Chapter Four: Surrounded by Love—Church and Family Watching Over One Another
Before Little Wheat came into this world, love was already there waiting for him.
In the fall of 2022, we experienced two special baby showers.
One was at a Chinese church in Springfield, Illinois,
and the other was at the church where we served in Indianapolis.
They were ordinary days in many ways, yet later they became especially precious to us.
There were refreshments on the tables,
gifts,
tiny baby socks,
and cards filled with words of blessing.
Brothers and sisters in Christ sat together. Some sang hymns, some prayed, and some simply smiled as they looked at Sue's growing belly.
Sue stood there with weariness on her face, but also with a kind of joy that had come only after many years of waiting.
I looked at her, and there was only one sentence in my heart:
“Lord, thank You.”
So many years of waiting,
so many prayers in the night,
so many disappointments and tears that others could never fully know,
seemed, for a moment, to find a gentle response in all that laughter.
In Indianapolis, it was also the first time our church had held a baby shower like this for a pastor's family.
Someone said:
“This is the child we prayed for together.”
I have always remembered those words.
Because they reminded us that Little Wheat was never only our child.
In a certain spiritual sense, even before he was born, he was already surrounded by a larger family.
We did not have many blood relatives near us in America.
But over those years, the church gradually became our family.
Some traveled from other places to visit us;
some brought baby supplies;
some kept sending messages to tell us they were praying for the baby;
and others, from different places in China and the United States, told us:
“We are praying for baby John.”
Little Wheat's maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother, and other family members also waited for his birth through a screen.
I remember the first time my mother saw Sue pregnant on a video call. Her eyes turned red.
She said:
“After all these years, we have finally waited for this.”
We had even begun planning to take Little Wheat back to China one day.
His passport was ready,
and so was his Chinese visa.
We imagined him meeting his paternal grandmother, his maternal grandfather and grandmother, and many more relatives.
At the time, no one knew that those plans would later not unfold in the way we imagined.
But then, what that passport and that visa carried was a very simple family wish:
We wanted to take this child home and let everyone who loved him see him.
After Little Wheat was born and entered the NICU, this network of love did not stop.
Sisters from the church took turns preparing meals to help Sue as she recovered.
Some organized prayer.
Some came to the hospital.
Some kept watch from far away.
Pastors, friends, mission partners, and brothers and sisters in Christ continued sending messages.
Those messages could not carry all our worries for us.
But they let us know:
We were not facing all of this alone.
This is also one reason I came to treasure the church more and more.
The church is most real not only when everyone sits in the same sanctuary.
It is also when a family is weak,
and someone cooks a meal,
someone sends a word of care,
someone drives to the hospital,
and someone continues praying in a place no one can see.
None of these things may seem very great.
But in the hearts of parents who are worried about their child, they carry great weight.
We had shed many tears during the long years when we had no child.
And when Little Wheat came, many people rejoiced with us.
That joy helped us understand family in a new way:
There is a kind of family that is not defined entirely by blood.
There is a kind of love that slowly takes shape when people in Christ bear one another's burdens and walk alongside one another.
From the very beginning, Little Wheat's life was surrounded by this kind of love.
He connected China and America,
family and church,
and many people who otherwise did not know one another.
When we later looked back on his brief nineteen months of life, this became especially clear:
He was always loved.