Adoption Ethics and Orphanage Care

Adoption is about loss, loss of a birth family, loss of a culture, a country. There is no way around it. As I read this blog post http://www.gracelings.org/2012/07/guest-post-walking-away-from-ugandan.html last week about a failed Ugandan adoption, it stirred many feelings in me and our 4 adoptions. We adopted first out of selfishness. We wanted a family. Our first adoption, we were ignorant. We were more concerned about buying the best baby stroller than the fact that our need for a young baby was driving a horrific supply and demand chain that was playing out in Guatemala with mothers selling their babies to enable them to feed their other children. Hindsight is always 20/20 and once our eyes were open, we realized our agency was doing little to better the conditions in Guatemala. They were a business and out to make a buck. For our second adoption in Ethiopia, we chose an agency with a fantastic child sponsorship program that was working hard to keep families together. They were building schools and other improvements to strengthen communities. About that time, we got involved with World Vision and started raising money on our own to keep families together and build communities along with sponsoring a child from our kids birth countries. It seemed like such a small thing to do to try and swing the pendulum away from the quick and easy answer of adoption to help enable kids to be raised by extended families and supported to attend school. We mindfully stepped further in this direction when we adopted from Congo, choosing to work with a group that was not about adoption, but about improving conditions in the DRC. We also chose to adopt out of birth order, enabling us to provide a home for an older child and not feed a supply and demand chain as agencies rushed to open pilot programs in the DRC when Ethiopian adoptions began to slow. But we failed, again. Failed to question, failed to go beyond the lemming mindset of adoptive parents, failed stand up and say, “Hey! This isn’t right, I demand more information”. Don’t get me wrong, we love our daughter, and with all her challenges, we will not give up on her, but damn it, she had an option that would have allowed her to stay in her birth country. An option that not many orphans have in the DRC, of a loving Godly single woman that cared deeply for her that we would have more than willingly supported. We could have impacted 6 lives through a sponsorship of this single mother of 4 kids had we known at the time ! But sponsorship is messy, right? It take time to locate and check out families willing to foster and reporting to make sure corruption isn’t involved and visits to check on the children and and and…. It’s much cleaner and easier for an NGO to build a brick a mortar building with shiny new floors, beds and mattresses to house more orphans than to actually go out and find foster families willing to love and raise these children in a family setting. We stopped building orphanages in the US over 50 years ago, but for Africa, LET’S GO BUILD ANOTHER ORPHANAGE! We can’t claim to be helping when we are just perpetuating a system that has already failed once. The best and the fanciest institutional care facility cannot replace a family. If you are truly not about adoption, then investigate these kids backgrounds before they are referred to an adoptive family, find out if there is a family member or neighbor willing to step forward with a little support, find out if the only reason the child has been relinquished is because the family cannot afford a life saving surgery or medicine, find out if the birth mother passed away in child birth and the family just can’t afford formula, then use the funds that would have gone into brick and mortar to keep a family together. Then come back and tell me you aren’t about adoption and I might consider believing you.

MmoooHooo Ha Ha! Love This!

Thought for Today

‎"When we leave our comfort zones, God can freely work in our lives. When we let go of our plans, God can use us in His bigger plan." -Richard Stearns, president of World Vision U.S.

Fruitylicious

Sometimes you just need to eat a bunch of fruit loops w/o Milk as a snack.  I'm just sayin'  ...
They're good :) 

For some, If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Thats good.  But Fruit Loops (even the
Aldi brand) are just fruitylicious!

Tails of a nut dog.

As if being Parents of Trauma isnt enough, not more than one stinking day after I remarked how good K-dog has been he goes off and ticks off a bee.  He likely got stung as he is now refushing to leave our deck and when he does he is skittish as all get out.  Worse yet, I saw him trotting to the front yard.  Why is that an issue.  Because we have an invisible fence for him.

Aaaahhh. The day in the life of our family.  If is not one thing is always another.

Ambition

Societal ambition is something that is beaten into the core of our existence all our lives.  Keeping up with Jones's, climbing the corporate ladder, breaking the glass ceiling.  The media barrages us with bigger, better, newer and more advanced options for technology and things you just NEED to have, all of which require more green which drives the cycle:, climb the corporate ladder, make more green, get more STUFF.  The more I surround myself with people who see their salary as simply a means to an end, in other words, I work to provide for my family and meet their basic needs, the more I see the bigger picture and how society's message drives us away from God.  It became a turning point in my mentality when we realized our ambition for our special needs daughter was not for her to become a doctor, CEO or lawyer, but to have meaningful relationships in her life.   Richard Sterns, President of World Vision writes in his book "The Hole in our Gospel" how he found himself constantly falling into CEO positions, being at the right place at the right time.  In his case, God had a bigger plan for him, all that experience became the roadmap God had laid for him and he ultimately accepted the position at World Vision at a lower salary than he had been making and after turning down what society would have called the job offer of a lifetime.  While it would be A to the Awesome if God's roadmap for my life included being Richard Sterns successor, i am pretty sure it doesn't.  What I do know is that God has put some pretty amazing people in my path recently and the more I hear stories about people turning down promotions, forgoing lives unecessary luxuries and choosing to put family time and serving the Lord first in their lives, the more I am inspired and the more I realize where my true ambition lies.

First Father / Son race?

E1 is pretty fast.  Likes to challenge his old man in short little courses in the backyard.  I'm more like lumbering bull.  I need space to gain momentum and speed.  I'm no match for his speedy chipmunk legs and agility.   The day is coming very soon when he'll take me in the sprints. Then again, I never was really that fast (..cough.. excuse   ..cough..)

There's a potential that we'll enter him, or we'll both run in a 1mile youth race.  Timing chips and all. He's not run that far before, but after Mama brought it up, he seemed excited about it.  Of course E2 was also, and he's fast also, but this is not his time.  His time is coming.

Stay tuned ..

Freedom.. the two wheeled kind

After much coaxing and build-up I talked E1 into trying to ride a bike again.  (Earlier blog post). On Sunday we broke through the apprehension and decided to try and go around the block twice.  Prior to going I was telling E1 how "close" I thought he was to getting it.  I said I bet in  25 trips around the block he'd have it down.

We set off.  I ran beside him and steadied him.  Down the hill on the street he did well. I could see the uncertainty in his eyes and the tightness in his arms/hands.  Up the inclines gave him some trouble.  But all in all after the 1st lap I told E1 I was wrong.  He'd have it down in 10 laps. We did 1 more lap and called it good for the day.

Monday comes and I load up the bikes for all 4 and head to a park with a large, flat lot. I unload E1's bike first.  He' steadies himself on the care then OFF he goes like he's been riding for years.    As mentioned in the earlier post, he's beaming.   The rest of the week he rides a bit on the driveway and the front lawn.  Until today.

Today I asked if he wanted to hit the street again.   He's out the door before I can even catch my breath. 
FIVE MILES later we call it a day.  F I V E  M I L E S!!   How proud I am of him.  I took him on a route with some hills to build some strength.  On one of the hilly laps I heard him whispering to himself "you can do it"  and he did.  Sometimes I wonder about E1's confidence.  Not today.  Not this week.  This newfound freedom of his has his confidence cups overflowing.   What an awesome thing to watch...

Way to go E!

Boo boo regret

There has been a lot of talk around town recently about boo boos (thats what the kids call them, but if you prefer, ta-tas, the girls, whatever floats your boat).  First the magazine cover that had mom in heels nursing her older son, then hearing another adoptive mom who just gave birth to a biologial child who is now nursing both, then chatter at work with a new grandma about her daughter's first nursing experience, then my cousin's wife enduring breast cancer.  So needless to say, the boo boos have been on my mind a lot lately and I think I am having a moment of boo boo regret.  God obviously gave women them to nurse and closely bond with their children, not as the sexualized object they have become.  I had heard stories about adoptive mothers breastfeeding their adopted children, but always assumed they had a biological child that started the process or had taken a bunch of hormone messing drugs to produce milk which I was unwilling to do.  As it turns out, a woman's body is AMAZING, and without pregnancy, can actually induce lactation using a pump or just by the principal of supply and demand!  Holy crap!  Why didn't someone tell me this earlier?  While i don't ever imagine myself mourning never being pregnant, I do mourn not being able to nurse my boys.  I think there would have been an initial leap of faith phase (especially as I imagine if hubby had walked into the room the reaction would have probably been, "ahh, what are you DOING!!"), but after that leap, it would have been natural.  I would be lying if I said I never thought about it when they were snuggle up close, but I always dismissed that instinct and told myself, "no, I can't do that...." thinking, would they be frustrated if nothing came out and just push away (ah rejection)? could they hurt me (self preservation)?  Either way, I never made that leap and the ship has sailed....sigh   

A Father / Son chest thump ...

I think I just had a moment. Not a moment like my oldest just lost his first tooth. Or that our newest now wears glasses. Not a moment like the personal satisfaction of completing a marathon.  Not the same as those, but a moment no doubt.

Yesterday E1 broke through the uncertainty, doubt, and fear and became a bicycling road warrior!  

I feel like pulling a Tim Allen and doing a caveman grunt and chest thump.  And you know what. I think E1 felt like doing one also.

Atta boy!!!!