The "A" Word

Adoption

How can one word bring up so many different emotions? Perhaps because it has so deeply impacted my life.

The reason for this post - because someone asked me this morning "is he one of your adopted children" First of all, obviously this person doesn't know me very well. First of all - ALL of my children are adopted. Secondly, anyone who knows me even remotely well would never ask me that question.

One word - ADOPTION - makes me smile, stirs up a passion deep inside me, makes me cringe when used the wrong way, makes me want to stand on top of a roof somewhere with a loud speaker screaming to all the world that adoption is a GOOD thing, I want to show EVERYONE that adopted children are no less a part of their family than genetically born children. And... WHY?? Why do people automatically assume that people can't love their adopted children as much as birth children? Why do people think they can ask if a child is adopted, and why would they NEED to ask that? Sometimes I want to say - tell you what... I will tell you about MY child's creation story and you tell me about yours - so how exactly DID your child come to be, oh and don't leave out any details... hee hee ;) I wouldn't do that - well, probably not ;)

I have two settings - mild and watch out ;)

It takes A LOT to get me to the "watch out" mode... but mess with my husband or my children, and you will see it come out of me VERY quickly.

Luckily for the person that asked me that, Matt was sitting next to me, and he answered before I could say anything. Also luckily for that person, Matt answered quickly before my friend (more like sister) Pam, could give an answer. Pam, whom I love very much, is much more likely than me to speak her mind (in a good way), and she is also the mom of two children given to her by God through adoption.

As I get older, I am starting to see that people really don't mean it in an ugly way; they really just do not understand it. But I want to change that.

The people who know me closely often "forget" that my kids are adopted. Simply because they are around us so much that they see that we are a family just like any other family. How can the rest of the world come to see and understand that?

When I sat down to write this, the kids were watching Power Rangers, and I put my headphones on and hit play on my media player, songs are playing randomly. (I HATE listening to Power Rangers, very annoying - lol) Well, as I got to that last paragraph a song came on that automatically calmed me down. It is a song written and sung by my friend Aimee. In it she sings about her kids growing up and how she will always be their mom, and always be there for them. I used her song in a video to show in church one time when we were talking about and doing education on pro-life issues and adoption. So, when it came on, I came back down from a roaring lion to a passive lion ;) I can rest easily knowing that MY children KNOW that they are MY children, but oh how I wish the rest of the world could see that too.