National Adoption Day
Yesterday as I was driving home from picking up my girls from school my five-year-old daughter, Jurnee, made eye contact with me in the rear view mirror. I smiled at her little brown face, with her two puffs of hair on top, each tied in big pink bows. She didn’t smile back. Instead she asked me an unexpected question, “Did my mother die?” I wasn’t sure how to answer. “What do you mean, JJ?” Again, “My Mom! Did she die?”
I knew she didn’t mean me, “No, Jurnee. Your mom didn’t die. But, umm, I don’t know what happened to her.”
I don’t know what happened to her mom. Jurnee was adopted three years ago this week. In our adoption agreement, her mother was given legal rights to have at least two visits a year. I felt very comfortable agreeing to that request. We had already met out in the community for “visits” several times the previous months. Once at a playground, another time at a museum, and Jurnee’s favorite, for donuts! Our visits had been fun. I took lots of pictures of Jurnee and her mom. I don’t think Jurnee actually remembers those visits but has those pictures. And she loves to look at them over and over.
After the adoption I never heard from her mother again. As I write that, my heart aches. It aches for Jurnee and that loss. Being adopted can cause some complicated emotional battles. She is loved. She knows that. She is wanted. She knows that too. Yet still, she yearns to know her “real mom.” She mourns that missing piece of herself. To be honest I do too. I wish we didn’t need adoption. But we do.
Tonight I sit here holding my beautiful, little boy. He is sleeping so peacefully in my arms. Tomorrow he will be adopted. He will get a new last name, the same as mine. I love him. I think I loved him from the moment I met him. But I can’t help but think of his other mom. The one who gave birth to him. I prayed for her, and Jurnee’s mom and Isaiah’s mom. I asked God to send someone to them that would lead them to Him. I asked Him to save them. I asked Him to heal their hearts and my children’s hearts also. “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.” Psalms 147:3
National Adoption Day is happy and sad in so many ways. These beautiful little ones need adoption because of loss. My heart aches for them as they have to make sense of it all for the rest of their lives.
While our adoptions always follow loss and rarely avoid pain, adoption by our Heavenly Father is wonderful and perfect. There is no loss with Him. Only gain. Only good. Only love.
I am thankful for a God who cares. “A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains:” Psalms 68:5
I am amazed by God’s goodness. He made a way for each and every one of us to be adopted! “But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Galatians 4:4-7 I love that verse so much. There is such hope in those words. He loves Jurnee, and Isaiah and Aaron and me and you!
We celebrate each adoption and we wrap our arms around them with the love of our Father as we nurture and guide them like we have been called to do.