He Became a POW in Vietnam Two Days Before His Baby Was Born

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Joining us now is Jackie Darby, sharing her personal adoption story.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
The story begins in Seoul, Korea. I was a newborn, abandoned baby, left to die in the garbage dump, to the point that rats were eating on my naked little body. A missionary nurse found me. She scooped me up and

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took me to a local orphanage. The orphanage was run by—I call them missionaries. I don’t know if they called themselves missionaries, but they were Americans who had missionaries in Korea. This was post-Korean War days, and took in babies like myself, babies and children. So, that’s how

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my life began. But in the meantime, the Lord was working in a different way in the lives of my parents. They saw a newspaper regarding all these postwar babies and children who needed homes, and the Lord really began working

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in their hearts to adopt. But my parents already had five biological kids of their own. Though it’s not like they couldn’t have children. They just wanted to expand their family and help these children. So they began the adoption process. Back then, it was snail nail, and began the

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whole process of writing letters, and they were assigned their first baby. But soon after they were assigned the baby, she passed away, and so they went through this process two more times. They were assigned two more babies, and both babies died right before they were supposed to get them.

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So they felt like, “You know what, maybe that’s the Lord’s sign just to forget it. We have five kids of our own.” People were kind of criticizing them and saying, “Why do they need another baby or kid? They just needed to focus on what they have.” So they felt like, “You know what, maybe that’s the truth.” So, on the day that President JFK was assassinated, November twenty-second, nineteen

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sixty-three, my mom got a phone call about an hour after the news went across the airwaves, and it was from the director-founder of the orphanage in Korea, and she asked my mom if they would reconsider being, because they had another baby who desperately needed a home,

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and my mom immediately said, “No, no, thank you, because we feel like, you know, it wasn’t God’s will, and we just need to be thankful for what we are.” Well, clearly, the Lord kept on working in their hearts, and at eight months old, I flew into Chicago O’Hare and I made it into my parents’ home. I was their sixth child.

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I grew up in a very traditional, small, traditional Lutheran church. Every evening, around the dinner table, we would have short family devotions, so I was taught about Jesus. It was always in my head. But inside, there were things going on that I never expressed as a child, nor did

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I express them into my teenage years. They did their best to raise me in the ways of the Lord and just give me everything that I would need as their child. On the outside, it appeared like I had a wonderful childhood, and I did. All my needs were

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met, for sure. But I had this haunting question: Why was I thrown in the garbage? It really just ate at me. I wanted to understand where I came from. Obviously, I knew I was Korean, you know, that was something that was from little on. I knew because clearly

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I didn’t look like the rest of the family. I was raised in a very white on Midwestern rural community. I feel like I was the only ethnic child. But I really struggled with my identity, and I really struggled with my worth. I told myself time and time again,

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“I shouldn’t be here. I was thrown in the garbage. I wasn’t wanted.” And so deep in my heart, I felt like I was a piece of garbage and that my life really didn’t have purpose. And those were things that I never expressed to my family or my parents.

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It’s just something that I guarded in my heart privately. My parents always told me the truth. Again, it was clear, you know, when I looked in the mirror, I knew that I looked different. And to my parents, my story was always a wonderful testimony, and it was. But when

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I was a child, I didn’t see it as a testimony. I was very embarrassed of my story because to me, it represented rejection and abandonment, and like I said, I felt like I was a piece of garbage. But my parents always told the story to others who asked about me,

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because that happened a lot. People would ask with good intentions, but they’d always ask, “Oh, when did you get her?” or, “You know, when did she become part of her family?” if we’d be out and about or just wherever. And so, the story came up quite often. I heard my parents telling the story a lot. They were very proud

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of the story and very proud of me. But again, it wasn’t something I was proud of. To me, it was something that I was ashamed of. And because I have the scars from the rat bites on my body, it was something that I always tried to hide. I didn’t want other kids to see them, because Lord forbid

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if I had to explain what those scars were from. It was just really embarrassing to me. So, from as young as I can remember, the story was told, and so it was just part of my life.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
And you’re listening to Jackie Darby tell her adoption story, and my goodness, what a story it is. A family diligently trying to adopt, well, they adopted her. She comes to Chicago, joins a family with five other siblings, is loved beautifully, but in the end, there’s always this guarded heart privately, that her life was filled with rejection and abandonment.

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When we come back, more of Jackie’s story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you.

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Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we returned to Our American Stories and

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to Jackie Darby, sharing her own adoption story after being abandoned in a garbage jump as a newborn. She struggled throughout her childhood with the question: Why was I thrown in the garbage? But God came into her life and didn’t change her story. He helped her find purpose in it. Let’s get back to Jackie with her story.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
I wrote the adoption agency where I came from that helped my parents and the adoption, and they confirmed that they have absolutely no information about me, other than, you know, they know that I was found. They know I was brought to the orphanage, but I don’t have any solid information about my birth parents. And for me, it was

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it was just an eating thought, like, “Why?” I wanted to know. I wanted to know as much as I could about my story growing up. It was one of those kind of thorns in my side, like, “I just wanted to know. I wanted to know,” but I didn’t feel like I could share everything with my parents because I didn’t want to come across like I wasn’t great

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if I showed emotion, like, “Why am I adopted?” And so, even as a child, I did not want to share my real feelings. When I was in my early twenties, I feel like I was going through probably one of the darkest seasons of my life. And because of that,

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I decided I was going to move to Florida. And it was on that plane ride that I was looking out the window and I was praying, and I said, “God, if You are the God that I’ve heard about, that I’ve been taught about my whole life up to that point, please, please come into my life, take over my life.

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I hate my life right now, and I’ll do things Your way if You will just make Yourself real to me.” And it was that day, April twenty-seventh, nineteen eighty-five, that I gave my heart to the Lord, and that became a turning point for me. From that day on,

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I began a personal relationship with the Lord, gave Him all permission to take over, and I wanted to. My heart’s desire was to be different, and I know He forgave me. He put me on a different path from that day forward. Healing is a process. There are so many different people and so many different things that God used

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in my life that brought healing to my heart and mind, and little by little, my perspective began to change. It let from some I was so ashamed of and so embarrassed of, to, “You know what? It’s not about me. This is about the Lord and what He has done

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in my life.” And the Lord began using my story. I became a missionary, and I moved to Guatemala, and so our first eight years on the mission field, my husband and I worked alongside an orphanage here in Guatemala, and we had their teen home. And what that means is during the first eight years of our mission life,

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seventeen teenagers lived with us, and during that season, we began our own family. So I was pregnant as well with our first baby, and then also my brother wanted to adopt a baby from Guatemala, and so he and my sister-in-law asked me if I could help them,

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and that’s when we found Laura. And Laura I fostered. We fostered Laura from the time she was five hours old until the time she was nine months old, so we had a pretty full house at the time. The Lord has opened doors for me to be able to

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share my testimony in groups—women’s groups, youth groups with kids, individuals—to others who are walking through the same thing maybe that I have, where they can identify with me and understand that our feelings, our questions are real; it’s not just our imagination. And I pray that my story

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is an encouragement to them and that as they’re walking out their healing process, they can apply some of the things that God did in my life to their lives. Because I read a realized that God is no acceptor; you know, He treats everybody the same. What He can do in my life, He can do in their lives.

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And I want my story to be an encouragement to parents that they can talk to their kids about the raw, difficult things about their child’s story as God leads them as well. And so, the Lord has been using my story in this way to minister to adults, but also

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to kids like Darley. We began our relationship from she was little, when she started coming over to our house, and I just spent time with her just as a child, and little by little, as I created a safe and comfortable environment, she began expressing her thoughts, her questions, her

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emotions little by little with me, and I began to share my story with her. So, because of that, she felt like she could identify with me and open up and share with me some things that she might not have been comfortable sharing with her mom and dad. And

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I often hear this now from adoptees and kids like Darley who—there’s a common thread—that they don’t feel comfortable sharing with their adoptive parents because we don’t want to hurt them. We don’t want to come across like we’re not grateful for what they’ve done. We are grateful, but at the same time, we’re still trying to process

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these mixed emotions. And so, I just feel like I’m a sounding board. I am not a counselor. I’m not a licensed counselor; I’m not a psychologist.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
I’m just a child of God, a Christian who is one team the Lord to use my story now to bring encouragement, most of all to anyone who wants to hear it.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
I know that in Jeremiah one to five, it says that He knew me before I was ever formed in my mother’s will. And He, you know, He knew me before I was ever born, and He set me apart. And that word isn’t just for me; it’s for all

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of us. But I stand amazed at how the Lord has had His hand on my life from the time I was born in my mother’s will, throughout all these years, to the time I willfully accepted Him into my

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heart in life, took me to the mission field with my husband. His hand on our lives over these many years in our ministry here—Start With One Global—and is using my story now. And so, I really give all the glory, all the credit, all the honor to

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Him because He’s the one who has ultimately written my story. That’s what Psalms one thirty-nine, fifteen and sixteen says, that all my days were already ordained for me and were written in His book before one of them came to be. And I believe that wholeheartedly, and I’m very humbled at this opportunity to share my story and just

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be able to express all that God’s put in my heart.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Madison Derkot. And a special thanks to Jackie Darby for sharing her adoption story with all of us and her new book, Whose Am I? Pick that

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up wherever you get your books. They’re grateful to their parents for loving a stranger and don’t want to wound them or hurt their feelings or make it seem as if they’re ungrateful, but there is that lingering question. Boy, did she have hers! And that

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is why was I thrown in the garbage? Why was I thrown in the garbage? And then she gave herself completely to God and it took a while to heal, and then she figured it out. And as she said at the end, “I stood amazed at how the Lord’s hand had been in my life.” And for any Americans listening who’ve been amazed, how the Lord’s hand has been in your life, you know what she’s saying. Jackie Darby’s adoption story here on Our American Stories.