybody has a story to tell, whether it's fiction or whether it's their own story. I got introduced to this program and thought it would be fun. I like to write, it would be fun. But I started that program right about the same time I started foster care. What that looked like was in the evenings, I would be pretty exhausted. My first placement, especially, was the sibling set. They were incredibly, incredibly difficult. They were abused in about every way that a child could be abused. The way that I dealt with that was I would bleed it all out onto the page. Any frustration, any thoughts, with the kids, with the system, with anything, just that negativity, that stress, or the good moments, too, the positive, you know, “Yay, we used the potty today,” went on the page. So instead of letting it simmer inside of me, like I had in the past, I was finding an outlet. On the pages, I began to write about it. I began to write about my journey, from my accident on, and I thought about all the different patterns that I had seen in my life. There are patterns. Heavenly Father's having me learn the same lesson over and over again. And I'm still not getting it. But it's helping me see, through my writing, things that I couldn't see in myself before that time. So the process was fun that way. It was eye opening, writing about myself.
The way that this program was set up was to actually write a book, and to pitch it to an agent. So it got to that point and I pitched it to an agent. That's where we're at right now, is in the waiting game. My manuscript, I'm calling it “Seeking Solace,” because we are still looking for that little girl and trying to find peace in that process. So we'll see what happens.
Tamara Anderson 1:05:18
Wow, what an incredible, first of all, resource, and tip that is practically free. I mean, you can either type or write on a piece of paper to vent and it's so therapeutic. But I also found through the writing process, what you were describing, that sometimes it takes writing it on paper to put puzzle pieces together in your brain and say, “Oh, I get that now.” It takes writing to help process some things and just look at them differently. So writing is so, so helpful, and so effective. I'm so glad you brought that up.
How can people get a hold of you? I'm sure there will be people who are like, “I totally resonate with Chani. I love her story. I can't wait to get her book.” Where can they find you online?
Chani 1:06:12
I'm back at my website, chanibarlow.com. It also will link you to Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, and some of those other social media accounts. It's all from my website, chanibarlow.com.
Tamara Anderson 1:06:26
Awesome. Thank you so much Chani. Any final tips before we close?
Chani 1:06:32
The only tip that I could have is, no matter what you're going through, whether it's a tough time, or whether you're in the valley between those mountains, I think, is to enjoy the season that you're in right now. Look for those little miracles, those little messages from heaven. Tender mercies, I've heard them called those. Those things that speak to your heart that make your day just a little bit lighter. There are things to enjoy in hard times and good times. So just look for those.
Tamara Anderson 1:07:07
Look for the everyday miracles. Thank you, Chani, for being willing to take us on your journey of ups and downs and kind of all through the messy middle, right? This has been wonderful. It's also given us a taste of the hope that you have and that you can get through anything with God's help. So, thank you.
Chani 1:07:28
Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Tamara Anderson 1:07:30
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. If you like what you heard, subscribe so you can get your weekly dose of powerful stories of hope. I know there are many of you out there who are going through a hard time, and I hope you found useful things that you can apply to your own life in today's podcast. If you would like to access the show notes of today's show, please visit my website, storiesofhopepodcast.com. There you will find a summary of today's show, the transcript, and one of my favorite takeaways. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this episode with them. Maybe there was a story shared, or quote, or a scripture verse that they really, really need to hear. So go ahead and share this podcast. May God bless you, especially if you are struggling, with hope to carry on, and with the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help you bear the burden. And above all else, remember God loves you.
You can find the complete transcription of this episode here: https://tamarakanderson.com/podcasts/chani-barlow-my-life-didnt-turn-out-how-i-thought