Our Adoption Class (Last Week)

Sorry that I am just now getting around to writing about our adoption class from last Monday (7/30) – we were gone in Indiana for several days. We were focused on surviving the two 10-hour drives, a high fever from Phoenix, lack of sleep and some shared sickness. Hence, no blog.

Our latest class was about openness and interracial adoptions; heavy topics, to say the least.

For those unfamiliar with (domestic infant) adoption terminology, openness refers to the degree of contact that the adoptive family has with the birthmother. As I understand it, closed adoptions, which used to be fairly standard, involve no contact between birthmother and child. Once the child is placed, there is no flow of information/communication. Semi-open adoptions usually involve the adoptive family regularly updating the birthmother on the status of the child, but no identifying information is exchanged. Communication, and potentially some visits, go through the agency, and the birthmother wouldn’t have the adoptive family’s address or phone number (or vice versa). In an open adoption, however, that identifying information is on the table, the two families see each other a predetermined number of times per year, and the child has a working knowledge of her/his birthmother. It’s not so much that there are three distinct options, but rather a spectrum of situations.

In our class, we talked about how openness benefits all parties in the adoption triad (adoptive family, child, birthmother), and, as a result, adoptions are trending toward increasing amounts of openness. It didn’t take a lot of convincing for us to get onboard with the idea of an open adoption – it would provide us with ongoing access to medical information, provide our child with life-giving information about his/her heritage, and provide the birthmother with both closure and reassurance about her choice.

The degree of openness is really up to the birthmother – they will only show our profile to birthmothers whose wishes correspond to our willingness.

Ideally, our birthmother will be interested in an open adoption, and will be a healthy presence in our ‘extended’ family. Please pray this for us!

Interracial adoption was also a no-brainer for us. In fact, when adopting through Bethany, you have to be open to interracial adoption if you have a biological child. We are not ignorant to the challenges this poses, for both us and our potential child. But I know that God is committed to racial reconciliation, and scripture suggests that families are a favorite choice for His work in the world. We would be thrilled if that was part of our adoption story, and we are more than willing to do the work it requires. I could ramble for days about this – it’s a personal soapbox. But I will spare you … for now.

How can you pray for us in this arena?

The circles we run in are, frankly, extremely WHITE. This reality weighs heavy on my heart – in fact, one of the reasons we go grocery shopping where we do (Dekalb Farmers Market) is so that Phoenix will be exposed to different colors and cultures. But I crave so much more than superficial contact with people of other races/cultures. And I believe that it is crucial for our children to see us in authentic relationship with people who look different than us – especially if we end up doing an interracial adoption. So pray that God would lead us into interracial relationships NOW, for our own sake and so our future child can have role models with the same skin color.

Thank you for your continued prayer and support!