by Grace Brown
Hello! What follows is truly my favorite love story, the one that made me a mother. Our family experienced the blessing of open adoption when God brought us our first child as a newborn.
I will never forget the night of her birth, when we unexpectedly received a phone call from our adoption agency stating that a woman over 400 miles away from our home was not only in labor, but was simultaneously processing the surprising news that she was pregnant, having presenting to the hospital with undefined stomach pains. This selfless woman, after considering the profile booklet of my husband and me, told us she had chosen us to parent her child, a decision she said she made in the guidance of the Lord. She was single, had two older children who depended on her, and sensed a peace that our home would be the safest place for this baby to grow up surrounded by love and provided for in every way.
Feeling elated by this surreal revelation after wanting a child desperately for years, we hurriedly packed the few baby things we had (which consisted of a hand-me-down carseat and a couple of infant nightgowns and blankets) and drove for most of the following day to the city where she had been born only a few hours after that momentous telephone call. First, we met with her birth mother, whose calm strength and clear trust in us was both awesome and amazing. My heart rejoiced that the three of us all easily agreed on her name. Three days later (an excruciating wait due to hospital and legal policies surrounding the adoption), we gazed for the very first time upon our tiny, four-and-a-half-pound, dark-haired, wrinkly-skinned daughter sleeping in her hospital bassinet, and swooped her up in our arms forever. We couldn’t believe that somehow, through a miraculous transaction that only God could orchestrate, we were her parents.
That was over six years ago, and the power of that reality intermittently strikes me while I carry out the daily tasks of raising an artistic, intuitive, sometimes impulsive, long-lashed girl whose favorite color is blue, who wants one of every possible kind of pet, can’t get enough of the Paw Patrol puppy cartoon and characters, and is growing her first “adult tooth.”
Agreeing to open adoption meant that we valued our daughter’s whole life story, not just the part that involved us. We wanted her to understand the truth of where she came from, to learn about the uniqueness of her Hispanic cultural heritage, and most of all, to take to heart the real love her biological family had for her not just in theory, but by knowing them and spending time with them beginning in her childhood and potentially throughout her life. We hope this would lessen the loss that she would face as an adoptee after being displaced from the woman who bore her and from her biological siblings, by attempting to keep those connections alive rather than blotting them out in an effort to avoid potentially complicated relationship struggles or from having to “share” our child with anyone else.
What has this looked like in real life? We travel to her birthplace and reunite with members of her biological family whenever we can. This happened more often early on, as many of them were eager to hold and bond with her as a newborn. They gave her gifts, cooked us meals, and took lots of photographs, as any proud family would. Her birth mother and several relatives were present at her first birthday party, which was priceless. We have been invited into their homes over the years for various holidays, have met for outings at restaurants and parks, e-mailed and made phone calls and sent letters and pictures and exclamations of milestones met. I sometimes ask questions of her birth mother about things they may have in common, or for parenting insights, or family medical history. Our daughter has a picture of her birth mother in her room, and I verbalize to her often how blessed we are to have adopted her, how thankful we are that God, through the choices of her birth mother, placed her in our family. I tell her the story of how she came to us, and remind her of how much she is loved by both of her mothers.
It is not altogether a seamless experience, however. I have failed to reach out as often as I should sometimes; I have been unsure how to relate and how much to share. There have been disappointments in which plans have fallen through and the birth family was unable to get together with us, and I have at times faltered in my remembrance of why we keep trying. My husband gently reminds me: we are doing it for her, so she can someday put the pieces of her life together on her own accord, because all of the pieces remain within her reach.
Grace and her family attend our church, and we have the awesome privilege of serving their daughter in our children’s ministry. The are a sweet family that has helped answer some of our questions through our adoption process.
