My friend, Shannon, has been talking about adoption for as long as I have known her (which is going on almost six years)! She has such a big heart and wants to help whomever she can. She has been blessed with three beautiful boys and a wonderful husband. She is a homemaker and works as a licensed massage therapist on the side. The McKnight family has so much love to give that they have decided now is the time to adopt! After the birth of their third son, they knew their family would not be complete until they adopted a little girl from China. It takes someone special to commit to a journey this family is taking and I commend them! I wanted Shannon to be the first to kick off our Inspire Me blog because she has inspired and uplifted me since the day I met her. She has motivated me to be the best wife and mother I can be.
Shannon, I love you girl and I am so proud of you! Most of us will never know what all goes into adopting a child, but what I do know is that Juniper Lin is one lucky little girl!!!!
Juniper Lin (her adopted name)Age 2
Jun’s StoryJun was born with a congenital condition called PFFD – Proximal Femoral Focal Deficiency. This means that while in-utero her right upper leg bone (femur) did not grow all the way. This is a rare condition that effects an estimated 1-100,000 births. There is no clear understanding at this time for why PFFD occurs. If left untreated, Jun’s right foot would eventually fall at the level of her left knee, and life would be very difficult for her.
Jun was abandoned by her birth parents just days after her birth and was placed into foster care the day after being found. She has been with the same foster mother for the past two years, and available for adoption for much of that time. Despite her disability and inability to walk or stand on two feet, she has learned to crawl and manages to play with another child who she is in foster care with.
Jun is a beautiful little girl with as much potential as any other child, if given the right medical resources, support, and love…which we plan to do. You can see photos of her by visiting our blog and becoming a registered member.
Jun will forever live life with PFFD, but we will help her receive the right treatment to offer her opportunities she would likely have never known. Her medical files have been reviewed by several surgeons, and the best preliminary understanding we have is that she will require hip reconstructive surgery, if possible, since her hip is not fully developed. She will also need what is called a Symes amputation. This involves fusing her healthy short femur and existing tibia to create one healthy upper leg stump, and amputation of her deformed right foot. After her surgeries she will be fitted with an above the knee prosthetic, which will allow her to finally experience what it’s like to walk! Each step will bring challenges, but we believe we are the right family for her. We set out on this journey wanting to change the life of a child, but we never expected how much we would be changed by her. She is not even here and already she is blessing us!
Our Adoption JourneyOur adoption journey was not a short one, having first begun the conversations nearly 5 years ago. We both felt that we had been blessed many times over in our lives and that we wanted a chance to share those blessings with a child in great need. Adoption seemed a likely choice, but an expensive one. With some savings and a big leap of faith, the timing felt right to move forward with our decision to adopt in the Fall 2009, and we set out to adopt a Waiting Child (also known as “special needs”) from China.
Many people who have adopted say “when you see the right child, you’ll know”. To better understand the medical conditions of these special needs children we spent considerable time researching the conditions most often presented. On January 28th of this year we received a distribution email from our agency letting parents know they were getting ready to send a group of files back to China to be distributed to another agency. They asked us to take a look to make sure there wasn’t a child we had overlooked. We had just been informed that our homestudy would be completed that week so felt a look through these files would be a good idea. After seeing Jun’s file I consulted our agency to see if the child was still available. She was, and our agency immediately emailed additional medical updates they had received several months back. This was when we first learned of the diagnosis of PFFD.
We were not surprised by the spark of interest generated by the child listed as having a physical disability. In fact, prior to reading her medical file many signs had come our way regarding prosthetics. So many, in fact, it was hard to NOT pay attention. The process of learning more about Jun’s medical condition was just as significant. Sitting at home on Saturday morning January 30th we began doing a search on PFFD. What was this condition? At that time we didn’t even know what it was an acronym for. We quickly began learning, and each new step led to a person, a mother, a prosthetist, a surgeon…all with experience with PFFD. It was almost as if a chain reaction was taking place of information flowing to us with great ease.
It was in meeting with a local Cincinnati family, whose adopted daughter also has PFFD, that we were able to see a real family dealing with a real disability, and what it might look like for us. It was on February 14th, Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year, that we made the decision to commit to Jun and move forward to request to adopt her. The rest…well, it involves lots of paperwork, waiting, and check writing!
This has been an unbelievable journey, and it’s just the beginning! We want to thank everyone who has taken the time to pray for us, support us when we’ve needed a shoulder to lean on, expedited paperwork on our behalf, written a reference for us, or written a check to help cover our adoption expenses. So many people go into the actual process of adoption that it truly does take a village!
God Bless!Shannon & Greg McKnight
For more information or to keep track of their process, you can visit their blog, “Our Red Thread Journey”.
If you would like to make a donation to the McKnight’s Adoption you can do so in one of the following two ways:
- Bank deposit donations: Anyone can make a donation by going to Fifth Third Bank and depositing into the account “McKnight Adoption Fund” (This account is also under Shannon McKnight if they want to verify it’s the correct account)
**As an extra incentive, if you are local to Cincinnati, when you make a donation to The McKnight’s paypal account, you will be entered in to a drawing for a free 90 minute massage by Shannon, LMT. Please leave a post stating you have made a donation and we will also verify through paypal confirmation!**
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