When we began adopting transracially, our families were very alarmed, and they didn’t hesitate to tell us. They were concerned about us being naive and unrealistic. About our ‘perfect’ one-boy-one-girl family being rocked so hard that it would be destroyed. They pointed out that with college expenses rising we couldn’t educate more than two — [...]
There are many countries and adoption programs that are closed to our family due to our income, age, family size and ethnicity. It is probably good that they are closed, as I have been accused of a tendency toward ‘adoption addiction’ — and it just makes it easier to find the specific paths that God [...]
It’s been a long week, with more than the usual adoption issues to deal with and more than the expected number of stares and comments from strangers. I sat down on Tuesday to have the ‘Where Babies Come From,’ discussion with my three oldest kids and realized that even there I have to think through [...]
Severely disabled, non-responsive, and unknown life expectancy. These are some of the technical words that define children many of my friends have adopted. These are the hard cold facts that fill the endless pages of their medical histories and that would have condemned them to limited lives in hospitals and other such institutions, except that [...]
Why would I, living in landlocked and frozen MN, buy 6 tickets to the Carolina Hope - Caedmon’s Call/Derek Webb concert this Friday? Maybe I hatched a wild plan to fly out to the coast for the weekend with 5 of my closest girl friends. Sounds fun, but it doesn’t fall within [...]
Sometimes I forget when I am talking with people about transracial adoption (or parenting in general) to share the happy quiet moments as well as the hard ones. When I stop and watch, I see that my family has them every day. Sandwiched in between the training and the conflicts, the school work and the [...]
As the mom to 6 adopted kids I try hard not to be afraid when I need to research Attachment Disorders and all of the psychologically disruptive things that this diagnosis can indicate. Rather than reacting out of fear, I have learned to process what I learn with a sober mind and a [...]
Who would have thought that figuring out how to verbally identify our children’s racial identity would be another one of the hard things about adoption? It seemed simple at first, they are African American and we are Caucasian. Then it got tougher, two of our children are also Cherokee Indian and two have unidentified fathers [...]
I couldn’t endure this parenting journey for very long if all I had were the Monday realities to look forward to. I thank God that for every Monday of transracial parenting there is an opposite and hope-filled Friday calling to me. Fridays are the promises fulfilled, the dreams unfolding and the needed rest from what [...]
This is my ‘Monday list,’ todays top 10 tough realities of transethnic adoption that affect my daily life and weigh the heaviest on Monday. I know that all of them are manageable through Christ, but sometimes (especially on these long winter Mondays) they are seem a little overwhelming.
I will share my ‘Friday List’ [...]
One of the questions I hear all the time as a transracially adoptive mom is, “But what about their hair – can you do it yourself?” Our 6 adopted children all have variations of kinky, curly, African hair. The color ranges from dark brown to deepest black and the texture ranges from very soft to [...]
“Why am I in this family anyway?” Words casually thrown to me over the shoulder of my 8 year old as he disappeared up the basement stairs with the umpteenth load of clean laundry. This is the child that God is using to sharpen me and break down the self-sufficiency that I suffer so dreadfully [...]
I have to confess a personal and deep-seated desire to get rid of the ‘Purple Jesus’ print that hangs on my living room wall. I acquired it accidentally when we rebuilt a portion of our church and I became the caretaker for some of the more obscure art we found stashed in various corners of [...]
This week I mail off the last letter and photo updates to the biological mother of my three- and four-year-old daughters. It is the end of a sweet season in my life. I have been writing letters and taking photos with Aris (not her real name) in mind for the past 4 years. [...]
In an earlier post I wrote that we become a ‘city on the hill’ when we adopt trans-racially. Simply put, we look different from most families and we stand out almost anywhere in our culture. But I have encountered another way that people view our family that I never would have guessed in [...]
As an educated, strong willed, successful American woman the words “I don’t know” have only recently started falling comfortably into my conversations. When I commit to do things I carefully count the costs and regularly have contingency plans — and because of the number of daily decisions it takes to run our family, there hasn’t [...]
After reading Dan’s post this morning I was looking forward to commenting on it until the topic switched from the hypothetical into my immediate life as my 8 year old adopted son came to me in the laundry room and handed me a note with three words on it “I’m running away.”
If my last post left you feeling like transracial adoption would destroy any chance of privacy in your life - take heart! There is the other side of the attention our unique families receive – some times God uses it to bring out the best in the people we meet. We’ve received countless words of encouragement, of [...]
I’m pleased to announce that Dorothy Bode, the mother of a large multi-ethnic family, is now a guest writer for our adoption blog. She and her husband are members of Bethlehem Baptist Church of Minneapolis, a church that is passionate about adoption in general and transracial adoption in particular.
One of the things I asked Dorothy [...]