Philly Area mom, Life forever changed by adoption
5 years.
5 years our daughter.
5 years a family.
5 years into this adventure of life hand in hand.
5 years into being the mother of this child who continues to amaze me and be a tool in His hand to sanctify me.
I can barely remember life before this day 5 years ago.
We were eating muffins at a cafe this morning when a guy approached us, held out his phone, and asked us what colors we saw.
“Um…gold and white?”
He replied, “No way! No! It’s black and blue!” He walked away laughing; we sat there stumped.
We thought he was just a weirdo until Evan came home from school and showed me the same picture and asked the same question.
Apparently, this silly picture has nearly broken the Internet since yesterday. In 6 hours alone, this picture of a dress got over 16 million hits all from people arguing over what colors it is. Our own family has been duking it out this afternoon.
Experience is reality. When we see gold and white, it’s gold and white; anything else couldn’t possibly be. It doesn’t matter that the person next to us swears it’s black and blue. We just tell her she’s wrong and roll our eyes when she tries to tell us the same thing.
So, what color is adoption?
The black and blue abounds. Hearts spill out via words on screens about the emotional cost, the trauma, the brokenness, the loss, the hurt, the hard starts that beget more hard. I’ve read them; I’ve wrote them. And, I confess that when I have been focused on the black and blue, it’s pretty hard to see any other colors. There may have been glimpses of gold and white; a change in color for just a moment that caught my eye. But, moments later, I talked myself out of it. No, I was wrong. It’s really black and blue. I must have been seeing things.
8 years into our adoption journey. 5 years into parenting a child who joined our family through adoption. 4 years into ministering to other families built via adoption. I know the black and blue; the black and blue is real and on some days seems like it can be tangibly felt. But, I know the gold and white better. And, I’ve seen how the gold and white is fully able to overcome the black and blue.
Adoption is family. It’s redemption in loss. Adoption is hope despite the unknown. Adoption is connection and relationship. It is courage and resilience. It’s beauty so intense it can be tangibly felt and breathed in. It’s power to overcome. Adoption is delighting in each other. It’s being intentional to focus on the gold and white even in the midst of black and blue.
It’s amazing. life changing. an opportunity for healing. a blessing.
It’s everyday. It’s life.
It’s good.
What color is adoption?
It’s gold and black, white and blue, and every shade in between. Don’t even try to convince me of anything different.
I get it. There was a big crisis. In 1979, facing a huge and growing population, Chinese government officials created the “family planning policy” as the solution. Things were turned upside down as families who years before had been encouraged to build China by adding to their family were now told they could have one child only. Couples who were from minority groups were allowed two children. And, in some rural areas, a one-son, two-child rule was upheld. If those families’ first-born child was a girl, they were allowed a second chance to have the boy they wanted and needed to ensure their own social security. It was the right thing for everyone; at least, that’s what was promoted on posters and painted on walls in villages. It didn’t take long for people to learn that violating the policy was serious business; families were fined anywhere between 3 to 10 times their annual salary as a “social compensation fee” with increased fees for multiple violations. When the billboards and fines proved not enough, officials stepped up their enforcement. Somehow horrific became normal as women with wombs growing with life were brought into makeshift surgical rooms together for forced abortions and sterilizations. It has happened. Many, many times over. I’ve heard the stories. I have read that through all these efforts combined, China has successfully “avoided” approximately 400 million births since 1979–400 million.
“Give fewer and better births, be happy the whole life.”
It’s now 35 years later. I wonder if there are as many conference room meetings now about the family planning policy as there were in 1979. There likely may be. The effects of the policy that are apparent right now are dramatic. With needing a son and only being allowed one child, girls are simply missing. Some have said there are as many as 40 million more men than women in the 20-something age bracket in China. 40 million young women are simply missing. The disparity has opened the way to a myriad of problems–prostitution and trafficking, families selling their daughters to other families as future wives for their sons, parents demanding huge dowries including houses and cars from potential husbands to their daughters. Men who are poor, uneducated, and/or disabled simply cannot compete and will likely remain alone for life. As of right now, about 12-15% of all Chinese men will never marry and will live out their lives shamefully as bare branches in their family trees.
We’ve seen the family planning policy morph in recent years in response. A few years ago, couples who were both only children in their families of origin became allowed to have two children together. Then, if even one member of the couple was an only child, they were allowed to have two children together. Upholding the policy has been said to be more “relaxed” in general. And, Beijing government officials have denounced forced abortions. Just a week ago, I read a report online that there have been conversations among officials in Shanxi province about how to handle the current consequences of the last 35 years of the family planning policy that included the idea of forcing all couples in their province to have a second child now and fining them if they don’t.
I don’t get it.
Every night, we eat at our dining room table with both leaves extending it to the largest it can go. We don’t fit around the kitchen table anymore. Eating together are five American faces and four Chinese ones, one of them my daughter forever. The other three are friends–a 4 year old boy, his father, and his mother–who are living with us for a season because it wasn’t safe for them where they were were. There’s a baby girl growing inside her who will be meeting the world soon. Those same forced abortions that were denounced publicly in Beijing are a reality where they are from. Only an overnight train ride from the city where officials are talking about forcing families to have second children, officials are still doing whatever they can to make sure they look like they’re doing a good job for the People.
The dichotomy of the world around me is overwhelming. My head is spinning and my heart dizzy.
_________________________
Missing girls.
Astronomical fines that cripple families.
Forced abortions.
_________________________
Pink flowered onesies with tiny little bows.
The baby bib from a friend decorated with hearts
that says “Daddy’s Little Sweetheart.”
_________________________
Women lying quietly in surgical recovery rooms
knowing they will never give a baby life again.
_________________________
The smile of a mother hearing her baby’s heartbeat.
_________________________
Officials confused by the problems surrounding them
and actually considering flipping the world upside down again
and fining the same families if they do not now have two children.
_________________________
The sisterhood between mothers.
The dimples on the sweet face of my little girl.
_________________________
Wondering if the woman who gave her life has the same dimples
and if she is somewhere today resigned to the hard reality of life
or if she’s as confused as I am and thinking too
I
don’t
get
it.
I clung to the steering wheel as if it was a floatation device and I was drowning. It seemed fitting. I felt like I was drowning. There I sat in the parking lot of the grocery store. Mothers with babies on their hips casually walking past my parked car to go pick up milk and eggs. Women shooting off one last text before finishing their errands. And, I sat there, crying wondering if we had made a very big mistake.
A few days earlier, we had been sent her file. She was beautiful. After over two years of walking down the adoption process path, we thought this could be it. We thought that this was the moment we had been waiting for. We had sat down together before an alphabetical list of words months before that day. We looked at a handful of words we couldn’t pronounce and debated over which of those words were scary and which were not-so-scary for us. None of them were without implications; we knew that. But, it almost seemed like the scariest part wasn’t the words and their implications but the actual box checking.
Months later, we saw her. Our social worker had locked her file for us and sent it via email with an intentionally warm but short, neutral message every family gets to the effect of: Look her file over. Show your doctor. Let us know if you have questions. You have a limited time to respond. And so, it began. I did what I knew to do. We poured over her file, studied her pictures, charted her measurements, read about where she was living, consulted experts, and prayed. Is this girl with silky dark hair pulled back from her face and large dark eyes our daughter?
We said yes. The time was running out on our deadline, and there was no reason to say no. The labels attached to her were diagnoses we had checked “yes” to on that list. And, as we did all that we had planned to do when that referral came, there were no big surprises. We showed her picture to our children and told our families all about her.
But, something wasn’t quite right.
Can we get another update? Can they send us video? Can we ask her foster family a few questions? Let’s get one more doctor to weigh in.
I had never done this before. I blamed it on nerves. I blamed it on my own fear of the unknown. Surely this was the biggest leap of faith I’d ever taken. But, this wasn’t what I had imagined. I found myself looking at the pictures of a beautiful girl and looking for something hidden. I read her files over and over looking for red flags. The confirmation I had prayed for wasn’t coming; the only thing coming was increased anxiety and panic.
I wanted to say yes. I felt I had to say yes. Why wouldn’t we say yes? But, why did I find myself in the dark place of looking for a reason to say no?
I fell apart in the car that day, afraid that I wasn’t only wrong about this little girl on the other side of the world who simply needed a family but that I was wrong about much, much more. If I couldn’t say yes to her, if I couldn’t move forward in being her mother, maybe I was wrong about saying yes to adoption entirely, wrong about my own motherhood, wrong about my own heart, about everything. I could barely catch my breath. How did I get to this place?
He met me there. In the tears. In the chaos. In my conversations with my husband and with our social worker and with our children. He spoke to me and took my hand.
I was right where I was supposed to be, broken and poured out, wrestling to understand Him, His will, and my role in it. It was not my job to “save her,” so very much not my job. His plan for her did not ultimately depend on me. A checked box on a 2-dimensional list did not mean that we were required to move forward to make any multidimensional child our child. Those checked boxes simply helped prepare us as adoptive parents and helped our social worker in her difficult job. That’s all. People cannot be reduced to checkboxes. I could not fear any the opinions of others that may have come. No explanation was required. It’s okay to say no.
She had arrived into my inbox and my heart like a little butterfly, gently fluttering by and landing for a moment only to flutter again to another heart where she’d safely stay for good. While she was here, God taught me more about who He is and who I am than I could have imagined. I fell apart right into His arms where He let me know that she wasn’t mine. It was those same arms that took my hand and guided me to keep going and ultimately handed me the little one was very much my daughter only 6 months later. There was still anxiety, doubt, and fear at times. But, everything was different. Somehow in the midst of all of that, there was a peace and assurance, the confirmation that I needed that told me I couldn’t say no. My heart and spirit wouldn’t let me. I had to press on; she was our daughter.