November is National Adoption Awareness Month.
To be honest, this subject feels a little heavy for us. We have had the privilege of being a family built and shaped through adoption for 18 years now and it's been a journey marked with so much joy and gratitude for the gifts that our children are to our family. I love our big, bustling crew and how our home is filled with laughter and how we get to celebrate the unique diversity and beauty of each of our children as well as their beautiful birth cultures. It is such an honor to embrace all of it and something that we deeply cherish together.
That being said, while adoption is abundantly beautiful, it always starts with loss. In the perfect world there would be no need for adoption and children would never be separated from their birth families. Every adoptee will have their own journey and unique feelings and way of processing through their story. Most adoptees will tell you that there's a considerable amount of grieving that happens at various stages of their life. To not acknowledge the trauma that many of our children have walked through and the impact that it has on them would not honor them. And so while we celebrate the gift that a month like this is, we also recognize the loss that our children had to endure before coming into our home. Everyone deals with pain in their own way and our goal is to always be as supportive as possible while honoring each of our kids' stories which is private to them and sacred to us.
And so we hold the tension of two truths at the same time - that adoption is both beautiful and redemptive and full of goodness and joy and also that adoption is costly and painful at times. Sending our love and support to all who walk this path, both adoptees and their adoptive families. May you sense the overwhelming love and peace of God towards you and sense His nearness in every season of your life. We are so grateful for this community here and the way we are able to encourage and support each other on our unique journeys.