Adoption Pt4 I Thought I Was So Smart

Seth and I were told we would never have kids. 

We soothed and steadied our souls by deciding to adopt.

 It felt like a gift at the time. Not everyone got to build their family this way, we told ourselves. It will be beautiful, we assured ourselves. 


Because we were desperate to have a family, we didn’t spend much time researching how. What was fastest was best. And what was fastest was Ethiopia. Ethiopia it was. 


We wanted to get on with the rest of our lives after the frustration of the last several years. We wanted to slide past our soft spots surrounding all that we had been through and get on with it. We wanted a family. 


One month into our paperwork we found out we were pregnant. And then again. And then again. And then again. And I don’t say that irreverently. We recognize the gift. In a small way we understand the heartbreak of infertility, and family planning, and miscarriage, and the irresistible urge we feel as humans to nurture, a feeling that when done well makes us feel like everything is right in the world. 


After we had our babies in rapid succession, people would ask us, “Do you think you will still adopt?” Adoption did seem like a reasonable way to say thank you for the things that we never even thought to pray for, never even dreamed. So when people would ask, we would answer “probably”. But the truth was  we weren’t sure. With a house full of happy healthy beautiful children adoption didn’t seem exciting anymore. It was terrifying.


But one day while on a run— I hate to run so the Lord always has my full attention the entire time  (I run and pray I don’t die)— I felt God tugging me. The message was: Allison, you cannot say to me ‘God, you can have this, and you can have this, and you can have this, and you can even have this. But this? My family? You cannot have this.’ It was revealed to me that I saw my family as MINE. Kindly and gently God reminded me that nothing is mine and everything is His. And He’s got this.


So we dove in. But that is not to say that it has been swift. It certainly hasn’t been. I’ve tried to back out a million times because of fear, insecurity, and idolatry. We pulled our paperwork from one country and started completely over in another. Without the desperation of starting a family, Seth and I were more concerned this time with ethics, with birth moms, with keeping families together than we had been before. 


We researched. 


And we found adoption to be terribly complicated. 


All we wanted was an unwanted baby. 


Which seemed simple enough. 


But adopting from a developing country most likely meant adopting a poor woman’s baby. And we discovered that we did not think our home was better because it had central air and heat. We found out that we would not be able to sleep at night if we were parenting some woman’s baby that she dearly loved but could not feed. In that case, adoption did not seem like a solution at all. Educating her, teaching her a trade did.


We did not go into adoption thinking that we would take on a baby with special needs. (We felt like we had enough special needs of our own.) But when Emmanuel came across our screen and we found out he had been abandoned in front of an orphanage, it seemed like an easy answer to our simple prayer: Lord, all we want is an unwanted baby. 


So here we are. 


Yesterday, I visited the orphanage where Emmanuel was raised and visited regularly after being put in foster care. For the first time I saw the note that was left with him. In it was his name- Lin Ming Chao, his birthdate- September 13, 2014, and one sentence that said “We cannot afford to raise this baby. We hope he will be happy.”


So here I am typing under a very sleepy poor woman’s baby.


And I thought I was so smart. 


Many months ago when I was struggling with this idea— her baby, my baby, I don’t want a baby who already has a mom, whose baby is it— a dear friend said this: Allison, I think you are spending too much time thinking about whose baby this is. Hers, yours. Listen— this is GOD’S baby. Nothing is ours. Everything is His. And whatever baby you end up with it is because if you allow Him, He can use you to redeem something mournful. God is going to do what God is going to do. And whatever He is going to do? There’s nothing you can do to mess that up. And whatever He’s not going to do? There’s nothing you can do to force that to happen. Relax. He’s got this.


My friends sent me to China with letters. One to open for every day I am away. But I just read them all in one sitting because I am bad at rules.  Also, the wifi is down at the hotel and I am trapped under a snoring baby. But I can’t help but notice that every single letter is praying for my peace, my peace, my peace. And, friends, I feel it. I feel like the things of this world offer this hypnotic, analgesic peace. But the peace of Christ which transcends every understanding is big and wide and whole and complete and exhaustive and endless. 


Peace.

​He’s got this.