Oh Christian authors...you have no idea!!!

Completing the assigned reading for my master’s degree has been such an interesting exercise. 

 

Me multi-tasking. Nails and school reading.

As I read what these Christian authors write, I consider how interesting it would be to have a conversation with them, relating their writings to the adoption experience. That is the lens I see through, so I can't help but correlate what they are sharing with my own journey. My intuition tells me that if I brought up how their writings impact the adoptee they’d say something like, “Well, I believe what I wrote, but I believe there are exceptions…adoption being one.” I know we’re not supposed to assume or presume, but I can’t imagine most Christian authors believing their writings also pertain to the typical situations we adoptees face. 

Take this quote from Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (an amazing book!) by Peter Scazzero: 

“Family patterns from the past are played out in our present relationships without us necessarily being aware of it. Someone may look like an individual acting alone – but they are really players in a larger family system that may go back, as the Bible says, three to four generations. Unfortunately, it is not possible to erase the negative effects of our history. This family history lives inside all of us, especially in those who attempt to bury it. The price we pay for this flight is high. Only the truth sets us free.”[1]    

I believe this with all my being. If the author includes adoption and adoptees within this post, closed adoption and sealed records would not exist anymore in the world. 

---

[1] Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 74.

Beauty, Pain, Wholeness and NAAM: All of These Things Are Not Like the Other

I’m going to do something crazy.

I’m going to try to write something every day in the month of November for NAAM. (National Adoption Awareness Month). Pick yourself up off the floor.

I need to do this right now like I need a hole in the head. I’m a little over a month away from graduating with my masters degree in leadership, my oldest son is getting married in 10 days, and I have a full time job and my house is a mess, and, and, and……

But my newsfeed on every social media site has already been flooded with NAAM posts from the people who aren’t experts. (People who aren’t adoptees.) And it grates on me more this year than it has in a while. I guess it's because I still haven’t solved my paternal search and I just want to scream, “Shut up, people!” Stop talking about beauty until all people know who and where they came from. Seriously, I’m tired of hearing about beauty.  Until I’m not poring over DNA results from four sites with tears streaming down my face at 2 am in the freaking morning hoping for a different result than I have been getting for four years…just save all your talk about beauty for somebody else that isn’t in the grip of the closed adoption system. The grasp it has on you is suffocating at times. I do believe there is wholeness even in the destruction that is closed adoption. For me it has been my faith that has made it possible. And, it's an ongoing journey. Just when you think you're alright, somebody hands you a clipboard at a doctors office to fill out several pages of forms you can't give any information on. And you feel like throwing it against the wall and walking out. And you wonder if you will die one day never knowing any of that information. Or more importantly, whether you  will die BECAUSE you didn't have the information you should have had to write on the paper, that could have saved your life if only you knew your family history.

Right now in my studies we are reading a few books that really blow the door wide open on my thoughts about all this. One book is Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership by Ruth Haley Barton. Her subject is Moses and she talks all about his adoption and the ramifications it has on his psyche and his leadership. I had to write a five page paper on this for an upcoming class that starts Monday and my only issue was limiting my thoughts to five pages.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

“The soul of leadership begins with who we are – really. Not who we think we are, not who we would like to be, not who others believe us to be. God’s call includes (yet is not limited to) the particularities of our life, our heritage, our personality, our foibles, our passions and deepest orientation, and even our current life situation.”[1] 

When I read this, tears ran down my face. God’s call includes the particularities of our life and our heritage.   

What are the ramifications of this for the adoptee in a closed adoption system?

   

---

[1] Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), 74.

When Is Closed Adoption the Best Option for a Child?

What reason, aside from a child's safety, would a closed adoption (versus an open adoption) ever be the best option for a child?

I do not ask this question for the sake of argument.

I am genuinely wondering.

This question popped into my mind the other night and won’t get out.

 I have racked my brain in wondering why a closed adoption would EVER be the best option for a child, unless his or her safety were at stake.   

Aside from safety, I struggle to find a compelling reason.

Please, share with me your reasons, if any -- that a closed adoption would be in the child's best interest.

I'm listening... 

*Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net