I think it's safe to say that most adoptive parents hate it when people say, "Oh, that child is so lucky to be adopted and home now."
I understand the debate and I agree with it… but only in part.
Adoption is loss. Period.
My daughter lost her birth family. She will never know who she looks like, her mom or her dad. She will never know if she has a biological brother or sister in China. She will never know her birth country, her dialect (yes, we can teach her Mandarin, but those Yulin folks have a unique dialect, I'm told). Even today we deal with the brokenness of her past. I would be remiss if I didn't even mention how unlucky it is to be tied down in an orphanage crib for 23 hours a day and horribly malnourished for nearly 2 years. There is absolutely nothing lucky about that. Nothing, nothing, nothing!!! Some days I exhaustedly wonder if we'll ever be free of that brokenness and trauma. It's a mess raising a child with a broken past!
She will have questions to which I will not have answers.
Loss.
Adoption is loss. And that loss is… not... lucky.
I agree with that.
And while I don't particularly like the word "luck" and prefer the word "blessing," I'm going to stick with the former for the sake of the original statement that causes debate.
My daughter was adopted.
She was given a second chance.
Regardless of whether it was my family or another family that adopted her, Quiet Tiger is lucky to have a second chance at a happy, healthy life. She is lucky to have a mom and a dad who fought for her and to have siblings to play with and pets to chase. She is lucky to have food, shelter, medicine, care and love. She is lucky to live in a free country. Those are good things that she didn't have before!
And with that short paragraph, I just made many adoptive families very mad at me. How can I possibly think that my daughter is "lucky?" The fact of the matter is...
Some children don't get that chance.
Our lost Nepali daughter never got that chance. Some kids in China are labeled "un-adoptable" and aren't getting that chance. Children who age out of adoption programs lose the chance. Children in Russia aren't getting that chance. Children in Guatemala aren't getting that chance. Children in Kyrgyzstan aren't getting that chance. Children in our own country are confined to a broken system and aren't getting that chance. Those kids are living in worlds where they don't have a chance at family, at hope. Those kids aren't lucky.
Will I tell my daughter she's "lucky?" Yes (again, I'll choose the word "blessed"), but that yes comes after talking about her past and her hurts and acknowledging all the grief, all her unknowns, all the pain that I cannot possibly fix.
What's more, we can introduce her to Jesus. Only our Merciful God, our Healer and Comforter, can repair that brokenness and give her a hope and a future.
And that is not luck.
That is redemption.
