Made to Be Mother to the Motherless

My journey toward an adoption mindset started a long time ago, but I didn’t realize it until I watched Hotel Rwanda.

I’d heard about adoption often. My friend told me that I should read Adopted for Life by Russell D. Moore, and asked me to help her brainstorm about how to begin a foundation that might be able to help families afford the cost of adoption. Another friend had a heart to work with orphans in third-world countries. A couple in my church, after years of infertility, successfully adopted an adorable little girl. Some friends of ours adopted multiple times from all over the world, combining a family of children with Asian, African, Hispanic, and Caucasian roots. My work at a crisis pregnancy center put me into contact with adoption agencies in the area, since adoption is a beautiful (and often undervalued) option for women facing unplanned pregnancies.

I had always considered adoption a wonderful thing, but it didn’t personally impact me until about a year ago.

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The Beginning of the Journey 

Hotel Rwanda is a devastating, difficult film about the 1994 genocide, in which the Hutu majority slaughtered thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In the midst of the crisis, a particular hotel owned by an international company became a kind of refugee camp. At one point in the movie, the United Nations begins the evacuation of all white people in the region, leaving the Tutsis to the Hutus. One particular scene stood out to me.

A group of white Catholic nuns arrived at the hotel with a few dozen African orphans whom they cared for. The UN soldiers pulled the nuns away from the children and loaded them onto waiting buses, and those beautiful African children stood in a drenching rain, watching the departure of the only caretakers that they had ever known. The soundtrack swelled with the voice of African children.

Suddenly my heart was on its knees, weeping. Something fierce and powerful rose up in me until I choked. Give me the children. Give me every single one of them. I will be their mother. I will love the children.

I had never experienced anything like that.

I expected the feeling to go away, like so many passing whims. It didn’t. It grew.

The journey continues

I began to read through LifeLines, the magazine for adoptive families by Bethany Christian Services, a reputable adoption agency that facilitates adoptions all over the world. I expected to be informed, but I didn’t expect to be impacted. Yet over and over, I felt this still, small voice whisper to my heart: “This is you. You will need to know this information someday. These stories will be like yours someday.”

I requested a copy of Adopted for Life for Christmas, and eagerly read through it. I am generally composed when I read books, but I found myself weeping over every single chapter as I read of the Russell’s struggle with infertility, and the horrific environment in which they found their two oldest sons, whom they adopted from Russia.

But I wept especially over the immense love of the God who looked at a people without beauty or righteousness to recommend them, and who said, “You are my children now, and I am your Father.” 

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When we were still orphans, Christ became a substitute orphan for us. Though he was a son, he took on the humiliation of a slave and the horror of death (Phil. 2:6-8). Jesus walked to that far country with us, even to the depths of the hog pen that we’d made our home, and hung on a tree abandoned by his Father in our place… 

The trauma of leaving the orphanage was unexpected because I knew how much better these boys’ life would soon be. I thought they knew too. But they had no idea. They couldn’t conceive of anything other than the status quo. My whispering to my boys, “You won’t miss that orphanage” is only a shadow of something I should have known already. Our Father tells us that we too are unable to grasp what’s waiting for us—and how glorious it really is. It’s hard for us to long for an inheritance to come, a harmonious Christ-ruled universe, when we’ve never seen anything like it.

~ ADOPTED FOR LIFE by Russell D. Moore

A Future of Adoption

I don’t know what my future holds, but I know that, as long as I live, I will advocate for adoption, by supporting those who choose to adopt and—Lord willing—by one day becoming the mother of a child, or many children, who do not share my genes, but who share my heart.

I know adoption is not easy, nor as romantic as some stories present it. That’s why I’m learning everything I can about the process and transition, so that I will have realistic expectations and practical understanding when the time comes. I worry about how my physical and financial limitations will affect adoption, but I am convinced that the Lord will work those things out. Whom He calls, He also equips.

I’m praying for my children. They may not yet be born, but I have children somewhere in this world, and when the time comes, I will seek them diligently. And when I have found them, I will wrap them in my arms and tell them how I learned to love them, because I was sought and found and loved too.

Romans 8:14-17
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.