Rossville resident Lorraine Butler Simcox personal story becomes children's book

Rossville resident Lorraine Butler Simcox has recently published a children’s book based on her experience of adopting a daughter from China.

Through a series of seemingly fated events — such as a chance encounter with a school nurse who had adopted from China and a romance that started online and led to marriage — Ms. Simcox said she found her calling to be a mother, wife and author.

Now, she and her husband are working to start an adoption ministry. The couple will be working to establish an adoption resource agency that will provide information about adoption, as well as financial grants to parents who want to adopt.

Q: Take me through the process. Did adopting your daughter spawn this book?

A: Yes, actually what happened... I’ll tell you the whole story. I grew up always wanting to have children of my very own. I think a lot of women feel that way. And I learned at a very early age that I’d never be able to conceive children of my own.

Q: How old?

A: I was about 13, maybe 14. It was actually through a series of medical discoveries that something had not been quite right when I was in utero with my own mother, and that is what left me barren. I decided that I loved children, and I really had some issues with who would ever want to marry me, that sort of thing, and so I threw myself pretty much into my career of teaching elementary school.

Q: Where do you teach?

A: Well, I did teach at the time. I taught for about 20 years. Most of my teaching is in Palm Beach County, Florida. But getting back to the story... I was approaching my mid-thirties, and I hadn’t married, yet and I’d considered adoption. But I thought, ‘Goodness, as a single that is a lot of responsibility,’ and I always thought it was very important for a child to have a mother and a father, and so I should wait until I got married. So I kept waiting and waiting and nothing. I didn’t meet anybody. I kept waiting.

Finally I sat down with my pastor. He told me ... ‘It is certainly within (God’s) permissible will for a single woman who has love and a desire... it would be certainly OK with him if you extended your love to a child in need.’ With that all said and done and with a lot of prayer, I began to explore opportunities. I was just like in this holding period.

Q: What time period are we talking about?

A: I think it was 2000.

Q: How old are you at that point?

A: I was just about to turn 40. So, I decided to break in, get the Internet and check this (adoption Web site, which a co-worker — who had a child adopted from China — told me about). That is what I did, and it was like God was all over the pages. Up until that point, I had actually talked to a person that was in an orphanage in South America, and she was going to send me all this information about adoption. And it never came and it never came. And I remembered what my pastor said and he said, ‘Red light doesn’t always mean, “Stop don’t do it,” It could just sometimes be a redirect.’

So I’m like, ‘Maybe I’m supposed to go to China,’ but then I’m like, ‘But Lord, China is so beyond me. It’s all the way around on the other side of the world. I know nothing about China, but if that is where you want me to go, that’s where I’ll go.’

So long story short, that was in October, that I had learned about Children’s Hope International. By November I had decided that I was going to start the process. I turned in my application in, was accepted in January. February started the entire process and then from start to finish it was two years.

Q: How did you come to write the book?

A: I went through a broken engagement and landed here in Georgia. And my girlfriend said, ‘What are you going to do?’ and I said, ‘I’m going to do what I’ve always known. I’m going to teach again.’ So I went back into public school teaching, but I just knew that there was something else that God had for me to do. Through another major event, I sat back and said, ‘I think I’m supposed to be doing something else.’ I sat still for two weeks. No phone, no Internet. Just reading and praying. I forgot this part. I had already resigned my position teaching. I said, ‘I’ve always wanted to live in the mountains, so I’m going to sell this big old house... and I’ve always wanted to write a book, I’m going to write a book.

I had written a letter from Lillian’s perspective to all of our friends letting them know that she was coming to America. So I took the letter, the last letter that went out to friends and family, and I submitted it to a book publishing company. I got an e-mail back that said, ‘I’m going to give you some criticism.’ So I sat down and in one night... I chopped it all up... in about two hours... I e-mailed it back to him probably about 1 a.m. Two days later I got an e-mail that said, ‘This is brilliant. We would be happy to represent you.’

Q: So when did it come out?

A: It came out in, I think it was May. It hasn’t been that long.

Q: What does the title, ‘A Single Red Thread,’ mean?

A: There is an ancient Chinese belief that connects those that are destined to meet, regardless of time, place and circumstance. And that red thread stretches and it tangles, but it can never be broken. So that has really been the story of my life.