The Costs of Adoption

Okay ... I know in my last post I said I was going to talk next about our dossier preparation occurring in tandem with the Season of Advent -- and I will get to that -- but first, I wanted to post a few of my thoughts on The Costs of Adoption. I have this permanently posted in my sidebar down on the right side, along with some financial information, but in case it gets missed there I wanted to share them here as well because this is the answer that has taken me some time to really formulate in my mind. The question is pretty basic and largely very innocent, but the answer is fundamental to our core beliefs and perhaps not what most people who ask it are expecting to hear.

One of the most frequent questions we get is: "How much does adoption cost?"

Philosophically, the first answer to this question is that adoption, by its very nature, will have cost our child everything. Our child will have suffered more in his short life than we have ever; and, by God's grace, hopefully ever will. Our child, through the lens of three, four or perhaps five years of childhood, will have witnessed the death of his parents; will have perhaps been forced to wander the streets for food and shelter; will perhaps have been taken in by a stranger and then dropped in an orphanage where there is no familiar sound, smell or smile -- he will have experienced the kind of fear that causes you to close your eyes to shut out the desperate world around him. Adoption will have cost him everything.

I've heard several people comment that our child is so "lucky" to be adopted by our family or how "good" we are to be "doing this." I understand the heart of these comments -- and honestly, I think before I really started learning about children who have been orphaned, I probably would have had the same thoughts -- but when we stop to think about it, NO child is lucky to be adopted, because to be adopted one must first be orphaned.

What adoption is, however, is God's hand of love and grace and mercy on a child who, through no fault of their own, has lived in the depths of our fallen world where tragedy and death are realities. Adoption has nothing to do with US and it has everything to do with God. This is not a story of what WE are doing. It is a story of what GOD is doing. God loves this child SO much that He is giving him a second family. For reasons I do not necessarily understand, God has chosen us to be part of HIS plan for HIS child. As a result, God is putting HIS love in our hearts for HIS child. We will love him as our own. But he is not lucky and we are not good. We are, however, both loved beyond measure by our Father in Heaven and we are being used by Him to fulfill His perfect plan for all of us.

Now, before you get frustrated with me, I understand that the vast majority of people who ask us about the "cost of adoption" are referring to our financial cost and you can see the sidebar for those details. ;-)