Adoption: Meant to Be?

I recently stumbled on a blog post where the author was talking about adoption and how it was meant to be that her children came to her through adoption. I'm actually a little mad at myself because I have no clue how I found this post, and honestly as I read it, it didn't really stir up a lot of emotion in me at the time. Then, I dreamed about it that night and I have spent the last week waking up at different intervals during the night (because of my abdominal pain) and that blog post (or at least the ideas behind it) have been one of the first thoughts to pop in my mind.

Were our adoptions meant to be?

I'm not sure how I can honestly answer that question and get all the things I WANT to say into a coherent post, but this is the analogy that comes to mind.

A person is in kidney failure. They are going to die if they don't get a kidney. They desperately want a kidney, might even be a little angry with God that the body that he created for them doesn't work properly and secretly wish that someone else would give them a kidney. One day, they get a surprise phone call....a woman was killed in a car wreck, but was an organ donor and her kidney is a match. Was that meant to be? Was it meant to be that she had to die to save your life?

In my mind, it's sort of the same way with adoption. Some couples just can't have babies. Some women can't find the right man but desperately want children. Some people (like us) have just always talked about adoption and it just seemed like the next logical stop to pursue after years of planning and prayer. But does that mean that it was "meant to be" when we do adopt that child.

Are our adopted children the loves of our life? Are we completely joyous that they are now our children? YES!

I think God intended for all children to be with their parents. It's unnatural to take a child away from his mother. And yet, in reality, it happens. Parents can't take care of their child because of financial, emotional, and a whole other hosts of reasons. Heck, some parents just don't want to do it. This leads to many things, one of which being the option of adoption.

I guess my feeling is that it was meant to be that we weren't supposed to sin from the beginning, but eating that fruit from the tree landed us here at the crossroads of so many people in the adoption triad arguing about issues like this. Who's right? Who's wrong? Is it all so black and white?

Here's what I know: I don't personally buy into the whole "they are better off" when a child is adopted, because let's face it...they aren't. They would be better off to be parented by the natural parents in the country they are born in. They would be better off if things like drugs didn't interfere with their parents raising them or health crisis like AIDS didn't kill their father. They would be better off if they had three warm meals a day. They would better off to live with their natural family who loved them than to ever have to deal with the unnatural loss they will eventually feel. And yes, all adoptees will deal with loss at some point, because they have lost a relationship with parents that God intended to occur.

So, meant to be...yeah, I don't buy it. Am I incredibly blessed to have two amazing children that I didn't give birth to? YES! But in a perfect world, the loss that occurs with adoption wouldn't exist. There wouldn't be children in orphanages waiting for their families, there wouldn't be a black mother in OH not having enough choices of adoptive families for her child, and there certainly wouldn't be all the older "unadoptable" children praying someone will find value in them sitting in foster homes.

I just don't want either of my children's firstmoms to ever think that the sole reason they carried their child was for me. It just seems so selfish on my part. Am I thankful they choose us? Yes! But for my children's sake, I wish both of their mother's situation was different so that they didn't have to make the difficult decision that they did.