Heavy, necessary, not exactly fun reading....
While attending the orphan summit in May of this year, I was able to hear a message from Ann Voskamp. She is a Christian author and speaker and even though I didn't know it, she had just finished a journey to adopting a child from China. She has several bio kids and this is her first adoption experience. Her child, born in China, had a heart condition. In her testimony, she shared that this condition would require surgeries and medical care that the birth mother could not provide so she had placed this child for adoption so that she could have a chance at life and not imminent death. Ann's message was not necessarily to beat the drum of adoption, but more like.......how do we stop this? How do we help these families to have the medical care they need for their children so that giving their child to another family is not necessary.......
Ann Voskamp gave voice to something I have cried out for many times, with my own children. I love adoption and I love my family just as it is, but I often ache for the birth mamas that could not feel capable of parenting the children they brought into the world. Where are the birth fathers? Why have they not come forward? Who are they? Don't they know they helped create amazing, talented, wonderful, image-bearers of the Lord God Almighty? Where are the extended families? The teachers? The churches? The friends? Where is the village that comes together to raise children?
I think the answer is that the "where are they" speaks to a broken place.....an invisible place.....a maybe someday place. In adoption, we feel called to take these children into our homes which already have extended families, support, teachers, churches, friends and a village. In the calling of adoption, the Lord raises up these systems. I wonder if it is now time to identify them in families of origin. To create them if they do not exist. To nurture them if they are just starting.......so that even in broken places and what is unseen, we can find a way to keep families together.
Stop bashing the woman who use government assistance to buy food for her children.
Stop judging these women for needing cash assistance when she cannot provide.
Stop assuming that women and children can do things that families who have fathers, husbands, grandparents, churches and community can do. To assume makes an ass out of you and me.
What might the world look like if we own our awareness of women and children who need help. Could we offer to help pay for daycare for working single moms? Could we offer to mentor and love on teen moms and their babies? Could we consider opening our homes to families who struggle?
Whoa.
Did she just say that?
Yes. Yes I did.
If we, as Christians, set aside judgement and piety and opened our hearts and homes and wallets and comfort levels, maybe, just maybe.........adoption workers would not have more business than they want. Maybe the courts would not be consumed by custody battles and petitions to determine if children can stay with their parent. Maybe generational sin and brokenness and dysfunction would be broken and the chains would fall off of their offspring and there would be freedom and hope and a future, in Jesus' Holy Name.
Oh my goodness. Lets just consider for a minute, what life could be like......here in America....and around the world.....if we fought to keep mothers and children together. I am not a man so I cannot speak to what the fathers go through. That is a drum for someone else to beat....but I can beat this drum, as a mother and as a former child. I will beat this drum. It is something God compels me to do......and so, of course, I want you all to join me.
Be open to the care and keeping of children. Be willing to help mothers who are struggling. Be ready to get less comfortable with your life.......and be right in living out the true religion, which is to care for the widow, the orphan and the least of these. Be aware that I am not just writing to all of you, but to myself as well.
Ann Voskamp gave voice to something I have cried out for many times, with my own children. I love adoption and I love my family just as it is, but I often ache for the birth mamas that could not feel capable of parenting the children they brought into the world. Where are the birth fathers? Why have they not come forward? Who are they? Don't they know they helped create amazing, talented, wonderful, image-bearers of the Lord God Almighty? Where are the extended families? The teachers? The churches? The friends? Where is the village that comes together to raise children?
I think the answer is that the "where are they" speaks to a broken place.....an invisible place.....a maybe someday place. In adoption, we feel called to take these children into our homes which already have extended families, support, teachers, churches, friends and a village. In the calling of adoption, the Lord raises up these systems. I wonder if it is now time to identify them in families of origin. To create them if they do not exist. To nurture them if they are just starting.......so that even in broken places and what is unseen, we can find a way to keep families together.
Stop bashing the woman who use government assistance to buy food for her children.
Stop judging these women for needing cash assistance when she cannot provide.
Stop assuming that women and children can do things that families who have fathers, husbands, grandparents, churches and community can do. To assume makes an ass out of you and me.
What might the world look like if we own our awareness of women and children who need help. Could we offer to help pay for daycare for working single moms? Could we offer to mentor and love on teen moms and their babies? Could we consider opening our homes to families who struggle?
Whoa.
Did she just say that?
Yes. Yes I did.
If we, as Christians, set aside judgement and piety and opened our hearts and homes and wallets and comfort levels, maybe, just maybe.........adoption workers would not have more business than they want. Maybe the courts would not be consumed by custody battles and petitions to determine if children can stay with their parent. Maybe generational sin and brokenness and dysfunction would be broken and the chains would fall off of their offspring and there would be freedom and hope and a future, in Jesus' Holy Name.
Oh my goodness. Lets just consider for a minute, what life could be like......here in America....and around the world.....if we fought to keep mothers and children together. I am not a man so I cannot speak to what the fathers go through. That is a drum for someone else to beat....but I can beat this drum, as a mother and as a former child. I will beat this drum. It is something God compels me to do......and so, of course, I want you all to join me.
Be open to the care and keeping of children. Be willing to help mothers who are struggling. Be ready to get less comfortable with your life.......and be right in living out the true religion, which is to care for the widow, the orphan and the least of these. Be aware that I am not just writing to all of you, but to myself as well.
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