Family

 

What is family?                                                                      

• The biological family you are born into? 
• The adoptive family who chose you? 
• The friends you surround yourself with?

However we define it, I think we can all agree that family is a vital part of our lives. We all have a past, a unique story, and a place in a family that is ours and ours alone. Maybe we are a first born, the baby, or the middle child. Maybe we don't have siblings. Some people have one parent, some have two, and some have more. Divorce, remarriage, death, blended families, broken families. Family. These are the people we do life with. We live with them, fight with them, laugh with them, and cry with them. We grow, change, and become who we are as we live parallel lives alongside our family members.

What happens when we don't?

Sometimes children are separated from their family members. Parents divorce or never marry, they share custody, or one parent leaves and the child is left with only one. Some children are given up for adoption or must be in foster care for one reason or another.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. At a street fair in my town last week, there was a tent set up with information about foster care. My daughter and I spent a good amount of time there asking questions and getting information about the process of fostering children. 

• Do you pick which children you will foster?
• How long is the average stay?
• Do children get adopted often, or do most reunite with their families?
• What are the requirements to become a foster parent?

There were so many questions to ask, and I was quite curious. Some of my own children have expressed interest in fostering and adoption, so I took this opportunity to become more informed.

A week later, I discovered a show on Hulu called Long Lost Family. This has intrigued me as I watch story after story of parents looking for their biological children, and children searching for their birth parents. Most of these children had wonderful lives, presumably better than they would have had if their biological parents didn't make the very difficult, selfless decision to put their babies up for adoption. The stories are heartwrenching. One worse than the next. Sad tears and happy tears shed both in one episode. But I was hooked and kept watching episode after episode. 

Then God spoke.

The next day I was running in my neighborhood. I passed a woman I had never seen before. Then I ran past her a second time. This time God told me to pray for her. I did. I prayed that God would ease her anxiety or help her in any situation she was dealing with. It was a general prayer, for I had never seen the woman and did not know her story. But God did, and soon I would too. 

The third time I saw her, God told me to talk to her. So instead of running past her, I slowed down and mentioned that I had never seen her in the neighborhood before and asked her where she lived. She told me, and although it was just around the corner, after almost 20 years in my home, we had never met. Until that day.

This particular Monday morning she did not want to go out and walk. 

• She had worked all weekend.
• She was tired.
• She really didn't want to walk that morning.
• She usually walked at night.

But this day was different.

This day, she looked outside and thought about how she should just go out and take a walk and enjoy the sunshine. Something (or Someone) had prompted her to veer off of her regular routine. And I'm so grateful she did. 

We talked for nearly an hour, like old friends catching up, seeing each other for the first time in ages. It was comfortable. It was an open, honest, candid conversation between two old neighbors who never met. Strangers. But yet it didn't feel like she was a stranger. In fact, she was a perfect example of what I have said many times to my children.

There is no such thing as a stranger. Just friends we haven't met yet.

She shared her story with me of how in her mid 50s she and her husband decided to adopt three children from the Ukraine. She is Ukrainian. They had one biological daughter and she was almost 30 years old at the time of the adoption. They could have just enjoyed their golden years together, traveling, spending quality time together as a couple, . But instead, she said, "We are still living. We still have time to make a difference. And if we can help some children have a better life, we should." 

• Amazing. 
• Selfless.
• Kind.
• Loving. 
• Brave.

All of these words come to mind when I think about her act of generosity and love. Going from an empty nest to a nest full of baby birds. Facing uncharted territory because raising one child is much different than rasing three. And let's face it, most of us who have three or more children, got them one at a time. We had time to adjust. My new friend went from zero to 3 in a day. What a challenge! But she was up for it. And I will continue to pray her through her journey, because she openly shared the struggles that come along with adopting three children in an advanced age. 

But what a blessing! For the children, and for the adoptive parents. I was in awe. I kept smiling as she shared more of her story. I told her how God told me to pray for her. She got chills and rubbed her arm as she told me that she is scientifically minded but she believed encounters like ours are more than science. She's right. It is more. 

It's God.

God wanted her to go for that walk. He wanted me to talk to her. Thankfully, after passing her three times, I got the memo! He wanted us to talk about adoption, and about God, and about how it was meant to be that neighbors for 20 years never met until we needed to. I am grateful we both listened to that small voice inside of us. My new friend got the encouragement she was needing at that moment, and I took one more step towards my journey of finding out more about fostering and adoption. 

Thank you to all the selfless families out there who embrace children that aren't theirs biologically, as if they were. Because except for the DNA, it's the same thing. 

It's life. It's love. It's family. 

And freinds, that's the way we all live happily ever after, after. Together. 

For this reason 

I bow my knees before the Father, 

from whom every family

in heaven and on earth is named.

-Ephesians 3:14-15