If we’re just being gut-level honest, it was, at first, all about US.
Adoption became a conversation in our home in 2011 not because of the 132 million vulnerable and voiceless children and orphans around the world in need of forever families, but because of the two people living in Kentucky at the time who wanted to grow theirs.
We fell in love with a superhero on RainbowKids whose “needs” suddenly didn’t matter when our God joined our hearts with his, and by Christmas 2013, we were holding the boy we called Superman tightly in completely humbled and overwhelmed arms.
We were madly, deeply, crazy in love with this 2-year-old superhero who had unexpectedly turned our worlds upside down. And we began shouting from the rooftops this lesson we had learned through running toward a boy our first adoption conversations would have initially caused us to run from.
That special needs are just superpowers in disguise.
And that THIS life, this path, this journey holding the hands of a once-orphan who was overlooked by the world but was never overlooked by our loving God, was a far richer road than we could have ever imagined.
Overwhelmed by our love for Superman and later, the fourth Superhero God graciously entrusted to our family, for so many years, we focused only on the BEAUTY of adoption.
The beauty of redemption.
The beauty of these precious, priceless children who are perfect in God’s sight and in ours.
We advocated for the 600,000 Supermen and Superhero 4s still waiting for forever families in China.
And as we did, we shared photo after photo and video after video of the BEAUTY of this adoption life — of these hidden treasures who had become the biggest blessings our family had almost missed.
But the danger of focusing only on the beauty of adoption is that we risk “marketing” this life to potential adoptive families for what they can get OUT of it.
Abundant joy.
Less fear.
A sanctified, surrendered self that is closer to the heart of Jesus than we’ve ever been.
A new perspective that changes not only hearts but entire LIVES.
But the thing is, that then makes adoption all about US.
About OUR walk.
About OUR gains.
About the joy OUR family can experience when we exchange our visions of family for His.
And it totally neglects the broken roads that these children and their first mamas had to walk in order to meet our family at the corner of hard and holy.
In adoption, there is no beauty without first brokenness.
And what I’ve realized in six years of adoption and advocacy life is that when I focus only on the beauty, I cheapen the story God has written in these boys’ lives, and I risk “pitching” adoption as only something that families can get OUT of it.
When that gift for ME has literally cost my children loss and death.
The loss of their first family.
The loss of their first culture (although we try to maintain those roots as best we can).
The loss of growing up looking into the eyes of the women who made and carried them.
Although I believe God knew that I would get the privilege of RAISING these children, I do not believe I was God’s first choice for my children.
He did not make a mistake by placing them in the bellies of beautiful women who, for one reason or another, felt ill-equipped, ill-resourced or incapable of caring for them.
I was God’s second choice.
I only get the honor and privilege of raising babies who grew in my heart instead of my belly because their first mamas loved them enough to place them on hospital floors and hospital gardens where they would be quickly discovered, receive the medical care they needed and be given an opportunity for adoption and new life.
But my great gain comes at piercing loss, both for my sons and for the first mamas they talk about and dream about nearly every day of their lives.
There’s no painting over that kind of grief.
There’s no glazing over that kind of loss.
It’s real and it’s deep and it’s heart wrenching, and every day I look into those boys’ perfect black-brown eyes, I see the reflection of first mamas they will never know and alternate lives they will never lead.
And as they regularly miss their first mamas when classmates draw family pictures and we toast first families on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I’m reminded of the beauty and the brokenness of our great blessing at their great cost.
Sometimes the reality is almost paralyzing, and in the advocacy world, it can almost bring me to a halt.
Until I remember the One who specializes in trading beauty for ashes.
The One who makes all things new.
Because when I focus only on the beauty, I overlook the brokenness, but when all I can see is brokenness, I neglect to take into account the Redeemer.
The Restorer.
The Rewriter of stories.
The REAL Rescuer in this life.
Adoption stories are not salvation stories.
There is one Savior, and it is not us.
They are REDEMPTION stories.
Stories where God, in all His grace, chooses to use US, equally broken and imperfect people, to change the story.
To flip the script.
To heal hearts.
To provide homes.
To BE to these children what He has always been to us.
The picture of parental love.
And it’s from there, in that messy place of remembering the brokenness and celebrating the beauty, that He allows us to say, “Come. Be a part of the hard and holy work. Not so YOU can be blessed (although you will be), but because in brokenness, you get the sacred honor and privilege of being part of the blessing.”
Of God’s redemption story.