Plea to Adoptive Parents

As I mentioned in previous posts I was adopted at birth by two of the most wonderful people God has ever given breath to. There hasn’t been a single day that I didn’t feel loved and supported in every way by either of them, but I want to share my perspective and experience in case there are adoptive parents considering doing what my parents chose to do.

They kept the fact that I was adopted a secret from me.

I didn’t find out until I was trying to enlist in the Air Force in high school, and I was told sitting in the recruiter’s office at age 17. There had been clues throughout my childhood that never occurred to me to be credible so I didn’t question it, so finding out this way hit my like a brick.

I had a couple really important conversations with my mom and dad that day, and it took me about 2 days to snap out of the disbelief, but the point I kept coming back to was that knowing I was adopted didn’t change anything. If anything I felt more loved knowing that I had been chosen. I may have been an ‘accident’ to some other woman, but to my parents I was a gift from God.

My advice to adoptive parents is simple…
* be up-front with the child
* raise them to know about their history
* celebrate the fact they were adopted

They won’t love you any less and they won’t be any less committed to you…so don’t fear the notion that some day they may want to search for their birth-mother (which they may do, and I’ll save my story about this for another time)...because even if they do they are still your child.

My mom will always be my mom and my dad will always be my dad, and the fact that we don’t share DNA has nothing to do with that. Period.

Holding Hands on Flickr by Jedi Andy

Ten More Minutes

Okay, I wrote about my hero last week and mentioned at the end that I wish I had paid homage to my mom before she died. I have very few regrets from the first 39 years of life but this is truly one of them. So, today I’m pondering what I tell my mom if I had just ten more minutes with her.

· I would ask the most important question any person can answer. Do you have a relationship with Jesus Christ and have you accepted Him as your savior? I came to Christ after she passed so this is a conversation that never happened. This side of glory I will not know the answer.

· I would tell her how thankful I am that she and my father chose to adopt me as their son, giving me a great childhood and teaching me so much. Heaven only knows how different my life would be today had they not, and I will forever be grateful.

· I’d tell her how sorry I am that I was such a self-centered teenager. The cases are too many to mention.

· I would tell her how sorry I am that I was not there to hold her hand as she passed away. I mentioned I have few regrets in my life but this is at the top of the list. I wish I had that summer to do over.

I guess my bottom line in writing these out is to emphasize that life is short, you won’t always have tomorrow to tell those you love all there is to say. I know my mom was proud of me and loved me, but it’s painful to think that she may not have known that I felt the same way about her.

Tell them today, call them now, write them, get in the car and drive over to them…right now. Turn the computer off, the radio off, the TV off and go do it.