All too often people who adopt are referred to as rescuers, or someone might say, "It was so amazing how your family rescued her." It happens a lot. And I get it. You see someone doing something good, or hard, or someone you admire and you want to compliment them, encourage them, let them know that you recognize the work that they are doing. But let me be clear, I will not accept the title of "rescuer." I will forever fight the appellation for two reasons.
Firstly, if you talk to adult adoptees, you'll hear this over and over again. Hearing that their parents rescued them or saved them does not encourage an adopted child to feel loved, safe, secure, accepted, self-confident...it's just not a positive word association for most adoptees. It is imperative to me, as an adoptive mother to two boys, that I listen well to the words and stories of adult adoptees and that we value their words and stories. The words of an adoptee trump those of adoptive parents. Admittedly, when I'm feeling swallowed up by behaviors that can be associated with trauma, I want the encouragement and experience of other adoptive parents, but for the most part, we work hard to seek out the voices of those who experienced the same things that our boys have...those are the voices who should have the microphone. When they say that they don't like feeling like they are the "good works" of their parents, it's our job to listen up. When they say that they feel bad about themselves when they overhear comments about "rescuing" or "being saved," it's our job to stop and turn the volume up. Their voices, stories, opinions, and feelings matter.
It's hard to know what words to use. It's hard to see the need and ask for people to step into the need and address it without adding glowing monikers or flowery words. I feel that weight and burden myself. I want to express the depth of the need and shine a light on these children. I want people to understand the circumstances that these children are in. I want to motivate people to act. All too often there is a part of me that wants to shout, "Run, save him! Save him from a life without a family. From a life with little to no medical care after the age of 14 or 16. From a life of solitude. From a life on the streets. From a childhood in an institutional home for adults." The statistics are real and startling and I do believe that we should act. But if we're running to save someone, we're just one small step away from becoming saviors and I don't know a single adoptive parent who wears a cape. I certainly didn't. I showed up at that hospital in Jacksonville completely inadequate for the journey I was so eager to take. We definitely didn't disembark from that plane in China with super powers. We did not swoop in to save or rescue our sons. We stepped into their lives. We did not storm in with magical forces or weapons. We walked into their stories. And yes, that choice changed their circumstances, hopefully for the better, but it matters how we define the act of adoption and all that proceeds it and all that comes after it. Words have power, and it matters how we tell these stories and how we shine a light on the need.
The second reason I'll never accept the title of rescuer is this: we're the ones who are being rescued. For sure. 100%. Without a doubt. Of this, I am certain. It is our sons who are rescuing Sam and I. Friends, it is so easy to settle into our American lives (and even easier to settle into our white American lives) and become completely numb to the world around us. Sam and I like comfort like everyone else, believe me. Despite infertility and the setbacks that caused to growing our family (and our finances), I can see now how we were pursuing the easiest life we could find in those early years of our marriage. Nothing too risky (because I don't like the unknown). Nothing too difficult (because no one likes hard things). Nothing too wild (because predicable is comforting). We were on track to live "wisely" and make decisions based on our own well being. Decisions that made sense financially. Decisions that made sense for our timeline. Decisions that made sense for our future goals.
But there's a danger in that, friends. It's a rip tide you'll never see coming. In this comfortable, easy life we can operate almost entirely without faith. That's next to impossible when you step out on the journey of adoption. When adopting, you find that you need God in ways you could never have imagined. J. R. R. Tolkein wrote, “It's a dangerous business...going out your door. You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” True. There is risk in stepping out of our pursuit of easy and comfortable lives and stepping in to the lives of those who are marginalfized, ignored, abondoned, or forgotten. You truly have no idea where you might be swept off to. The adoption journey is a journey into the unknown, even if you've done it before. But there is also the sweet, sweet journey into deeper faith when we choose to enter into the hard. But to experience it, we've got to open the door and decide to step out of our own comfortable lives.
For us, adoption was that invitation. Adoption was the thing that propelled us into the hard and it keeps us there. It keeps us dependent on the Lord because it wasn't a one time act. In the same way that a wedding is an act and a marriage is a lifetime of choices, the finalization of an adoption is an act, but this life, oh how it is filled with choices. I love these words from Heather Avis, a fellow infertility sister and adoptive mama in her book The Lucky Few, "What I did not know then is that ease and normalcy and niceness are not as important to Jesus as obedience, perseverance, and sacrifice. I didn't know that easy and normal and nice would do little to build my character or make me a better and more complete human being. Somewhere off the rose-petal path where easy and normal and nice bloom, true beauty lives in the muck. But only the lucky few of us who step off the path will find it. My luck began when God picked me up off the comfortable path I had paved for myself and drop-kicked me into the mud."
Slowly, ever so infinitesimally, God is refining me through and in the midst of the hard. It is I who am being rescued. Rescued from myself. So no, I'm no savior, no rescuer. I'm an average, middle-class white American whose life circumstances led me to a place where I could choose to open my eyes and see that there is so much more to the world than what my eyes would have me to believe. I am the one being rescued from a life of normal and nice and given a life of dependency...and boy is that scary. But that's where our faith grows, my friends.
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