A Note from Shaunti: Did you know that November is National Adoption month? Recently I was looking around the table at our regularly scheduled staff meeting and I realized that four of my eight core staff members are adoptive families! Wow! I’ve had the privilege of walking alongside several of them over the years and I know it is both a beautiful and difficult journey.
Many of us who are not adoptive families have wondered: is there a way to support the adoption and foster care community even if we don’t feel called to become an adoptive family ourselves? Quick answer: YES! This week, I asked my new blog coordinator, Kristy Floyd, to share a bit of her story and how we can best support the adoptive families we know.
Guest Post by Kristy Floyd
Have you ever been in a position where someone genuinely wanted to love you well so they kept asking what you needed, but you could never figure out what to say because you yourself had no idea? Much of our adoption journey has been like that: paved with individuals, friends, family members, and church family asking, “what do you need?” And unfortunately, our response was always, “we honestly just don’t know.”
I’d like to take a moment here to help people who have wondered, and been asked, that question.
My husband, Dane, and I, were in our mid-20s when our family expanded, literally overnight, from one to three children – all around the age of six. “Irish triplets,” people would say. We thought we were ready for this. After all, we had done all the research and read so many books on being an adoptive family. As my dad noted four years later, we felt like we knew it all, but truly didn’t have any idea of what we were walking into as a young husband, wife, and sister. He was so right. We weren’t prepared for the hurt our children had endured and the pain it would cause all of us as we walked with them through healing.
We felt powerless in those moments when people could see our suffering and feel our weariness and we still had no idea how to answer their pleas. What do we need? We need a miracle. For the pain to go away. For the love to grow faster and our kids’ hearts to attach well – even though it wasn’t my skin next to theirs when they were born.
It was and still is so much to carry. But there’s that great phrase in the Bible: “But God….” He always makes a way, doesn’t He? Christian community was and still is a huge part of the answer. Having others surround us with their experience, help, or simply with their willingness to be present was a game-changer for our whole family.
So what is it that those in Christian community can do to help, when a family may not even know themselves? Realistically, every family that walks through adoption will need something different in the ever-changing seasons of their lives for years to come. But there are things that can be done, even when the answer still is, “I wish I knew”:
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