Ours By Adoption

I have a couple friends, young wives and wives-to-be, who are planning their families.  Naturally, they are concerned about whether or not they will be blessed with children, if the children will be well, if they will be good mommies.  Generally, things move along as planned with babies conceived and birthed in due time.  Sometimes, things don't move along as planned and disappointment becomes worry becomes panic becomes depression.  Options are considered.  Fertility testing and drugs, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, adoption, continued childlessness.  Each option comes with its own set of considerations.

I feel compelled to write this today because it is the day we celebrate the birth of my dear neice.  She is twenty-one today--a bright, vibrant, wonderful young woman who oozes style and lives life with a passion all her own.  She is a junior in college, a strong and beautiful dancer, a comic and a devoted follower of Jesus.  Thirteen years ago, however, she was a child with little hope--orphaned, fostered, too old to be adopted by anyone looking for a baby.  She is also black.  My sister and her husband had nearly given up hope by the day they went to a picnic designed to showcase adoptable older children, but they went anyway, and it completely changed more futures than theirs.

My neice turned on her charm, flirted with the nice white couple (description hers) at the picnic and later, boasted to her friends that those people would be adopting her.  They did indeed.  They fell in love at that picnic and began the process to make this savvy little girl their own.  The morning my four children met their new cousin was amazing.  No ice to break.  No racial barriers to hurdle.  No cultural--or multicultural--awkwardness to conquer.  The five became cousins the second they laid eyes on each other.  We have been blessed beyond measure by my sister's willingness to become a mother by adoption, to join with her husband in creating an interracial family, and to embrace and honor a heritage that is not her own.  She made a decision to love unconditionally and sacrificially; that's the first act of motherhood.

Over the next couple years, we added two more children to our number.  One day I mentioned something to them about their cousin's adoption.  Both jaws went slack and they stared at me, stunned.  "What?" they asked incredulously.  "She's adopted?"