A second chance

My blood ran cold.  For a moment I couldn’t breathe as I read the words in a news article that defined in great detail the injustice and pain that many Chinese birth families face.  The article’s setting was the province where Little Monkey was found.  A grim picture was presented of the one child policy, how it is enforced and the reality of pain caused.  Could I really be reading what it was like for the birth mother of my child?

It can be easy to paint birth parents with broad strokes….or not to think of them at all.  I mean really think about them.  Shoot, I can conguer up all kinds of senerios.  Some birth parents are poor and can’t afford healthcare.  Some are busy professionals who aren’t ready to parent, others simply have made bad choices.  Some face family pressure to have a boy to carry on the family line, others are victims who wanted to keep this precious girl but were unable to pay the fines for a second child.   These are the stories of many children in chinese orphanages, yet I can’t wrap my mind around them.

More than anything I want to fill in the story of my children.  My version is filled with happy background music as the birth parents make the best choice for their child.

I think that is why the article made my blood run cold.

The music stopped and entered in the nightmare some families face.

It made me think.

Adoption never starts with happy background music – no matter the story.  Those of us who have been blessed by adoption if we don’t stop and embrace that fact then we are living with blinders on our eyes.

In my first year as an adoptive mom, I heard many things from a hurting four year old.  I will never forget the sorrow of those dark brown eyes as she asked me why I had to be her mommy.  What did I say?  “I am so sorry that your birth mommy couldn’t take care of you.  That is sad.”  It never crossed my mind to say….God made you for our family.  You are better for it.  God is not in the business of causing someone else pain in order to bless another.

As an adoptive parent who deeply loves her children and can’t imagine life without them, I am acknowledging the fact that adoption wasn’t God’s first plan or His best.  

Hear my heart.

God did not set the one child policy into action so that I could have the joy of Little Monkey in my life.  Yet, He sees the children who are innocent victims and He declares that pain will not have the final word.  He set plan B into action.  The Father of the fatherless provides for His child and I was blessed to be a part of that plan.   This is how I want to explain adoption to my children.

The world is fallen and the best doesn’t always happen.  What adoption is…..redemptive….a second chance.  In this world of pain, suffering and injustice God gives us a plan B.  Second chances are beautiful, amazing and miraculous.  That is the gift we have been given.  Can you hear the happy….NO JOYOUS…..background music now?!

This is why I have learned so much about faith as an adoptive parent.   I know that my blonde brain would not understand my adoption in Christ without the real example I have living through my family.  The cross wasn’t God’s first plan.  Sin entered in and a second chance was needed.  That is my adoption story.

Redemption.

I have been laboring over this post for three weeks now writing and re-writing fearful that I will not explain all that God is teaching my heart about adoption.  My adoption.  The adoption of my children.  And may I be as bold as to say, the culture of adoption that I see rising up in the church.  Not sure that I have done it justice yet.  sigh.

I guess what I am saying….I am thankful for second chances.  God gave one to me.  He gave a second family to my children.  I am believing for one more.  I cry out for all that has been lost by the birth parents of Little Monkey and Little Man; I know God has redemption in mind for them as well.