Choose to Think About Adoption

Adopting Intentionally – Day 1

For 31 Days we are blogging about Adopting Intentionally. You can find an overview and links to daily posts here.  

I first thought about adoption when I was six or seven and read the book The Family that Nobody Wanted with my mother.  I was mesmerized by the story of a family being formed through adoption.  I felt deep excitement for all of those siblings as they were welcomed into one family from different ethnic backgrounds and life circumstances.  The story stayed with me.

I next remember thinking about adoption when I was eight and nine.  I reveled in the rags to riches story and music of Annie singing with emotion behind the couch in my living room.  And my heart broke and soared watching a movie called The Orphan Train (that is now on YouTube).  Stories of children who did not have parents were absolutely heart breaking to me.

As a camp counselor in college we worked with children from a local orphanage, and all I wanted to do was adopt them all. And when I would see stories of Adoption on TV I felt like I had to watch it and at the very same time as if I needed to turn away, my heart felt so tethered to other’s stories.

I did wonder if I was meant to adopt.

There are stories of adoption all around us, children who have been adopted have stories, parents who adopt have stories, siblings, grand-parents, birth families all have stories.  It is a thread woven into our communities.  It can be visible and it can just as easily be invisible.

Have you seen the thread?  Have you thought about it?

I invite you to a month of talking about it. 

I challenge us to think about it, consider it.

And for some of you . . . I invite you to perhaps take a step forward and perhaps adopt intentionally.