The question-- “why”--is such a hard
one. Whether you are asking this
question to yourself or someone is asking it to you, the answers are not always
cut-and-dry, nor easy to find. Sometimes
there simply isn’t an adequate answer to this question. As a mom, my children ask me this question
daily. Do they ever grow out of
this? My 16 year old still plagues me
with this question. My youngest is just
starting to get into the “whys,” and I am already dreading the day when my
answers will not be enough for her.
The hardest “whys” are the ones that
simply can’t be answered while we are here on earth. “Why did my parent have to die so soon?” “Why are we battling infertility?” “Why did we lose a child?” “Why did my birth mom give me away?” “Why was my child born with special needs?” These questions simply don’t have adequate earthly
answers. However, I do believe one day
we will see the big picture and it will all make sense. In the meantime we have to have faith and
trust that the Lord has a plan and that He can and will use ALL things for His
good will!
“And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to
His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) My husband and I have definitely asked our
fair share of “whys;” but we have found our faith to be far more important than
the answers to those questions.
As you know, my husband and I have
adopted and fostered children (and if you don’t know this, I recommend reading
my blog archives). Two of the children
living in our house currently are not the same race as we are. As a matter of fact, out of the 10 children
we have had in our home, we have had five Caucasian, three African American,
one African American/Caucasian, and one African
American/Hispanic/Caucasian. Now, that
being said, we did not begin this parenting journey looking for any race in
particular, we just wanted kids. As a
matter of fact, when we got the call about Tony the social worker asked how we
felt about a mixed race baby, to which I answered, “I don’t care if he is
purple as long as he is human.”
We have been asked many times over
the years by friends and family why we “chose” children of different races. As a matter of fact, I was just asked this
recently by a member of my church and it got me thinking about it again. When my husband and I decided we were going
to have kids, our hope was that we were going to give birth to two or three (or
five) kids, then adopt an older child later.
What I find weird is that we never discussed race or any other
particulars about the child we hoped to adopt.
When a couple decides to start a family there usually isn’t a discussion
of race or really even special needs.
When a woman gets pregnant the child is in God’s hands and we really
have no choice in the matter. When a
family adopts, there are tons of choices, an over-whelming amount of choices
actually. When we started the adoption
process we had to first decide foreign or domestic, then choose an agency, then
what kind of adoption (open, closed, semi-open, etc...), then what type of
child we felt we could care for. We had
to choose sex, race, special needs, all of it!
We really had to think about this and discuss it openly. Though there were some physical and emotional
needs we didn’t feel called to handle, for the most part we were open to
anything.
After much discussion about what kind
of child we were looking for we both came to the same conclusion; we were
looking for the child God already had planned for our family. We have learned over the years that God
clearly knows best and it is always best to concede to Him in everything. God knew long ago exactly what our family was
going to look like. I find it so comforting to know that God is in control and not me.
God perfectly made our family and we
feel so blessed to have been chosen to parent all of the kids in our lives,
whether they have stayed or moved on. Whether we had been able to conceive all of
our kids or not, God was still the one beautifully orchestrating which children we
received. So, I guess my answer to the
question, “Why did we chose to adopt/foster children of different races?” will
have to be; We didn’t choose at all, God chose for us and we couldn’t be
happier with His decision!
