An Adoption Nightmare Story

I just received the following note from a long-time friend I recently connected again with.  I had posted the information about the adoption grants on Facebook and she read my note.  This is just what the adoption agency warned us could happen.  It is just so hard to not want to adopt them all.  I deleted some of her note to help keep her identity private.

Pam, I believe your heart is in the right place... and please don't think badly of me... but my dear hubby and I adopted two "healthy" boys from ______ and they have done horrible things to us! One set fire to the house (w/ me in it, recuperating from surgery). The other cost me my career. They were 11 when we adopted them. Now, they have twisted everything in their minds to believe that we "stole" them from their brilliant homeland. Nothing we did for them was enough or good enough. We've prayed. We've sought help through church and community. Thank GOD they are finally out of the house! They've cost us everything except (thank God) our marriage! We just wanted to love them and help them out. We were completely unprepared for the years of their anger and pain to be taken out on us. Please read this to Clint and think it over very, VERY carefully! It doesn't seem like it, but this child you're considering adopting may be much better off, left with everything he's ever known... rather than taken to our completely different, highly competitive, consumer-oriented and critical world. There may be opportunities here for him, but there will also be crushing competition for work, bitter criticism, and a whole new culture (possibly language, too) that he'll have to deal with. Can you picture him surrounded by punks his age? How will he deal with peer pressure? Sexuality (which is way over-emphasized in our culture, in my opinion)? American teen angst? Racial strife (so prevalent in our culture, no matter how hard we fight it)? How will he work out that adolescent coming of age (moving away from you and onto his own) while you are trying to bond with him? How will you deal with it? Is Clint really ready for it? What about your other kids?

I'm not alone. Loads of other well-meaning, Christian parents have taken on these kids... and their lives have been completely devastated because of it: family pets killed, siblings or neighbor kids (grand kids) raped, marriages, homes, jobs lost... and not because these folks forgot to pray, or because they didn't have Christ as center of their lives, or they didn't really try. On the contrary, many of them spent every penny they had on therapists and doctors, took therapeutic vacations, connected with the home cultures, attended seminars and conferences, sent their kids to fancy rehab centers... and so forth. Are you and Clint really prepared to spend the rest of your lives, and money you don't have, taking care of this kid while he tries to kill you? I may not actually be kidding. These kids go through hell and they have plenty of hell to put others through on their road to wholeness... and they may never become anything even close to whole.

_________ says, "The world has a soft spot in its tired, old heart for abandoned orphans. Abandoned parents are on their own."

You are there to do a mission. You'd adopt them all and bring them home, if you could... but that's not what you're there for.

You know, people tried to warn me, too, and I didn't listen. I am married to a pastor. I was a public schoolteacher, making $__k a year, w/ full benefits. It never even occurred to me that the adoption might cost us the jobs, which cost the benefits, the church, our home... or the level of destruction to our stuff, our wider family, our selves! When you're left w/ nothing but this kid, is there any chance he'll stick w/ you the way you will have stuck w/ him? If he's a normal, American teen, he'll dump you and run... even faster and farther, if he's a kid trying to become a normal, American teen.

Hurt people hurt people... It 's just true. This kid's been hurt and there's no telling how far he will go to lose you and find himself. I wish this wasn't so very true.

Well, I've gone on and on... please reconsider. You are there to help people work out their own solutions in their own context... with God's help. You are not their answer, God is.