Thought Life
Sometimes you read a story that seems scripted by a sentimental Hollywood writer. As ESPN’s Rick Reilly makes clear, Colin Kaepernick’s life story fits this mold.
Kaepernick’s mother, Heidi Russo, was in a rough situation when she gave birth to little Colin. She nursed him for over a month until she found a couple who could adopt him. They turned out to be an evangelical couple who raised Colin in a Lutheran church and trained him to know the Lord. Now, he’s playing quarterback in the Super Bowl. Here’s more from Reilly:
Her name is Heidi Russo, a 44-year-old nurse from Thornton, Colo. He’s declined her requests to visit or talk. She accepts it, but she aches for more.
Wouldn’t you? She was 19, unmarried and nearly broke when she gave him up. She cared for him for five weeks while she looked for an adopting couple who were (A) set for money, (B) had other kids and (C) loved sports. Heidi stands 6-foot-2, and the birth father, now absent, was also 6-2.
She picked another nurse, Teresa Kaepernick, and her husband, Rick. They had one request: they wanted a boy. They had two kids already — son Kyle and daughter Devon. But they’d lost two sons to heart defects, Lance and Kent, who would be 34 and 32 now.
“I think about them every day,” Teresa says. “What we went through. What they went through. They played a role in all of this.”
Beyond incredible. One of the things we most hear in this abortion-obsessed culture is this: kids born into rough circumstances don’t have a chance, so they should be aborted. That’s utterly wrong, and almost impossibly evil, but it is common talk nowadays. Example like Colin Kaepernick’s show us just how terrible such thinking is.
How many other impressive young men and women are missing from this world because of the scourge of abortion?
I don’t know Kaepernick’s heart, but I know that I’m grateful for his birth mother’s choice, for his adoptive parents’ love, and for a beautiful story that’s not fiction–it’s gospel-imaging fact.
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