I’ve waited to write about this. Mostly I wanted to process my hurt and honestly, my anger. Recently I went to a conference for Christian orphan care. I was with a group of amazing adoptive mamas. These women had adopted children with special needs and they were as tough as they come. That week I was honored to sit with women who had lived in the trenches of adoption, and dealt with the unimaginable. Collectively we had watched children die because of orphanages, and we knew that our message was literally life or death for some children.
The day before our class was to be given, we were told that there was a problem with some of our presentation. The organizers felt several of the images within our group’s presentation would need to be removed. The pictures we had chosen to present were ‘too graphic’ for this conference. And silently I fumed as my child’s picture was one they had chosen to remove.
“Graphic Photo” This was Israel when we first picked him up, and then 1 year later.
I have learned something over the years. When we promote foster care and adoption without the full truth, we are hurting families. Adoption and foster care are HARD, and lonely, and there are days that you will question the choice you made in doing this. When we promote a half truth, we are not preparing or equipping families for the reality of what we are asking them to do. And the reality cannot be ‘too graphic’ in nature to share, because if we don’t understand this as a church, we will continue to be ill-equipped to support these families living in the trenches.
I see so very clearly now, but I admit that my vision was once blurry and rose-colored. For many years, I drove to my job and taught the twenty-five students in my classroom and I never once thought about their lives beyond the brick safety of my school. I never thought about the student who slept outside the casino in his parent’s parked car so that they could gamble and drink all night. I never thought about the pig-tailed 8 year-old girl who was ‘visited’ by ‘uncles’ each night. I never once looked at the boy who sat silently day after day, never a behavior problem, yet also never contributing. I never thought about why he had on a long-sleeved shirt when it was warm out, or why he flinched when I touched his shoulder.
And then I blinked and things became a bit clearer. I opened my door to these same children through foster care and I held the sexually abused 6 year-old and I walked the floors with the drug-exposed newborn. I learned how to medically treat a child with broken bones, burns and trauma inflicted by a parent. What I saw was that every single one of these children had once sat as silent victims, waiting for an adult to notice their pain. They sat waiting for the whole truth to be told.
Then I blinked again and I flew to a foreign country and stepped into a foreign orphanage; and it was not cleaned up and sanitized. It was raw humanity and lowly pain, and I tried to close my eyes; but it was too late. You cannot unsee children dying. You cannot erase the silence and the smells. No, all of this clings to you and it becomes a part of you. And you need to share it, because we know with trauma, that it needs to be pulled out of that raw space and examined and acknowledged. Instead I am finding that people don’t really want to see this lowliness and hurt.
And then you sit at a conference that is for orphan care and these are your people. These are the ones that are supposed to be rallying with you and you want to share a tiny piece of what it really looks like. And you had actually sifted and weighed what image would best portray this, without being too brutal. You aren’t asking to unload it all, you are just asking them to take a moment and look, and then when they don’t want to look, you feel so alone. Because you have brought this raw hurt and this painful picture home, and he is cleaned up and now acceptable. But what he once lived is ‘too graphic’, and for you it is what consumes your day.
“And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.” D. Bonhoeffer
No one ever told me that foster care and adoption would be so lonely and painful.
I did not know that I would lose family and friends.
I never realized that adopting one child is acceptable, but you announce adoption number three, four and five…and you’ve suddenly tipped into being a bit fanatical.
I didn’t realize that adoption doesn’t always end up happily ever after, and that some children cannot heal within your home.
I didn’t know that sharing the truth of trauma and the photos of those left in the orphanages was ‘too graphic’.
I never knew that through foster care and adoption, I would come face to face with my own hypocrisy, privilege, and fears.
I never knew how ashamed I would feel when people told me how wonderful I was for ‘saving these kids’, when I truly understood that it was foster care and adoption that had saved me.
I never knew that God would use Israel to change the heart of a woman like me.
I didn’t know the rules.
Darren and I are stepping back into the trenches of foster care. It sounds pretty darn fanatical, but I no longer want to be a rule follower.
