Adoption: A First Choice

May 2010 (Two months after coming home)

Recently someone shared a blog post about infertility with me. First of all I am assuming this person assumed we dealt with infertility... I try not to let it bother me when people do this... but it does sadden me that most people think the only reason one would adopt is because of infertility. To set the record straight our FIRST choice was adoption. Even when I try to explain this I still get the "awe, it's OK if you don't want to talk about your struggle" look... People! There was no struggle? The only struggle is convincing people that adoption can be first choice...
Anyway...I digress... The link was a blog post written by a pastor about he and his wifes 'struggle'. Judging by the 100's of comments on this post I am assuming this guy has a pretty big church or following.

October 2013 

Out of curiosity I read the post. At first I was assuming that the end was going to wrap up nicely into an "but we have been blessed by the chance to adopt" ending... It didn't.

Instead this man who is a professing Christian, who by default professes to be ADOPTED by Christ went on to talk about their, and thousands of other peoples silent struggle. Talking about the struggle is not what I found troublesome. I realize that many people go through this and with that comes a lot of mourning. I get that. I have watched friends and family go through this. I see how hurtful this is. I don't deny the pain.
What bothered me was that was the ending... "We struggle silently... and after 10 years of trying to conceive", he said, "we have been forced to accept that we will never know the joy of being parents."

WHAT??? Really? I was speechless. I scrolled through the comments hoping to see someone... anyone suggest adoption but I didn't see that. Instead it was filled with more and more comments agreeing with him and confessing to the same realization. No children...

I am probably, OK I AM sensitive to this issue. I get that not everyone believes in adoption. But a Pastor, an adopted child of God... He couldn't see it.  It kills me because someone with this much following has influence. If he had finished the post with what I expected it to be and even half of the people who commented on his post followed his lead to look into adoption.. well...  they could have cleared out a couple of orphanages.

I look at my family and I feel like we are completely normal. I feel normal, I think my kids feel normal... but somehow we aren't "normal".
I wish we were though... not so I can feel better about myself, but so kids around the world can be adopted, so they can have a forever family, so they can feel... well... normal.