Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
My Ad for Adoption
Several years ago, I counselled a young couple who had been trying unsuccessfully to have children. “Why don’t you just adopt and be happy instead of struggling with this?”
Why wrestle everyday with failure (if we want to call infertility failure which I don’t really) when you could celebrate challenge and discovery. Oh forget that.
Here’s the real question: Why go around empty-handed when there are so many kids to pick up?
Here’s a little story that I swear I’ll carry to my deathbed as the defining moment in my relationship with my husband and in the future that we created with our family.
Ours was a second marriage for me, the first for him. I was the mother of a beautiful, tough, kid of all kids 12-year old girl. He had never had children. We tried. Nothing. We tried some more. Nothing. We tested, medicated, tested some more.
Finally, we got the word. No pregnancy was going to happen without major intervention. In vitro — and this was a long time ago — so they were doing in vitro with mason jars and turkey basters. Not for us.
So anyway, as the story goes, my husband and I sat on our backyard picnic table while I told him this death knellish news. “Hmmm,” he said, “I think what this means is that God has something more important in store for us.”
Huh? God? When did my husband ever mention God in a sentence? Never. He just did.
So I packed up my Kleenex, we got in the car, and we went to a Brewers game where we sat high in the cheap seats in old County Stadium along the third base line and I sniffled my way through 9 innings, all the while balancing on my lap my surprised sorrow and my imagined mission from God.
This was a gift my husband gave me — hope. That’s what adoption is, folks. Hope. This little boy in the picture…the thousands of kids who are picked up by strangers who promise to love them. That’s hope.
That’s what you can have in the new year. Hope.
Seriously. There’s a kid sitting around somewhere waiting for you to pick her up.
Here’s a place to start: Adoption Resources of Wisconsin http://www.wiadopt.org/
7 Comments on “My Ad for Adoption”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
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“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Great ad for adoption Jan. There’s always an interesting question about adoption…once folks get past the ego, then the fear…. when they have committed to diving into parenthood in that manner…who is the lucky one? It’s not even about that. It’s about finding the rest of your soul….in a place you’d never expected…another human being.
Adoption is a gift and thinks for reminding us! And as we have teens who were adopted I no longer think of them as adopted. They are tethered to my soul in ways that how they came into our lives is irrelevant. OF course we will never forget adventures to China and Cambodia to get them. But those stories have been layered with everyday happenings that come with raising a child and marveling in who they are and what they present to us. I will never regret the “giftedness” of adoption and pray its gift multiplies for those brave enough to pursue its course!
I think a lot of people think they need to be special or especially skilled. They just need to go for it. For every kid waiting to be adopted, there’s somebody hanging back because they think they’re not ‘qualified’ or not ‘ready.’ I’d like to give all of them a big goose in the rear. 🙂
Reds Wrap makes my heart weep with joy that someone can say what is said here
Thanks Pat — your thoughts mean a lot to me.
I’ve always called adoption The Path of Hope. You know how it’s going to end: with a baby. So what are you waiting for?
No kidding! I’m on a major campaign this year to get folks I know who say they have thought about adoption to get going on it. It’s a no lose proposition.