Ok…. I know all my adoptive parent friends out there
are looking at me like I have just fallen off the turnip truck. This is a fact that they know and live every
day. It is not a new “truth” for them,
nor for me. I just have been thinking a
lot about this lately and decided to put my thoughts out there! So, friends, just bear with me.
I have been involved in many adoptions over the past 10+
years. Not in any paid facilitator kind
of way, but as a “help” in what areas I can.
The first adoption I was involved in was a single mother who had lots of
love to give and sought the child to lavish this on. She adopted a beautiful girl around the age
of 14 months of age. AM was beautiful in
every way and attached quickly to her new mom.
It was a perfect story to add to the adoption books. Now, fast forward several years…. The mother has had to deal
with the questions of “why don’t I have a daddy” and “where is my daddy” for
years now. How do you answer that one so
that a child of 5, 6, or 7 understands it?
How do you adequately fill that void?
As adults, we can spiritualize it with the simple answer of “Oh dear
child, you have a heavenly Father that loves you more than an earthly father
ever could!” But how does a small child
understand the spiritual realm when we are challenged to accept and understand
it as adults? I have watched and heard
and felt this mother anguish over this question. She is a wonderful mother, full of wisdom and
love! AM is a wonderful child, full of
talents and joys! But for now, the
question lingers.
Another little angel was adopted shortly after AM. She too was a perfect little bundle of pink
joy that delighted her mother and father.
She was the princess that they had dreamed of and long for. Here she was…completing their family. They lavished her with love, time, and almost
anything the child could dream of in her small little mind. Then the bottom fell out of the economy and
the dad’s business hit hard times. They
struggled to continue to live in the same way as before and the mother had to
return to work. Still they attempt to
keep their precious princess’s world spinning as it always had… and they
succeed! But the struggle is there. Why when they were obedient to God through
adoption? Why, when they knew it was
God’s will to take this “fatherless” child into their hearts and homes, was
there this attack on them?
Today, three families are here completing, in one stage or
another, adoptions of their own Ukrainian angels. And they struggle…. Last night, one father
was pick-pocketed on the way to see his new son in the hospital. It was his new daughter’s birthday and he was
to meet us all at a restaurant. We
became concerned after the time grew later and later. The countenance of his precious princess was slipping
lower and lower, as she waited for her “Daddy” to arrive. The joy on her face was palatable when he
finally walked in…until she heard the story of why he was late. This poor papa had already faced so many
things through this adoption…sickness, sadness, separation from his wife who
had to stay home to work….and now, he had been pick-pocketed. However, his resilience was only momentarily
threatened, and now he moves on!
Another family had to come face-to-face with the family that
many years ago callously abandoned their new son. He has little understanding of the shear
neglect and emotionally abuse that this mother and adult daughter imparted to
him. He is oblivious to the fact that
they could have done more for him. The biological
mother rarely visits the son without some motivate… to take his new MP3-player,
or new clothes for her own profit! Other
times, she comes drunk to the orphanage in an attempt to soothe her pain of
abandoning her son. Never for his
benefit! And now, this new mother and
father had to stand face-to-face with these family members and maintain a civil
attitude toward them for the sake of their son!
What strength and Christ-like love the showed!
The stories go on and on…. But this post grows weary to the
reader. Come back later to see the Part
2 and what God has revealed to me through all these stories and more!!!
