e-mail
John the Baptizer once said: “He [Jesus] must increase, and I must decrease.”
John was a cousin to Jesus Christ (Luke chapter 1). He also paved the way for Christ’s ministry. He knew he was merely the “opening act” for Someone far greater than himself. Yet he had many doubts and sent his followers to ask Jesus if He was really the Messiah.
I’ve really been struck by a thought recently. In my mind, it’s sort of a modern-day parallel to this account in the Bible. When people first discover you are adopting, usually right off the bat you’ll hear, “So what’s wrong with the mom that she’s giving them up?” Often you’re so taken aback at the audacity of the question you can’t even articulate what bad form it is to say “give up” rather than “place for adoption.” Frankly, for many, such education falls on deaf ears. People are eager, ready and poised to cast birth parents in the worst light. The perception persists that someone who would even consider adoption must be a stringy haired coke-head.
Must birth parents decrease so that adoptive parents can increase? In other words, why are adoptive parents always the unsung heroes? I know not everyone is blessed to have a good relationship with a child’s birth family. Not everyone pursues an open adoption. Further, I know all too well that there are parents who fit in the abusive or neglectful box.
My point is, barring those parents for whom the state must step in and remove the children, parents who willingly consider adoption are the heroes. They chose not to abort their child, but rather, to give the child life. Risking the shame , stigma or finger-pointing that can come with a child out of wedlock, or the straight out crazy stares when one hears that a married person who simply cannot care for another child would lovingly choose to place in hopes of a better life for this child…I’d say that’s love.
But, somehow, it’s a competition as to who loves the child more. Why must birth and adoptive parents cancel each other out? My children, my precious gifts from God, would not be here if not for the love of their birth mom, who carried them and nurtured them for nine months and endured painful and complicated deliveries with both. Amazingly, that she would go through it a second time, after her first! And she feels the same as we do, in that her children were meant to be with us. We can each appreciate the good and honorable in the other. We both benefit, and so do our children.
Sometimes, like John, we have doubts. Will I be a “good” parent? Will they resent me later on? Will they search for their “real” parents someday?
Though not everyone can have the Mutual Admiration Society that we have with our children’s birth family, there is still much good we can all learn from each other.
