Another Adoption Head-Spin

In facing the challenges I've had this week with Small Sun, I emailed my old playgroup friends in the States. We have a yahoo group that has acted as the forum for many a lively discussion, from breastfeeding to schooling decisions. I love that group of women and often turn to them for encouragement and ideas when I'm facing a parenting challenge.

The responses I received were helpful. Some new ideas emerged, and some things I'm already doing were reinforced. Also I felt surrounded by community as I focus on parenting in this particular season. One thing that several people said that got me thinking, however, was the sentiment along the lines of "God put Small Sun into your family, so you can trust that God will help you to be the parents he needs."

I just want to unpack that statement a little bit and share how I feel about it, purely from the angle of how I react to it, not from examining the accuracy of the statement itself.

I put a lot of trust in the sovereignty of God in our lives, and find comfort in His omniscience. So on one hand, this statement could be incredibly comforting to me. It would be if it was made about my daughter. I discovered her there in my womb, and it felt nothing short of miraculous that God chose to knit her there, in me. I can believe that God meant for me to parent her because He put her right there in my body. Kind of hard to miss His intentions on that one.

But with Small Sun, well he was planted somewhere else. He was nurtured and carried and cared for in the womb of another mother. I think in most voluntary placement adoptions it's like apples to oranges if you try to line up the pros and cons of the first family and the adoptive family to figure out who was "more fit" or where the child would be "better off". I think it's a futile exercise and pointless to do. Things are lost and gained on either side. Some things are more easily measured, like financial stability, private school education, etc. But it's the things that are harder to measure where I feel the child loses and gains more: it is in belonging to a genetic heritage, matching with your family, and having your gifts, and personality make sense within the framework of your family that really end up meaning something in the end.

So to stumble back around to statements like "Small Sun belongs in your family", "You are the best parents for Small Sun", and "God put Small Sun into your family for a reason", well, they just make me squirm. I can't flat out disbelieve them because I CAN see so much Providence in the joining of The Captain and I with Small Sun's first mother. Yet I certainly can't believe them because to say that Small Sun belongs with us, is to say that he did not/does not belong with his first family, and I don't believe that to be true. To say we are the best parents for Small Sun is to say that his first mother wasn't the best mother for him and I don't believe that either. And while I do believe that God had purpose in bringing us into Small Sun's life, I don't believe that it was God's hand that severed the mother-child relationship he had with his first mother.

Perhaps some of this is tied up in open adoption longing? If we had a more open adoption, perhaps I could believe those statements to a greater extent, because my mothering wouldn't feel so much an exclusion to Small Sun's other mother. I don't want to be the only mother present in his life, but I am.

So when I receive this intended encouragement, I actually feel myself grit my teeth and batten down the hatches a little bit. I feel like I've got to do this adoptive parenting thing the best that I can, but I can't be deluding myself with any platitudes about Small Sun's supposed belonging in our family. I can't indulge in making my experience in the relationship more comfortable, at the risk of further alienating Small Sun from his first family. I can't rest easy on the belief that he is "supposed to be with us". 

Flip that coin around though, to a situation where someone is questioning Small Sun's belonging in our family, and I will fight with claws and teeth to defend him. In the space of a breath I will be nose to nose with the offender, declaring myself definitively and permanently his MOTHER. That is different though. That is a matter of defending him in our family and making sure that he is protected and that he belongs.

Belongs...there it is again. Tricky thing, belonging. I guess it is when belonging in one place means not belonging in another that I begin to squirm. I think that there are seemingly opposing truths that can exist simultaneously but I don't feel like I've matured enough as an adoptive parent to be there yet.

Instead of helping me sort out my thoughts, this blog entry feels like multiple muddy footprint trails all over a nice white rug. Rather than finding the head and the tail of the animal I think I'm wrestling, I am groping blind finding a foot here, a wing there, all muddled and confused. Sorry, but that's the way adoptive parenting is a lot of the time.

Comments

[Rebeccah]

This is a wonderful and wise post.

[Lori]

"Perhaps some of this is tied up in open adoption longing? If we had a more open adoption," is where tears formed.

Reading "God put Small Sun into your family, so you can trust that God will help you to be the parents he needs." made me wiggle a bit, too, but I couldn't put my finger on why.

Just now, I thought, God knew Small Sun would need a home. He saw yours (meaning your heart). He opened the door and placed that sweet boy in your arms.

I'm actually crying now. I'm not sure why, but I am.