my friends jennifer & david have started the process to adopt their first child. they are just salt of the earth people and erin & i love them dearly. they started a blog to give some updates on the process, which i have kept up with. their recent post has my mind just spinning... they have to fill out a form stating their preferences for how they want their child.
personal note: i love folks who adopt. when i was at my youngest years our family was a foster family. i don't remember the names of the kids who would come and stay at our home (sleep in mine & my bro's room), but i remember their faces. scratch that, i do remember taylor, but only because his real name was david & my older brother's name was david so we called him taylor and that had me confused.. where did we come up with that name.. sorry, tangent.
children need a home, and these two will provide a great home. i would also expect that they will provide a great home for a child that might not be 'ideal' by some standards. which is where they find themselves in a lot of exploration
for clarification sake: their current struggle is about race. i've expanded it by using 'ideal' as simple term to encompass a same ethnicity, non-conditioned/special-needs, premature, high risk pregnancy, etc. child. you get the picture. i think their honest thoughts expand more than just race.
And the big thing for us is the question of race? I can hear your wheels turning?! Here's the thing....we could choose to accept only healthy caucasian infants or we can just keep it wide open or anything in the middle. So we have considered many things:
If we are willing to adopt outside of our race...
*how will our friends and family feel/recieve us?
*how will our church family recieve us?
*how would we handle the questions, the stares, the looks?
*what issues would our child have to face because their skin may be different from ours?
*at the end of the day, do the stares, the looks and the comments matter?
you need to go and check out their thoughts. it has me thinking about it all. maybe you have an adoption story to share.
and just for the record: without giving their family history, these folks know what is like to be looked at and talked about. they live in a world & have lived in a world that is not ideal by most standards. which i have always thought makes them especially capable to love those who are not ideal & in ideal situations.