This woman, Jen Hatmaker, tells it like it is.
She and her husband adopted.
They love their kids to death.
But it is hard sometimes.
Life isn't always a cake walk, no matter where you are or what you are doing. That goes the same for adoption, and in this blog post she is just keeping it real. Which is just how I like it.
Yes I am a big advocate for adoption, and I am thankful beyond measure that we have allowed God to work in our lives in this way. But does that mean it is always easy? Heck no! We are still in the process of parenting people, and parenting is never easy! It is a daily responsibility just full of emotions and choices. Just because we got to choose these particular children does not make raising them a walk in the park.
I absolutely love the following part of her post too, which she says after describing many difficulties she is having with a newly adopted child......
"I know what you're thinking: You asked for this. Yes we did. And we'd ask for it again, with full disclosure and foreknowledge. We would. We would say yes to adoption, to Ben, to Remy. We would do it all over again. We might do it all over again in the future.
That does not mean we are not exhausted."
For us and our personal experience, we have been blessed with crazy good children and a calm after the storm of "the process" of adopting them. But it is not always that way. Oftentimes people adopt kids and bring them home, and they are great for all of two minutes and then the chaos begins. What then?
You figure it out, you do your best, you get down in the trenches for awhile... or maybe a long while... and you pray and move forward with God's help.
BUT the absolute LAST thing you need is someone coming up and saying the infamous "I Told You So!" or giving you the well worn, "Well you made your bed now you gotta lie in it" schpeel.
Like I said, thankfully I am not speaking from personal experience here. But I have heard adoptive parents speak of this exact thing over and over. And who knows, someday it might be us. Things can change in a moment because this is a child we are talking about, a person. They aren't always going to be perfect. For goodness sake, we their parents are far from perfect!
So lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the oldies but goodies used to say. Lets not condemn people's choice to adopt just because things aren't going as planned, or because they have hit some emotional potholes along the way.
Lets support them, love them, encourage them instead of pointing out every fault, blemish or difficulty. After all, isn't that what Christ would do?
I know in speaking for myself, if the day comes when I am having a terrible problem with one of my biological children, I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to come and say "Well, you chose to give birth and trust God to give you a child, now see the mess you have gotten yourself into!?" No, I am fairly certain that would never happen.
So why do people feel so free to say it about the adopted children?
I mean, isn't it the same thing? We are stepping out in faith, allowing God to lead us to our children that He means us to have. Yes they will come with scars and blemishes, some emotional some actually physical. Yes they will have difficulties, some worse than others. But they are ours. We love them. We wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. We accept the hard times and with God's grace, attempt to muddle through. We do the very best we can with what we are given, we learn, we pray and we look to others for help and reassurance.
To others
To our friends, our family, our church.
For love, for support, for guidance.
Not condemnation, or whispers or I-told-you-so.
So go take a look at Ms Jen's blog. She speaks about so much more than this, and way more eloquently than I ever could. But this one piece of it just stuck out and spoke to me. So let us try our best to remember...
"Love one another as Christ has loved you."
We adoptive parents are no different from everyone else. No better. No more perfect. We simply followed God's call to rescue one of his equally imperfect orphans. Help us along that road when things get rough. Love and encourage those who are in despair and need guidance. Thanks!
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