Love.
Redemption.
Joy.
Family.
Those are all words that come to my mind as well. But I think if I had to sum it all up in just one word it would easily be the word choice.
I once read where an author said that adoption is the most intentional thing you can do in the entire world. You can get pregnant unintentionally. You can buy a car, quit a job, or move away, all without waking up that morning planning to do so. For that matter, there are plenty of movies out there depicting how you could wake up to discover that you had accidentally married someone else.
But not with adoption. There are weeks, months, and often years of intentional effort required to pursue adoption. And with each piece of paperwork, each notarized and apostilled stamp, each social worker visit, medical form and background check, you are intentionally making conscious and legal choices to adopt a child. Rightly so, for a human life should not be something haphazardly passed around as if it had no value. Each piece of paper that slides across someone's desk represents a real, living child worthy of this intentional pursuit.
Yes, the adoption process is all about choice- the choice to pursue a child.
I naïvely thought that choice would end when he arrived home.
Children who have spent time in an institution have brains bathed in trauma. Even the best caregivers rotate through their shifts, caring for multitudes of children starving for love and attention, unable to fill the family-shaped holes in their hearts. In the best of orphanages, there is rarely enough food to fill each belly or diapers to ensure clean bottoms. The children in the worst orphanages experience horrors beyond imagination. Drugged to stay silent and still day and night, food withheld to keep them small enough to fit in cribs, and abuse that churns the hardest of stomachs is the daily reality for thousands of children. And it lasts for years and years.
Families sacrifice to bring them home and after a month home, society questions why these families just can't get it together. They've had a whole month, year, or more to get in a groove, why do these parents talk about how they are still struggling?
Because that damage doesn't just go away. Sometimes ever.
Kids who have survived life without a family have to work extremely hard to assimilate into a family. They have no concept of what a family is, much less how to give and accept genuine love, and adoptive families have to make the intentional choice to love them through it all.
That might sound shocking. How horrible of a person do you have to be to have to choose to love a child?! Especially one that you fought so hard for?
But what society doesn't see, is the mother cleaning feces off the wall of her teenage son's bedroom for the third time that week, because after all these years, his mind still believes he is unlovable and he must therefore prove that to this family wanting to call him son. The other moms from soccer practice don't see the school-aged girl rocking violently for hours trying to fall asleep each night because she was starved of motion and human touch for years. The Sunday School class doesn't see the sister hiding in her room because her brother, who has known true hunger, is wailing and raging at being served dinner. The t-ball coach doesn't believe those parents who warned him about their daughter's potential outbursts and violence, because all he's ever seen is her as a little angel at practice. The colleagues at work don't know that the exhausted man in the cubicle next to them held his sobbing wife late into the night after they received yet another life-altering diagnosis caused from their child's unknown past.
Life inside the walls of an adoptive home may be drastically different than what you see from the outside. But inside those walls, each family is making a choice.
When I married the Hubs, I made a vow, a choice, to love and honor him for the rest of my life. Surrounded by friends, family, daisies and beautiful music, we twirled and danced and laughed. I knew I had made the right choice in loving him.
And I learned quickly that that was a choice I'd have to make anew each day.
Loving and honoring him does not always come naturally to me. I would not have needed to vow before God to do something if it would always be easy. I am not biologically programmed to love him in the same way I am for our daughters. My love for him is a choice. And one I gladly make.
I have found the same is true in adoption. Three years of experience have taught me that adoption both was and is a choice. I will always choose to be my husband's wife. And I will always choose to be Little Man's mom.
This doesn't always mean that we are twirling around in flowers with a piano playing in the background. No. Some days, weeks, and months are very hard. And they can be very lonely, when few see the whole picture, including the struggles.
In all this, I still, with all my heart, believe adoption is beautiful. I believe it does encompass all of those wonderful words- Love. Redemption. Sacrifice. Joy. Family.
We must all decide what we will do with this. Even families that have already adopted. The Hubs and I have to be intentional about asking what God would have for us next. How can we rally around other adoptive families? How can we help others bring their kids home? Does God have more children for us? Does God desire for us to make a difference for the kids left behind? How can we support mothers so they can keep their children?
I certainly, don't have all of the answers. All I know is that our lives are filled with choices. And we will all have to make a choice about adoption, whether we choose to brush it out of our thoughts, or ponder our role.
I do know that I always have one choice before me. And I will always choose the same end.
Little Man, in the good and the bad, I will always choose you.
In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of HIs will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of His glory. Ephesians 1: 11&12
