As I explained yesterday, all the posts this week will center around the theme of adoption. Today we hear from Jennifer Grant, author of the new memoir, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter. (For those of you who are interested in reading Jenn's book, leave a comment on this post and you'll be entered into a drawing for a free copy. Winners will be announced next Monday.)
I think I was about nine or ten years old when I first heard the passage read. Or first really listened to it, anyway. I sat in church, likely running the crease of the bulletin under my fingernails, trying to tap my sandals on the linoleum floor as noiselessly as possible, desperate to move. When I heard the pastor read from Matthew 12, however, verses that describe Jesus's response to being interrupted by his family, I sat up straight, my restlessness stilled.
Jesus was "speaking to the people" when someone – a disciple, maybe – alerted him that his mother and brothers were outside and wanted to speak with him. When I heard his reply, I couldn't decide which was worse: the words he spoke, or his prickly tone? He extends his arms and said, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?"
I felt a little sick to my stomach. He sounded…irritated. But wasn't Jesus' face permanently locked in that serene expression so beautifully drawn in pastel? You know, from that picture that hung both in my home and on the wall downstairs at Sunday School? Seventies-Jesus with golden brown hair and that lovely white tunic? Would that laid-back, Kris Kristofferson Jesus reject his mother and siblings that way?
Years passed and my shock over this odd scene subsided. Then I became a mother. From the moment I first learned I was pregnant, I was bombarded with messages from magazines, television and even the church that as a mom, I'd know that my children were more special than any others on earth. My job would be to protect them from every harm and to make their happiness and eventual social and financial success my highest priority.
But as the novelty of new motherhood began to wear off, I started to question these kinds of "family values." Could my mission really be confined to seeking the best for the children to whom I gave birth? Or, as a Christian, should I define "family" more broadly? I'd see images of women and children suffering around the world, and those puzzling verses returned to my mind. Maybe, instead of obsessing over the happiness of my babies, I should stick my head out of the window, so to speak, look around, and ask, "Who is my family?"
It didn't feel right to simply shrug my shoulders and blithely accept my good fortune as compared to that of people born into extreme poverty. I'd buy my kids their new school clothes and shoes and then think of mothers who did not have the resources to provide their children with even one meal a day. I'd wonder: what's the connection between us? Does the fact that $10 malaria nets in African countries save whole families have anything to do with my family buying a new flat-screen TV? Should it? Is there any connection between me, a suburban, middle class mom, and women around the world?
Attempting to answer those kinds of questions affected my decision to adopt my daughter from Guatemala seven years ago. As I wrote in Love You More, "Adopting Mia opened the world up to me in new ways. I look at my little girl, with her sophisticated (and sometimes extremely silly) sense of humor, her love of the natural world and her talent for making beautiful pastel drawings. I see her sweetness and the light she brings to those around her. She began as a "waiting child" in Guatemala, but if she is of such infinite value, what about other children born to other very poor mothers around the world? Half of the world's children are born into poverty. There are an estimated 150-170 million orphans globally who live without parental care, are warehoused in orphanages, live on the streets or in child-headed households. Their potential is unseen, like a paper sack of daffodil bulbs, hidden behind a watering can in the garage, shriveling in the dark.
Is adoption – whether domestic or international – a means by which God opens our eyes to the needs of the world and calls us to love others more?"
I've found that growing a family by adoption has an effect sort of like Jesus' words in Matthew 12. It turns things upside-down, surprises me, and forces me to look at our human community in new ways. And I'm left with gratitude for the uncountable gifts God has showered down upon me in the process.
Check back in this afternoon for more from Jennifer Grant.
