Reece’s Rainbow Report #56: Wood Family

That was the only thing standing between Brian and Kristen Wood and their new daughter waiting for them in China. 

But that was in March of 2020 — the month the world was forced to stop spinning. 

“We feel like every kid deserves a home,” says Kristen, a 38-year-old nurse and case manager. Geopolitical circumstances beyond their control, however, meant that “Tasha Sue,” a toddler with Down syndrome, would have three years more to wait in her orphanage before coming home to a family. 

So the Woods waited, and then waited some more. Thankfully, when “Tasha Sue” turned three, the family was allowed a video call. From that point until April of 2022, the orphanage director sent Brian and Kristen updates on their hoped-for daughter’s condition. They felt grateful, knowing that so many other stuck China families were not getting the same treatment — but then the updates ceased.

“That was probably the hardest,” Kristen says. “It’s like, is she even alive? Can we get proof of life?” 

Today, one can easily find proof of life in the Wood’s Virginia home. The girl once known as “Tasha Sue” is now Katie Wood, a six-year-old who loves her toy drum and being held. She holds the distinction of being the first from her Chinese province to be adopted since the Covid lockdowns lifted. She isn’t lacking for playmates in her new home either, nor even siblings who know what she’s going through as an adoptee. 

Because her new parents adopted not only Katie in 2023, but also Makenna, a two-year-old from foster care with a chromosomal deletion resulting in major special needs, and Viktoria, a four-year-old Bulgarian with cerebral palsy whose adoption was finalized in Eastern Europe the same day the Woods returned home with Katie in September. Kristen and Brian, a 37-year-old old pastor and nurse, are currently in Bulgaria to pick Viktoria up for good.

“You would think after three of your biological kids, you’d be prepared for life, but you’re really not most of the time,” Kristen laughs. After arriving at a recent ballgame, for example, she opened the car door to find exploded diarrhea all over the vehicle. Back home to the bathtub they went. 

“I won’t lie and say it’s been super easy,” Kristen admits. “But God has really slowed us down a little bit.” 

Or, depending on how you look at it, sped things up. The Woods did, after all, legally finalize three adoptions in 90 days. 

“It sounds so cliché to say that every kid deserves a home, but watching these kids go from not understanding what a family is, not even experiencing love to watching them blossom — it’s just amazing,” Kristen says. “I’m not naïve enough to think that trauma is going to be loved out of them, but love can do a lot of things for a child.” 

Like teaching a child to eat solid food, for instance. The Woods were told upon adopting Katie that she couldn’t chew, but she soon proved the naysayers wrong. 

“It shows they can move the mountains and beat all the obstacles people have stacked against them,” Kristen says. 

The mountain-moving got its start in 2016, when Brian and Kristen met the Marshall family at their church. The Marshalls had adopted several children who had been listed on Reece’s Rainbow and became close with the Woods. The friendships deeply impacted Brian and Kristen. Maybe instead of “fixable” special needs like cleft lip or palate, they mused, they should modify their plans and follow the Marshalls’ lead of adopting a child with more severe disabilities. 

So Brian and Kristen eventually found Katie on Reece’s Rainbow, becoming convinced she was meant to be their daughter. When their travel plans froze in the spring of 2020, they had no idea when their adoption would be allowed to resume. They switched focus in the meantime, accepting Makenna’s foster care placement after committing to adopting Viktoria in Bulgaria. 

They met Viktoria in February of 2022, while Makenna arrived that September.

“We said yes to Makenna, but we were so far deep into Viktoria’s adoption that we’re like, ‘We’re not giving this up. We’re gonna keep going,’” Kristen says. “We still were not sure about China and what was going to happen there, so it’s like, okay, we’ll have two adopted kids.” 

If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans, right? 

“God’s purpose and plan is bigger than ours,” says Kristen simply. What else can she say, after all, when any semblance of control has been wrested from her hands? 

On a flight in China, for example, Katie licked the seatbelt and got very sick. Even before that, their visas had expired. They spoke no Mandarin and were stared at constantly while trying to get to know a new child as total strangers. Once home, the family walked through almost a grieving process when it truly sunk in that Katie was not a toddler like they had originally planned for, but much older and with more trauma to show for it. 

Katie shoved food in her mouth, unused to being fed at regular intervals. She trusted no one, understandably, and had zero concept of making choices or how to behave around people. Her new mother likened her behavior to going from a cage to freedom and not knowing what to do with it. 

Viktoria may deal with the same issues when she becomes a Virginian — her new parents have no idea what their future together holds. No control, after all. But they do know the progress they have seen already with Katie: the way she has began to trust them, how much feeding therapy has helped and watching her melt — sometimes clatter — into family life. 

“It’s been so cool, watching them doing the things we know they can do,” Kristen says. “Just giving them the opportunity to be who God has called them to be has probably been the best part.”

And they get to do it all over again now — perhaps with just two days, a true two days this time, standing between them and another new daughter to love once more.