Once again I am going to warn you that I will be spilling the beans on Deb Hannah’s book, so if you’d rather wait to read this, you’ve been warned!


Deb and her husband Joe adopted five children after having given birth to four. The five adoptees arrived as two sibling groups—three and two. If you go to Deb’s website, you see a picture of Deb and her husband Joe and five kids. The math doesn’t add up.


When I read the book, I read it in two sittings. I checked out the website between my two reading sessions. Midway through the book, Deb was parenting 8 kids. But the picture showed 5 kids … My brain went “Uh Oh!” but my heart convinced me it probably just had to do with what kids were available when the picture was taken. Yeh, right …


By the end of the book, Deb and Joe were parenting 5 kids. That’s right … 4 of the 5 adoptees had blown out, and blown out in a huge way. The only adoptee left was the youngest child in the sib set of three. In this blog, we’ll call him Charlie (which is not his name in the book, but I’ll explain later.) Charlie wrote a great letter at the end, describing how much the Hannahs had done for him and how grateful he was to be a part of the family. He talked about how he believed the best way he could show them that their efforts were not in vain was for him to succeed, in spite of the fact that his siblings had brought the family to their knees.


Deb has been reading my blog since we began communicating. She knows I view Beth as my “success story” as far as my adopted children are concerned. Beth embraces our family completely. My other two adoptees have told me with words or actions (or both) that they want to forget our family. Deb also knows that the vast majority of parents understandably measure their degree of success by the usual parameters … does my child succeed at relationships? Do they support themselves? Do they take care of their own basic needs? Do I enjoy being around them more often than not? Do they embrace my family (our family)? I still remember the Mother’s Day card I received from Amy years ago that said, “Thanks for letting me be a part of your family.” I guess it never was her family.


Deb really opened my eyes to the dangers of measuring my success based on those parameters. She pointed out how much pressure that placed on Beth to succeed. And how would I respond if Beth didn’t succeed? Would that be truly because of me, or in spite of me? Isn’t Beth’s success dependent far more upon Beth than upon me?


I view Beth as my success story because I personally derive so much pleasure from the relationship. Beth fills my tank, and meets some of my needs in the relationship. How could I not quantify that pleasure in terms of “success” vs. “failure?” But really that is more a perk of the relationship than a measure of its success. I am successful if I did my best, presented Beth with the right options and environment to succeed, and served as I was commanded by God to do.


It takes a phenomenal amount of faith to continue to give and give and give and receive little or nothing in return and still consider what you are doing to be successful. It goes against the human condition to be that selfless. Even the most giving of people have human limits.


I know there are many of you who have given more than you ever thought you could give and then found you had to give some more. Please know that you are not alone in your struggle to define success and to continue to give in the face of insurmountable odds.


Next up I'll quote Deborah Hannah as she explained to me her view of how to define success.


This article on the joys and challenges of older child adoption can perhaps help you figure out your own definition of success.


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