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I speak about adoption and read about adoption. I try to keep up with some websites, articles, and adoption-information sources. National Public Radio just featured a week’s worth of features about adoption, for example, and I’ve joined a new e-group for people who write about adoption, and receive a weekly update from Adoptive Parents magazine.

There is a lot of information out there these days. I’m glad that adoption is out of the secretive closet of a few decades ago, and glad that so many have been helped by the increase in information, research and support.

But if I get lost for too long in the adoption webworld, then all the statistics, studies, stories and opinions can make me fuzzy in the head.

Meanwhile, as I sit in the office reading about ethics in adoption, my sons Benjamin and Josiah, in their bedroom across the hall, create elaborate (and loud) castles-and-knights dramas. This morning, when I think I’m up early enough to write before everyone else is awake, Josiah slips in, says “Good morning, Mom” and gives me a sweet-smelling, soft hug.

It is so very easy to think of my boys as an interruption. Let me remember that, in the midst of my informational-loaded world, life is still about relationships.

My life with these boys is made up of seemingly small things – hearing them trot to the bathroom in the morning, feeding them breakfast, reminding them to make their beds, pleading with them to be reconciled when they squabble – details that are really full of purpose and significance. These boys have eternal souls. They are more vital, more alive, more close to God’s heart than I can comprehend. “See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.” (Matt 18:10) Wow. I am making breakfast for two boys whose angels are face-to-face with God.

I long to be a good mom, to give my children what they need and inspire them with love for the Lord and desire to do good. I fail in some way every day. I pick myself up and try again. And I try to recognize the wondrous moments, the miracles that these boys exist and that they have been eternally connected to me. To really notice them and all the things they say and do, to marvel at how wonderfully they have been made. To enter into their little joys and cry with them when they are sad, as if it really did matter, which of course it does.

As we live with our children, we can be on the lookout for hidden treasure - eternal realities buried in our daily, physical world. Some of these treasures are there to be discovered by any mom or dad, and some of them are unique to adoption, because adoption can show us such wonderful truths about God.

Waiting for an adoption has buried treasure, too. In the midst of paperwork and phone calls, visas and authorizations and medical reports and wondering when you’re going to travel – in the midst of all of that is the wonder of God doing something amazing. There is the miracle our hearts being knit together with little people across the country or across the world, and the wonderful, luminous, redemptive realization that out of brokenness and loss he creates families and eternal blessing.

Whatever stage of an adoption or parenting adventure we find ourselves in, there is something for us to marvel at. It is right for us to read about adoption, try to understand the complicated dynamics of adoption and figure out how to make our adoptions best work. But let’s also remember to stop for a moment, look around us, and see God.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:59 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.