Our car is not one of those aerodynamic, super-quiet vehicles that just float down the road. Ours has quite a lot of road noise, so it's very difficult to have a proper conversation. Talking to someone not sitting directly next to you requires yelling. (Maybe we need a megaphone.) This led to Lindsey commenting while riding in the car recently, "I gave up trying to talk to y'all in the car like three years ago!" She (like me) tends to use hyperbole. [That sentence is really just an excuse to use one of my favorite words; "hyperbole" just does not get used often enough!] Obviously Lindsey's statement was an exaggeration because we didn't even know her three years ago. That's so weird: this is my teenage daughter I'm talking about, but I didn't know her three years ago. I didn't even know her one year ago.I've said it before: adoption is wonderful, but it's also weird. There are emotions and plain ol' practical things that go along with it that really just don't exist outside of adoption.
In my quiet time this morning, I was thinking about things, and praying for people God laid on my heart, including two families we know who both lost a child within the past two years. The anniversary of two-year-old Brock's going to be with Jesus was this past Sunday, and I started thinking more about something his dad (Drew) said that day: Drew talked about grief mixed with joy; mourning Brock, but celebrating their new baby Lila Jane. Such conflicting feelings at the same time. It's not the first time I've thought how difficult that would be.
But this morning, I realized that Lindsey experiences that mix of grief and joy on some level, too. Just as little Lila Jane doesn't replace Brock, we aren't replacing Lindsey's birth mom and dad. She loves us, and she is happy to have a "real" family (her words), but that doesn't mean her other family didn't exist. Adopting her into our family did not erase her past -- and it shouldn't! Even though her original family had troubles big enough to result in her being removed from the home, the memories aren't all bad. And they are part of what makes Lindsey who she is.
Back when we began to consider adoption, the thought of adopting a young child appealed to me, and I believe that's because I reasoned that a young child wouldn't have so many memories. I thought they wouldn't, or couldn't, love us as much if they remembered their birth parents. I thought the memories would be too painful for them, and maybe for me, too. I believe this is the reason many potential adoptive parents are afraid to adopt any child older than an infant. I've been told "you've gotta get 'em young" so as not to have trouble with them. But it's just not true. I think perhaps Lindsey loves us more than she would have if she'd been born to us because she knows we have chosen to love her and to become her parents. God truly can redeem anything. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28
