Everyone's adoption story is different. There are three parts to our reasons for adopting: the philosophical, the personal, and the procedural. The philosophical approach answers the question, "Given your view of life, why would you choose to adopt?" The personal account tells "What experiences and emotions led you to adopt?" The procedural covers "How did your thoughts about adoption change through the year-long process?" This post will cover the first two.
Philosophical
We are Christians. Put simply, that means we accept as a historical fact that a man named Jesus actually came back to life after dying a couple thousand years ago. Amazing, yes. Unbelievable to some. But based on historical and experiential evidence, we think it's true. And given the records of what he taught, this power of life over death has important implications. First, the reason the universe exists is to enact love. Second, we are capable of love. By love, we mean actively improving the conditions of life for another person. This is often accompanied by warm emotions and reciprocation, but can also involve self-sacrifice and pain. Third, becoming a person full of love at all times means expressing love toward whomever we meet.
Now, it's not possible to know everyone you meet well enough to love them effectively. You can start by respecting "your neighbor" and being willing to communicate with him or her. But we are finite beings. We can only love in part, and only love a few people at a time intensely. For the rest, we just try to help to the extent we can, and not do anything to harm them. When it comes to our children, we try to do whatever is best for them, not what makes us feel proud or comfortable. (Note: I said we try.)
Therefore, someone could love perfectly well without ever adopting or having any children. We have had natural-born children, and enjoyed our relationships with them. In fact, our motivation to go to Peru was mainly to create a memory with them, and to serve together to help people clearly in need. However, after meeting the children at the Hogar de Esperanza orphanage, we each became aware that we could personally and directly love one or more of these children as part of our family. In our philosophy, you can choose to love whomever you want most deeply, but there is a call to love the person you happen to run across, to be a “Good Samaritan” to your “neighbor.” We recognized that we were among only a few people with the capacity for adoption who would ever get to spend a week with these particular children.
Personal
Our awareness of adoption was rooted in past experiences with adoptive families and children with special needs. When we were first married, I was working at an agency that provided services for people with mental disabilities. We talked at that time about possibly adopting a child with Down Syndrome in the future. Later, in Ohio, we volunteered with children with autism and multiple disabilities through our church, including Sunday sessions and a summer day-camp. While living in Louisiana, we became aware of a particular girl in an orphanage in Eastern Europe, where one of our college friends was working. We inquired about her status, but she had been moved to another location already. Finally, in Illinois, we knew a family who had adopted multiple children from Asia. They received word about another possible child, and we talked as a family about whether we could help, but again, our involvement wasn’t needed.
We had reached a point where we no longer thought about having or adopting another baby. We saw many examples of adoption around us. We know families who have adopted children from infancy to teens, sibling groups or multiple children from different countries, boys and girls, children who struggle to learn English and those who excel in school and sports. We had just moved on to another stage in life, even though we were just in our mid-40s.
On the other hand, we were looking for ways to help children in our community that faced difficulties. Chrissy went back to teaching full-time, and also started mentoring teen moms in our town. Both of these points of contact helped us to understand the situation of children growing up in poverty or without resident parents. Then, in 2008-9, we had two periods in which different people moved into our house for a time; one, a single woman from our church who was temporarily displaced, and the other, a mom and son we knew from where we used to live, who were relocating to our area. We learned that we could adjust to having someone else live with us.
So, how did we feel about the children in Peru? Right away, they made us feel welcome and appreciated. Then, through the week, several of them attached themselves to us, sitting on our laps, holding our hands, pulling us over to the playground. Although their backgrounds are difficult, and many of them face serious challenges, we did not spend a lot of time thinking about their tough lives. The volunteers and staffers told us a few stories, generally without identifying a specific child, so we could appreciate the kind of things they’d been through. But we just enjoyed having fun with them and saw that they were like any children in the US. We realized their great potential, and the fact that it would be hard to reach that potential where they are. At least for the boys in the family, we didn’t necessarily feel like we “loved” the children in that short time, but we began to care about them, and what would happen to them. When we got home, and started talking about adoption, each of us had one or two children that we hoped would be available. It turned out that those were whichever children we had each spent the most time with—so we thought we could grow to care for any of them, once we got to know them.
Our desire is to help a child reach his or her potential to be a loving member of a family, and someone who can exhibit their talents and personality in their work, friendships, and service to others.
--Doug
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