It is officially adoption awareness month, or something akin to that. I'm not sure that has been celebrated before, but darn if I don't think it's a wonderful idea.
I am adopted, I have adopted and I have helped others adopt. I can think, truly think, of no endeavor that is more worthy of both praise and wonderment than when someone adopts a child. It should be the answer to those issues of abortion that amazingly keep springing up.
We should be, in my sometimes meaningless opinion, adopting children and pets at a much higher rate than we currently are. I do not equate the two, by they way, other than the fact that both are helpless and should be loved.
It's a funny thing. I used to be asked about adoption a lot more than I am now. When I was growing up, it was fairly common to ask how I felt about adoption, about being adopted. At the time, I didn't, feel that is. It just was what it was.
As an adult, I've thought long and hard about it, as I do most things. I've come to a conclusion, and I have never written about this, that it bothers me. I should be more grateful in all things than I am. Ingratitude seems to grow like a cancer in me sometimes. My adopted parents wanted a child, wanted me. I get that, and I am grateful. But there is a part of me that still insists that someone, some unknown persons, did not want me. That at one part I was, for lack of a better term, completely unwanted. That there is someone out there in this universe, if they're still alive, that chose to give me up. No discussion. No search for the lost child. None of that that I'm aware of. To this day, I've come to understand, that has driven me to either prove myself to some great unknown or to get some sort of great feedback from someone I'll never see.
I've never struggled to see all these persons I was "kin" to but wasn't as my true relatives. I've never struggled to see my upbringing as my own. None of that. I've simply wondered more and more about who "they" were, and I've thought a lot about what circumstances in the early 1950s (am I really, truly that old?) could lead to my, uh, being given up on before I ever had a chance to show my worth.
That's what makes scripture like these so important to "adoptees" I believe.
In Isaiah, "Before I was born the LORD called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name."
In Isaiah, "I have engraved your name on the palm of my hands..."
In John's Gospel: "No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me ..."
Even in Romans: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
In other words, my worth must not, should not, be determined by whether a human being, any human being, cares for me or not. God did when I was in the womb of someone I'll never meet, and He does to this day. It is I who struggled, I who falter, I who wonder, I who doubt. Not Him.
Adoptees should understand that though they were released to be loved by someone other than birth parents, it is the beginning of their lives not the end of something else. Adoptees should recognize that in a strange sort of way, even Jesus was given up for, uh, adoption, open adoption at that. He always knew, it seems, who his heavenly father was who "gave" him to Joseph for safe-keeping. He watched over him, cared for him and twice said "This is my son, with whom I am well-pleased."
Truthfully, that is all I ever wanted, yet I will never get that. Seems to me that records should be open when you're past, uh, half a century or so in age.
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