Abandonment, adoption, and God's sovereignty

Pam Wood was just 5 years old when her mother dropped her and her three siblings off with a babysitter and never returned. Days later, the babysitter took them back to their locked house and left them on the screened-in porch. They had nothing to eat for days, but the mosquitoes feasted.

She never would have guessed it then, but she sees it now: God was orchestrating circumstances, setting in motion a plan laid out before she was born to demonstrate His love and sovereignty over her life.

There were four of them: Debby, almost 7; Pam, 5; Leroy, 4; and Mark, barely 2 years old. It was late July 1960. The house in northern Indiana sat back from a lightly traveled country road.

“I remember sitting on the porch for days with my sister in charge,” Pam said. Debby explained that it was not unusual for their alcoholic mother to leave the four alone, and she had learned to fend for herself and her three young charges by asking a neighbor for food and stealing an occasional candy bar from a local store. One of their father’s brothers saw them each day playing in the front yard as he drove by. He noticed they hadn’t changed clothes and looked disheveled, so he contacted the state’s Department of Child Services, which placed the children in the foster care system.

Mark, who had not had a diaper change since he was dropped off, had a severe skin infection and had to be hospitalized. “He was the cute one, and was adopted right away,” Pam said. The others were separated in foster care, which for Pam meant living with one family after another for the next seven years.

She suffered both physical and sexual abuse in many of the homes.

“I was made to wash dishes, and if I missed a spot, I’d get beat and they’d pull out all the dishes in the cabinet and I’d have to wash them all,” she recalled of one home. “I had to share the bed with my foster mother, and if I moved and disturbed her, she’d make me spend the rest of the night in the basement behind the furnace, where I had to stay in a standing position.”

One family near the end of her years with foster care dropped her off at Sunday school and church each Sunday “to give themselves some free time,” she said. That was her first exposure to any mention of Jesus. “When the man was abusing me, I’d tell him that Jesus could see him, and he’d say Jesus couldn’t see through the roof.”

Eventually, the Department of Child Services decided it would be best for Pam, who had been rebellious, to be reunited with Debby, and both ended up in a group home. They lived in a basement dormitory with other girls, and Debby resumed her role as her younger sister’s protector. It was a good place to live, Pam said, and children there were available for adoption. The brother and sister-in-law of the woman who ran the home planned to adopt two of Pam’s friends, but just as the girls were about to leave for their permanent home, their father took custody of them.

The couple, Daniel and Lora Kupferschmidt, who had four children of their own, decided to adopt Debby and Pam instead. But first their father, who was in the Army when he divorced their mother, and also was an alcoholic, had to waive his right to custody. He never showed up for the court hearing.

“After 10 foster homes and an orphanage, my new family found me,” Pam said. “They brought me into their home. They demonstrated love and compassion toward me and they treated me as their own.” Even the four Kupferschmidt children accepted the girls as the sisters they always had, but had just met.

“One year later we went before a judge to make it all legal,” Pam recalled. “I remember walking out of the courthouse holding my dad’s hand. I looked up at him and said, ‘Dad, do I belong to you now?’ He answered, ‘Yes my daughter, you are mine.’” The feeling was “indescribable,” she said. No longer would she move from house to house, unloved and unwanted. “In its place was a feeling of love, security and knowing who I was,” she said.

Then one day, her new father sat her down to talk about having a relationship with Jesus. He told her she could be adopted into the family of God, just as she’d been adopted into his family. “I totally understood and eagerly accepted Christ as my Savior,” she said.

Years later, Pam and Debby reunited with their brothers. Leroy showed them a photo he’d found of their biological father as a young soldier during the Korean War, before Pam was born. It was an impromptu snapshot taken with a couple of Army buddies. While Leroy pointed out their father, a lone man standing in the background caught Pam’s attention immediately. She was struck by his facial features and his stance, hands in his pockets. She was certain she knew him.

A phone call to her adoptive dad confirmed it.

“That man in the background was the father who raised me, who adopted me, who led me to Christ,” Pam said. “Here was God’s orchestration of my life. My two earthly fathers, who never knew one another, in the same picture before I was created. Even then God had a plan for my life. He knew I needed both these dads to be who I am today.”