Another View on Adoption

I love adoption!  If I had my way, I’d adopt a million more times!  I love being a mother.  I love helping these young ones become the very best they can be. I love creating people!

There are so many different kinds of adoption and different reasons to place a child for adoption.  All we have known in our family is special needs adoption.  The biological family feels unprepared or inadequate to handle the needs of the child and chooses another family they feel will help the child reach their full potential.  I have seen the pain and anguish our birthparents have gone through. I know they didn’t make these decisions lightly.  As bright as was my joy to receive a new baby, theirs was so dark to place.  I hold my birthparents in a special part of my heart.  I have seen their acute suffering and wish to protect them and defend them from people who say unkind things about placing a child for adoption. 

I have these three beautiful children and their love every day, so to me adoption is beautiful.

But…

Friday I saw so much anguish and hurt.  Bitter tears. And it’s caused me to reflect that I choose to not see the whole picture.

One of my big girls had to write a poem about injustice.  And she wrote about her three siblings, her Aunt, and her Uncle.  In twenty minutes time, a passionate and beautiful poem poured out onto her paper.  Her teacher asked her to share it with the class and she couldn’t.  Her teacher read it aloud and she wept hot, silent tears.  She wrote about leaving family, heritage, and country to be adopted.  Her last two lines were:

Given to families who love them.

From families that should have. 

I see, as she doesn’t yet, that it’s not always in a child’s best interests to be raised by their biological family and in their culture.  I see that this is a fallen and broken world.  In a perfect world, a man and a woman would meet, fall in love and get married.  In time they would be blessed with children that they cherished.  But this isn’t a perfect world.  Sometimes parents can’t take care of their children.  Sometimes they are too scared.  Sometimes they just don’t have the resources.  Sometimes they know the best thing for this child, and the most loving thing, is to give them a different family.

I still love adoption.  I would still take another million babies, but I am reminded that there are prices that must be paid.  Alex, my brother and my sister don’t speak Mandarin.  Bella doesn’t speak French.  Joy does not understand Armenian culture.  There are things we can’t give them.  Genetics and heritages being two big ones, but there is still good here.  I’m glad that my daughter sees that.  There is love.  Love that doesn’t care whose uterus a child developed in.  Love that this is your sister, your brother, your Aunt and your Uncle.  They are your family.  Love that loves so strongly it notices that they have been deprived, even when they don’t see it. I love her caring heart. I love my beautiful biological and adopted family!