Sometimes I receive some pretty good questions about my thoughts on a certain topic. One of my readers is an adopted child. He wanted to know if I had any personal feelings about adoption.
Here is a subject that requires a lot of thought.
First, if you say the wrong thing, you could break that person’s heart, or you could break the heart of those two people who chose to adopt that child into their family. My feeling is there are times when things happen for a reason, and that when a child is adopted, he or she is done so with love by two people who want to share their love and their life with another person.
Sometimes you have to look at the full picture to find out why this came about in the first place. I believe in angels, and my belief is that when a child is born, he or she is an angel sent by God to two wonderful people who will spend most of the rest of their lives nurturing that child with love and devotion.
But there are times when a mother will decide she can’t care for that child in the way that is needed, and so she gives that child away for adoption so her child can have a better way of life. My thought on this is that if God did not think it was a good idea, he would have let her know in some way. That mother gave her child away out of love in most cases, because she knew she could not take care of it.
So when these two adoptive parents decide they want to adopt a child, they are doing it out of love and also because they were destined to do so with the will of God.
As the years go by, the child will naturally wonder if he or she were abandoned or given up because they were not loved. My thought on that is that he or she was loved enough by the natural mother that she gave that child a chance at a better life. God works in mysterious ways, and sometimes it is better to just accept it and go on with your life.
But what happens when that child starts wanting to look for the natural mother, and asks questions that will hurt the feelings of the adoptive parents? Adopted children wonder if their natural mother really cares about them, and so they start looking for her. For some adoptive parents, that can cause some bad feelings and, for some, that child will receive some help from his adoptive parents in trying to locate the natural mother.
Whether there will be some problems between the child and both sets of parents depends on how the search started and for what reason. Sometimes there is a medical reason behind the search, and that is OK in my book, but I have to look at this in the way that I would feel.
If a child I adopted and loved for all these years decided he or she wanted to find the natural parent, I would feel hurt because it was myself and my wife who chose that child to love and raise. The key words here are chose and love.
They chose you and they loved you, and just maybe the search for the natural mother should not start. Only those who are involved can make that decision. If that child and the adoptive parents can be comfortable with it, then start the search. But be aware that somewhere down the line, someone will be hurt, and my thought on that is that you have to use some common sense in this matter.
I do believe that time heals most hurts and blossoms the love of one to another. To be chosen is to be loved.
Ray “Uncle Ray” Day is a weekly contributor to the Kokomo Tribune. Contact him at uncleray@earthlink.net.
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DAY: Adoption: For love of another
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