“But don’t you want kids of your own?”

This is an excerpt from a guest post of mine over at Fireflies and JellyBeans.  I never thought I’d do a guest post at a crafting blog, but the ladies who run it are both adoptive parents and wanted to feature some adoption posts.  So to read the full text you can head over here and to see their other fun crafting stuff, this is the spot.

. . . The director asked me if I recognized this baby.  How could I not know the face I had been praying for for six months.  Through paperwork hold-ups and immigration appointments gone wrong and frightening phone calls about hospitalization for malaria, this face had haunted my dreams.  His pictures were on the fridge, tucked in my Bible, and framed on my dresser.  And so the first words I said to my son were, “I know you!” because I did.  I held him at arms length- all ten pounds of his skinny frame on a ten month-old body.  I studied him.  I wanted to take it all in.  And as he started to get a little anxious about this lady who was dangling him away from all that was familiar, the orphanage director said, “He’s saying, ‘hold me, Ma!’.”  I clutched him to my chest and felt him relax.  I cried.  I cried so much to be holding this dream in my arms.  I couldn’t believe we could take him home and I think some days as I see his lean brown six year-old body beating me in a race up the street, I’m dumbstruck all over again that I get to be his mom.  When he wraps me up for a hug or begs for one more story or tells me I’m the best mom ever because I’m making meatloaf, I’m reminded again of how blessed I am that THIS child is my own.

Josh and me in Liberia
September, 2007

I know biological children bond husbands and wives together.  But I remember a day when I realized if I hadn’t married my husband, if we hadn’t been infertile, if we didn’t pursue adoption, if Liberia wasn’t the country we choose, maybe I wouldn’t be Josh’s mom.  It’s hard for me to imagine a life that doesn’t include Josh.  I imagine that maybe I would have had a lingering sadness I couldn’t explain if he hadn’t come into my life.  While he was created in another woman’s body (a woman we love and value greatly), I believe God made me to be his mother.

Through the adoptions of two more children (both through the foster care system) and then the surprise birth of our biological child in 2011, there is one thing I’ve learned:  All these children are “my own”.  My love for the son that grew in my body isn’t any greater than the love I have for my children through adoption.  Pregnancy didn’t make me more of a woman or more of a mother.  Birth did not increase my ability to love or my understanding of sacrifice.  Adoption is not a better or worse way to become a mother, it is just different.  In the same way my children are beautifully different from me. . .

(Finish reading at FirefliesandJellybeans)