Dawn’s been on an adoption roll lately, and as usual she’s been producing as well as provoking some really good writing. I find that her posts usually get me out of writing slumps. Her latest round of questions involving religious faith and adoption is no exception.
Dawn’s response to her own questions posits a kind of meant-to-be approach to her adoption situation, which she is careful not to generalize to all adoptions. I respect her position, especially because it does not involve implicating God in all sorts of bad dealings, like creating a world where first mothers are routinely separated from their children. Still, there’s a bit more determinism in her outlook than I have in mine.
As a Christian, I believe that God is the author of everything and that nothing is outside of his will. However, it’s a large leap from that to the trite “it was just God’s plan” at which many a grieving person bristles. Just because he has plans and is in control doesn’t mean we have any inkling of what he’s up to. I cite this verse especially, from Isaiah 55: 8-11: “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achive the purpose for which I sent it.’” I like this verse because in one fell swoop it attests to the power and ubiquity of God while simultaneously saying, “fool if you think you have any idea what that power means!” It also attests to the complexity of God’s plans–it’s not as simple as whether or not something was ‘meant to be.’ I don’t believe we have the tools to understand precisely the way that free will works in the world. Do I believe that God plans for people to be poor, abandoned, abused, lied to, raped, murdered, or tortured? No. But I also believe that he can create occasions for blessing out of occasions of injustice. Adoption, for me, is no exception. It is an opportunity–as far as it is possible, on earth–for blessings to abound in spite of all the losses. I am not talking about adoptive parents as saviors (again, I reserve that title for Christ and absolutely no other) or adoption as the ultimate in redemption for everyone involved. Adoption does not reverse losses. It doesn’t fix things. What it offers, in the best and most ethical of situations, are other beautiful things to exist alongside the losses, like Dawn’s incredible relationship with her daughter’s birthmother and all of the lessons Dawn talks about learning from her daughter and the entire experience.
I believe that God means to bring about life. That’s the one thing that we can understand, and beyond that we’re really out of our league in explaining how it plays out. In my own situation, I know for a fact that if not-Boomer had come to us in February we wouldn’t be expecting the Snapper in late November. Well, actually, maybe not–who knows if it was a failed contraceptive earlier in the week or not? At any rate, while I don’t understand the sequence of events that led to my son’s life, I believe that it was anything but an accident. Not-Boomer’s life is just as miraculous and intentional. All life is authored whether or not the parents feel they have chosen to facilitate it. I don’t mean that the reverse is true, that infertile couples aren’t ‘meant’ to have kids. I just mean that such life that is in the world was meant to come into it. We just don’t have the tools to understand where and how. What I’m saying is that it would be too easy to say that we were meant not to parent not-Boomer so that we could have the Snapper. What is harder is to say that we have no idea how or why were were meant to parent anyone. What we can say is that God very intentionally gave breath to one and will hopefully give breath to the other in a week or two. All we can do is be available to nurture that life in any way we have the opportunity to.
As far as the ways adoption has altered the way I think about God, I think it’s added dimension after dimension of complexity to my life of faith. I’m less willing to make bold declarations about what I think God is up to. I no longer ask for anything in prayer; my prayers are all silent now. It’s all meditation and acceptace. Sometimes I ask for wisdom or strength but mostly I just get quiet.
I love this. You express it beautifully, and the Isaiah quote is perfect.
The one thing that I would add, for myself, is that sometimes when I ask for things in prayer, the act of asking for them and praying for them (even when I don’t presume to know what God has in store for me, if you will) has an effect on me – there is a value to a prayer even when I don’t know whether it will be answered.
As an example: when, as a community, we pray for healing for someone, we are not trying to tell God what to do – but we are requesting something. The very act of requesting it affects us as a community – it brings us together, it shapes our common vision, etc. Similarly, a prayer for peace (however implausible) is a way to hold up a vision of what we think the world should be like, and a way for us to remember our path.
Hope that doesn’t sound too “preachy” – just some thoughts that have been on my mind that seem to match up with what you’re saying.
I am with you on getting quiet. It is enough most of the time.
Also I love how you said “All we can do is be available to nurture that life in any way we have the opportunity to.” Amen.
Beautiful. Our adoption experience has taught us so much, but with each lesson I find I have more questions, not more answers. Complex, painful, beautiful, puzzling, and so much more, all at the same time.
“Get quiet.” I think I need to do that more. Thanks for posting this.
December 5th, ‘06
Well, someone out there has my son, my precious little boy ripped away from me by lawyer David McConkie and his law firm in conjunction with Colleen Burnham and their employer Children’s Aid Society of Utah. Return my son to me!
DETERMINISM is almost like declaring the rights of natural mothers consistent with the Declaration of Independence especially given that lawyers and social workers and all other adoption predators consistently prejudice and discriminate against natural mothers. Adoption lawyers and social workers routinely quash natural mothers and our voice and consequently try to silence us much the same as the corrupt lawyer who involved himself in my and my son’s entangled adoption mess did, David McConkie, because they all know that natural mothers like myself demand equal rights under the law.
Unlike most natural mothers–of who most others either have no courage to stand against their/our oppressors (the pro-adoption factions who have the whole adoption system set up to control every facet in adoption commerce) or simply don’t care or feel isolated and alone in their anguish and ordeal–my attitude is that natural mothers must make our voices heard. We must demand equal rights and that the practice of legislating us natural mothers into non-existence, which actually is disenfranchisement, be stopped. Time and again I read and hear natural mothers consent to let themselves be called “birth” mother, and also be inclusive of adoptive parents and others.
No one seems to pay attention to this glaring, but simple, fact. Legal procedure more often than not is utilized in any given child being adopted which is to say the women and men who petition the court to adopt any given child most often use legal procedure to secure their end (to adopt the child).
Yet natural mothers are obstructed from utilizing the law to secure their/our end of achieving equal rights under the law. Too often natural mothers let themselves be threatened and intimidated and indeed the corrupt lawyer in my situation, David McConkie, threatens and intimidates me more than I care to say. He stole a key to my apartment in December ‘05 and since has broken into and trespassed my place almost daily and vandalized my personal property such that I had to replace my DVD/VHS player and other electronic equipment, he’s also stolen clothes out of my closet and drawers, planted eaves-dropping devices to sneakily listen in and done other similar eery things.
He got angry because I wouldn’t let myself be manipulated by him and a social worker trying to force me to remain homeless, and so keep lodging in the local homeless shelter, and in retaliation David McConkie stole a key to my then-new apartment and since has kept breaking in and trespassing my abode each time committing crimes galore. David McConkie was vindictive and retaliatory, in other words, not because the situation had anything to do with adoption but because he couldn’t exploit my vulnerability.
When the situation is perverted like this, and deteriorated into a matter of the lawyer getting angry because he’s so arrogant and thus too full of himself, this is the point when the matter becomes criminal. David McConkie trying to dupe me to remain homeless because he was yet again trying to stop me from pursuing him to justice, because he’d terrorized me to snatch my son away from me, had more to do with David McConkie trying to cover-up his wrongs and less was about anything actually having to do with my son.
Yet he keeps using adoption as his excuse. In other words now David McConkie uses my son as a crutch, to keep himself out of trouble, because he knows the whole matter now more than anything relates to his criminal activities.
What a loser this guy is! There’s too many more like him, operating their law practices by transacting adoption commerce, who have entangled the lives of other natural mothers.
BE NOT AFRAID as John Paul II said throughout his papacy. Natural mothers need to become activists and speak out, and make our voices heard, otherwise more doom and misfortune await us!
Thank You,
Kathy Caudle
Natural Mother