Nov 26, 2019
By Jane Mackintosh
When we were in the initial process of being approved for foreign adoption, and in our home study, we were required to take parenting classes—which was a bit ironic since we were already the parents of three biological children: Adam (age 13), Eric (age 12) and Alicia (age 10). The man teaching the class had one adopted child who was a toddler, which left us as the “experts” on child-rearing in the room. We had been to Bill Gothard’s seminar on “Basic Youth Conflicts” and heard him say that adoption is not “just another way to build a family” but a calling, and those couples looking into adoption should consider whether this was a call from God or merely a desire for children. He was not expressing opposition to adoption, just a different way of looking at it. I remember being very incensed at this thought, thinking children are children, no matter what their stories. I was certain I could love and nurture any child into wholeness, and any child who became my child would be loved and cared for as much as the ones I had given birth to. And the second half of that statement proved to be absolutely true. I also learned just how naive I was in my certainty that I could love and nurture any child into wholeness.
After a solid year plus of paperwork, classes, more paperwork, having to retrieve every birth certificate, our marriage license, parents’ birth certificates, parents’ marriage licenses, plus doctor’s visits, all financial records, proof of employment, tax returns for multiple years, notarized character references, proof from every county that a notarized document came from that the notary was licensed in that county, then everything translated into Brazilian Portuguese and all documentation to the Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco to guarantee that California was indeed a state in the United States and the counties of the notaries were indeed counties in California, we were ready to send our paperwork to Brazil for approval for the placement of the children we would adopt. This was 1990, and at that moment, Brazil was an open country, meaning Brazil was allowing children to be placed for foreign adoption. During the process, Brazil’s terms for adoption changed (change is a constant in foreign adoption) and any family wishing to adopt a child under the age of five must have at least one parent able to reside in Brazil for six weeks. This was a blow to us, but soon became a blessing, because it moved us higher up the list for placement since many adoptive parents could not do this. (The other factor that moved us up the list was that we were looking for a sibling group of two to three children.) We decided we could, and within three months of our final submission of paperwork, we got the call that there were three children, ages 5, 3, and 1, and were we interested? And the rest is history.
Wouldn’t it be special if that was all there was to this story? I suspect our story is not unlike most adoptive families. It is full of victory and defeat like most parents of biological kids experience—except as adoptive parents, we had to deal with much of what we inherited from early trauma in our adopted kids. When my daughter-in-law, Rachel, was looking into adoption, she found a book which she had me read to see what I thought of this perspective. It was written by an adoptive mom also with biological children. She said that success with your adopted kids is related to the stories of trauma in their early life from which they were dropped on their heads. This sounds harsh, but her point was to raise our kids according to their abilities to process their early trauma rather than our expectations of what we think they should be doing. Our son, Adam, and wife, Rachel, and their experiences with their adopted/bio kid mix, introduced them to newer research on the impact of early childhood trauma and the neuropathways that are rerouted because of the trauma. We have learned from them about parenting ways to help restore those neuropathways to a healthier outcome. We wish we had known about this when we were raising our kids, but we do have a chance to understand better our grandchildren, who are adopted. We do know very well the impact on the bio kids when adoptive children are added in.
Now for the important part. Would we do it again? IN A HEARTBEAT!!!! Even knowing what we do now about the impact of one of those children having a terminal illness and dying? IN A HEARTBEAT!!! Even knowing what we know now about the negative impact of adoption on our bio kids? IN A HEARTBEAT!!!! I will tell you emphatically that there will be damage to your bio kids, but if you could see from my perspective the way God has used those damaging effects to make our bio kids into the men and woman of God they are today, you will understand in a profound way the promise of Romans 8:28 of how God takes all things and uses them for good. If you could see, from my perspective, the joy our adopted sons have brought to our family, and that our adopted sons, all three of them, are evidence of the promise of the Psalms that “children are a heritage from the Lord, and blessed is the man whose quiver is full.” I use the terms bio/adopted to describe how they came to us, but believe me when I say, all six are our kids! Our story is a story of blessing and triumph. It is also a story of hardship and deep loss, but we have seen God work in ways we never would have gotten to see and the very thought of not having all six of our kids makes us all shudder with what we could have missed had we not been responsive to God’s call to adopt. Yes, God did call us, and yes, now I do agree with Bill Gothard’s assessment that adoption is a “calling,” not “just another way to build a family.” It is not an easy “calling,” but the gifts of children given by God, whether through biology or adoption, are a “heritage from the Lord.” To turn any down may be the easier way out, but the blessings you will miss makes me weep for you if you decide to turn them down.
This brings me to my final soapbox. We despise abortion, and rightfully so. We know that God despises abortion. It flies in the face of the very core of who we are created to be—especially mothers, as any mother who has had a child die knows. Those who lose a child in the womb, have still lost a child and mourn that loss deeply, regardless of how that child was lost. It is in our DNA and those who feel they have no choice but to purposely abort a child, still bear the deep scars, no matter how much they pretend they do not. It is in our DNA. Those who cannot conceive also mourn deeply, and we must find a way to minister to them also. It is in our DNA. Here is my point. When abortion is no longer legal, which will come at some point, we, as the Church of Jesus Christ, must be ready and willing to adopt these children from mothers who may feel they cannot raise them. We need to understand God’s heart for the helpless and find ways to support the mothers who wish to keep their children, and those who believe they cannot raise them. We must be the answer that God is calling us to be. This is His heart and we have His heart. After all, He adopted us!
