I would really love to hear how other members of the triad manage their faith around their adoption stories. Including negative stories — I don’t mean I want to only hear beautiful stories of serendipity, you know?
edited to add: More specific questions. How did your understanding of God impact your feelings around adoption? How did your feelings around adoption impact your understanding of God?
Oh and feel free to answer in the comments or answer at your own blog. If you link back here, it’ll either show up in Technorati (and wordpress shows technorati links on the front page of the blog dashboard when I log in) or else if you have wordpress, it’ll tagback and show up as a link in the comments.
I don’t mind if you bash my beliefs in your answer — I just really want to hear what YOU all believe.
Possibly related posts:
Hmmmm. I am a person of faith, a theist, and a Unitarian Universalist. I believe in God. I believe God’s love surrounds us and can comfort and lift us up if we are open to it. I do not believe God chooses the people in our lives for us. I believe we do. He or She has set the game in motion — and loves us deeply — but does not move the game pieces. We do. I think people WANT desperately to think they were “meant to be” with someone else (spouse, or adopted child, or biological child) because it gives the relationship some external, mystical validity and grandeur. Why we can’t just cherish the people we are with for themselves and in the moment, I don’t know. I was not “meant to be” Jayden’s mother, but I am and I am blessed by that fact. Random luck? No. Not that either. We make our luck just as we make our own choices. So, my own choices, mine and my husband’s, and Jayden’s birth parent’s choices, and the choices of the Chinese government and our adoption agency and probably many other choices (freely made or not) brought us together. That God did not do it, does not mean that God does not bless her and bless us, and, I pray, bless and give peace to her birth mother every day. Well, you asked for all this gush!
DS-L
Oh interesting! I wrote on my blog.
How very timely.
Today I went to a service at my Unitarian Univeralist church, after an almost two-year hiatus, because it was a special service (in honor of Nat’l Adoption Month) focusing on those touched by adoption. (umm, can I say, though, that I hate that “touched by” phrase even though I can’t think of anything better) It reminds me of my mother saying, in fake-hillbilly talk, “She’s teched in the haid.” Ick.
ANYway, it was very moving (the service). There was a tapestry of voices from adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive parents, all members of our congregation. At the beginning, the minister asked anyone to raise their hand if they had been “touched” by adoption, and I got goosebumps when probably 3/4 of the room raised their hands. The stories that were told gave voice to both the pain and joys that people experienced, and it was quite moving. There was no shying away from hard stuff. Birthparent voices talking about enduring pain and loss. Young adoptees and a wide range of experience. Adoptive parents’ hopes and desires for their children’s happiness. The minister spoke about how adoption is both “tough and tender.” It was really quite an experience. And one adoptive mom spoke about the “spiritual aspect” of adoption and she said, how can adoption not be a spiritual experience? It brings us to the essence of who we are, birth and loss and love. I wish I could quote it but it was something about bringing us all, if we look at it with openness, straight to the essence of humanity.
It made me want to go to church more.
I don’t think that God “makes” things happen, especially bad things, and I don’t think that we are either rewarded or punished. But I do think that we are all on some complex, inexplicable journey that we don’t understand, and that in the midst of all the joy and heartache we can find grace.
((How did your feelings around adoption impact your understanding of God?))
I just reread this question and wanted to add something. Several years back I attended a 10 week workshop called “Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography,” and it was all about writing about the evolution of our spiritual lives. Mine ended up (suprise!) being all about adoption somehow and I titled it ‘The God Shaped Hole.” Ultimately I realized that I was trying to stuff my very human-shaped birthmother into the God-shaped hole, ie trying to make her something bigger than what she really was; and her regard for me was life and death. She was my God; she had made me. One of my ministers had remarked, “Only God can fit into the God shaped hole.” This gave me a huge epiphany and insight and let me look at my birthmother in a more human, more realistic and more forgiving light.
Am I allowed to comment even though I’m not involved in adoption?
I do not believe that children choose their parents. Because that means that kids with horrible abusive parents chose those awful parents, so we can turn a blind eye to their pain and just think it is divine will for some children to be hurt.
The easiest evidence for *me* that this is not divine intention comes from the Gospel, with its central theme of caring for the weak.
i don’t believe in an interventionist god, or in fate, or that things were “meant to be.” i certainly understand well that sense that *this* is the child i was meant to parent, that something divine brought us together with intention. but like moxie, i have trouble with that notion, because it suggests that other kids (or their souls, or their metaphysical selves, or god on their behalf, however you want to think of it) made really really bad choices, and that god’s hand was involved in the horrible circumstances they find themselves in.
instead, i believe that whatever the circumstances we find ourselves in, god’s *love* (rather than god’s hand) is there, and god’s love has the power to transform our lives in profound ways. i *don’t* believe that god creates difficult circumstances for us in order to transform our lives. i think pain and grief are just part of the human condition: people we love die, people we love don’t love us back, our ovaries don’t work right, our brain chemistry doesn’t work right, etc. i also believe in sin, which i believe creates oppression and structural violence (i.e. racism, poverty, genocide, domestic violence, homophobia, etc.) but i don’t think god creates those circumstances, not with the intention of teaching us something, or of forcing our souls to work through our stuff. rather, i think that when we find ourselves in those circumstances, god’s love is always, always available to us. i believe that god’s love is always creative, generative, healing, transformative. god’s love doesn’t make bad circumstances suddenly good, but god’s love makes it possible for good things to come out of bad circumstances. i believe that god’s love is freely and unconditionally given, and for me, that is the definition of grace.
so, applying this to adoption, no, i don’t think god’s hand was involved in bringing micah to me. i think there were a complex set of circumstances that made that happen — my infertility, his mom’s situation, her openness to a same-sex couple, another mother’s decision to parent three weeks before, random timing — but i can’t believe in a god that is orchestrating all that. i not only believe in, but have experienced in profound ways, however, a god who transformed those circumstances for us into something meaningful and beautiful. i hope that micah’s first family has also experienced god’s transforming love in the years since their decision to place him.
dawn, you said you and jessica were clearly meant to be family, or have known each other in another dimension, because it’s the only way to account for the deep familial connection you feel with her. i completely understand that feeling. and it makes sense to me to try to account for it by deciding that you *are* in fact family, in a way that is different than your relationship to other strangers, who weren’t “meant” to be family to you. but for me, the possibility that god’s love can transform perfect strangers into family is even more exciting. i don’t believe that i was *meant* to be an adoptive mother, or that god, with intention, gave me children to whom i am a “biological stranger” in order to teach me something. but the thing i have learned through this profound, transformative experience is that with god’s love, our hearts, our very souls, are capable of opening so wide that a perfect stranger, different from us in significant ways, brought to us through a random series of circumstances, can take up residence there and be our family. for me, this is so incredibly hopeful in a world of hatred and division, of narrow definitions of family and clan.
Wow. Tough question.
I was raised very conservative roman catholic (polish and irish). I was raised that sex outside of marriage is a sin. That women who get pregnant have sinned and dont deserve their children. They are evil.
Even though I had been confirmed and had left the church by the time I got pregnant, it was still in me (you can take the Catholic out of the church but you cannot take the church out of the Catholic). I was very cognizant of the fact that I had not only offended my families morales and values but that I was doomed to hell – and so was my child.
The agency that bought my daughter zeroed in on this (along with many other character flaws of mine). They used religion against me and told me God would forgive me if I gave away my daughter. On and on they railed. (There is also kinds of Bible and Talmud crap in their literature).
I was raised with a punishing god and yeah, he punished me as severely as I could be. He took my child from me (my 18 yo self talking there).
Today, I am a agnostic. I believe a true person of faith, a Christian, whatever, would HELP a mother in need and not tell her she is awful and then scamper away with her child.
On a completely different side, I can tell you that was nervous about religion upon reunion. Having found a bible thumping daughter would have been difficult (not impossible but difficult for me). Turns out, she had nearly the same experience as me (adopted into uber Catholic family, denounced it and now considers herself agnostic. Whewf!)
I would have greatly preferred two hail mary and an act of contrition to to the adoption of my daughter. Penance gives you eventual peace. Adoption loss provides life long trauma for my daughter and I.
MamaMarta said “with god’s love, our hearts, our very souls, are capable of opening so wide that a perfect stranger, different from us in significant ways, brought to us through a random series of circumstances, can take up residence there and be our family. for me, this is so incredibly hopeful in a world of hatred and division, of narrow definitions of family and clan.”
Perfectly said and so beautiful. May I use it in an adoption service I may be planning? Dawn – sorry to coopt your blog for this request.
DS-L
*shrugs*
I was at a strange time with my faith as it was. I thought that my wandering from God had lead me to where I was, and some who call me a sinner because of my status as a birthmother would agree. It wasn’t until she was placed and gone that I realized how much I needed God.
Do I have some left over anger? A bit. Does it then make me feel guilty? A bit. Am I working on it? Yes.
I posted my thoughts on my blog:
http://thirdmom.blogspot.com/2006/11/adoption-and-faith.html
i wrote about it too!
I’m wrestling with this one. I’ll write about it soon – probably today.
I posted. GREAT topic.
Type your comment here.Responding to Moxie who wrote–
” Because that means that kids with horrible abusive parents chose those awful parents, so we can turn a blind eye to their pain and just think it is divine will for some children to be hurt.”
That just does not follow. An individual’s choice is only divine in the context of their own divinity. Pain is pain regardless of origin. What is your idea of divinity? The only reason we turn a blind eye to the pain of others is our own lack or inability to accept and alleviate it. The judgment is on us.
[...] Dawn’s been on an adoption roll lately, and as usual she’s been producing as well as provoking some really good writing. I find that her posts usually get me out of writing slumps. Her latest round of questions involving religious faith and adoption is no exception. [...]