Longings

Yesterday I got an email from Vivianna's adoption agency asking for prayer for more families willing to adopt African American infants and those with medical needs. About once a year it seems we get an email of this type from the director. I emailed her back saying I thought they currently had a few waiting families open to other races and she said yes, they have been matched already with African American and bi-racial babies and they are down to their second to last family and have two African American babies due in the coming months. This just made my heart drop. When you look at the profiles on the agency website it is all caucasian couples, most with a white child already, many having been on there waiting for almost a year, and I think to myself, "they are waiting and longing for their perfect little white baby to complete their family." I don't say this to offend those who read this blog that did choose to specify their own race, I say it because it personally grieves my heart. I understand there are many reasons for choosing to do so, I have personally heard them, and once spoke some of them myself, many that start or end with "our family wouldn't accept a child of another race," or "I don't want it to be obvious we adopted when we are out in public" or "I just wouldn't know how to do their hair" or "I don't feel comfortable with it because I can't possibly raise that child to understand their race if I am not of that race." While all of these excuses have meaning, and need to be taken into account, in one way or another- they boil down to a level of uncomfortableness that many, many adoptive couples are not willing to face.


Billy and I will once again travel to our agency this weekend to speak on behalf of open adoptions, transracial adoptions, and special health risk adoptions. We will pray as we always do, that God will give us the words to open the hearts of those who hear about the possibility that maybe, just maybe God has their child in mind already, and maybe that child's skin is a bit darker than their own. I will say as I always do that adoption is not Plan B, not something you do when all else has "failed". Adoption is and was the plan God had for you all along. Couples have spent a decade coming to this realization, a decade that they could have been parenting istead of pining. When I look at the chocolate and caramel colored skin of my two little answered prayers, I feel gratitude well up in my heart. Gratitude that I was chosen out of all the women this whole wide world over to be the Mommy of this boy and this girl.

I was telling Billy about the email that the agency sent and Isaac overheard me. He said "Mom, I want a baby brother that is African American just like me!" and I had to fight back the tears. This isn't the first time he has said that. It will be awhile before that dream can come true. I said "we do too, buddy. We just have to pray to God and He will hear us." And so we pray for our own longing...and we pray for the couples we come in contact with this weekend and their longing. My prayer is that when they dream of their future babies, they dream in color.