When I was in elementary school one of my best friends was adopted. My understanding of adoption was pretty much what I gleaned from Disney’s The Rescuers. I thought babies just waited in basinets for someone to come and take them home. The message to adoptees was always that they were chosen. That didn’t seem all that special, though, in the cruelty of children when being adopted was hurled as an insult
In high school I had a creative writing assignment to write about something I had never told anyone. I wrote about how I thought I was adopted. I wrote that it didn’t matter that I had seen the film of my birth many times as well as the pictures in my baby book. It didn’t matter that I had so many qualities of my parents and bear a striking resemblance to my siblings.
I wish I could go back in time to undo any damage I did and hurt I caused to my friends. Why? I’m an adoptive mother. I would give the world for my child. There is no way I could love that little girl any more than I do. Everyone who meets her is shocked to learn that I did not birth her because she looks just like me.
The adoption ministry at our church holds adoption fairs a couple times a year. At the first one we attended we learned that adoption is not God’s Plan B. A friend I had in the online adoption community told me that your children will find you. Both of those philosophies are wonderful ways of viewing adoption.
So many factors came together for Jessie to be ours. How could anything as wonderful as our child be a Plan B? She is definitely God’s plan for our lives.