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Challenges in Adoption
If you would have asked me a year ago, I would not have been able to tell you much about the nuances of adoption. Approaching this job as a 24-year-old newlywed, fresh out of college with a bachelor’s degree, and very little personal experience with loss and grief proved uniquely eye-opening. I found myself coming face-to-face with person after person who carried great burdens on their shoulders. For our expectant mothers, it’s the confusion and fear of being pregnant without the resources, ability, or support system to step into motherhood. For our adoptive families, it’s often the grief of infertility, or a burden on their hearts for the children of all over the world in need of a family.
It's difficult for anyone to grapple with these challenges. Early on I feared that because I couldn’t personally relate to their situations, there was in some way an unbreachable separation between them and myself. That the only role available to me was the distant social worker that types up the reports, sends them where they need to go and shakes your hand when I’m done. However, from observing my fellow workers in this mission field, I learned that the far more courageous thing to do is to follow Jesus’ example.
What Jesus Does
When Jesus traveled back to Judea after hearing word of his beloved friend Lazarus falling sick, Jesus knew that he would already be dead upon arriving. He knew Lazarus’ sisters Martha and Mary would be in the depths of grief and fear for the future, and that all of that would soon be changed to joy when he raised Lazarus from the dead. Yet, in John 11:35, we are given a sweet glimpse into the type of person Jesus truly is, with just two words we can see that He is a far more compassionate God than one that just answers prayers. Those two words are this: “Jesus wept.” Jesus, before doing the impossible and redeeming a hopeless situation, went to Mary and simply wept with her. Allowing himself to be “deeply moved and his spirit greatly troubled.”
What I can do
I know I cannot pretend to have even a drop in the ocean of Jesus’ power and omniscience. I can’t sit with a grieving couple, pursuing adoption after a miscarriage or stillbirth, and know what’s going to happen for them. I can’t promise an adoptive family that they won’t experience new forms of grief in the adoption journey, and I can’t sit with a birth family and answer all their questions about what the future will look like, or whether the confusion will be done at the court finalization.
What I can do is sit with you, weep with you, and support you in the coming days. I hope and pray that we as an organization can give you even a glimpse of the life-changing immensity of love that Jesus has for you and share every joy and sorrow along the way.
