Embracing Brokenness: An Adoption Story - Micha Boyett<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For the rest of the week I will be off (by myself!) at a Benedictine monastery near my parents' home: writing, praying and hanging around monks. I'm\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/michaboyett\/2010\/07\/embracing-brokenness-an-adoption-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Embracing Brokenness: An Adoption Story - Micha Boyett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For the rest of the week I will be off (by myself!) at a Benedictine monastery near my parents' home: writing, praying and hanging around monks. 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{"id":603,"date":"2010-07-13T22:17:09","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T05:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mamamonk.com\/?p=603"},"modified":"2010-07-13T22:17:09","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T05:17:09","slug":"embracing-brokenness-an-adoption-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/michaboyett\/2010\/07\/embracing-brokenness-an-adoption-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Embracing Brokenness: An Adoption Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Amanda Fleming Kolman and I shared a dorm room for one glorious year at our cheesy Baptist college, where we, the ultimate of church girls, laughed like crazies and jumped on our beds to our favorite Watermark song<\/a> (to our college-aged selves it seemed the most appropriate form of worship for that particular song). We also smoked cigars on the roof of our dorm the night she got engaged to Loren, the man she calls, \u201cthe freaking catch of a lifetime.\u201d She<\/em> has three kids who are \u201cspunky and bright, and a whole lotta fun to know.\u201d She\u2019s a trained counselor who now stays home and is currently struggling with the fear that she is too simple. She likes to sew, can peaches and weed the garden. And she has virtually no interest in modern art or politics.<\/em><\/p>\n

She also shares my middle name, Elaine (which, hearkening back to my college self, is the name by which I always refer to her).\u00a0 And for more reasons than all of the above, I\u2019m honored to have her as a guest. Thanks, Elaine.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

I know that my family turns heads, although I\u2019m not usually aware of it.\u00a0 Every once in a while, though, I can sense that people are looking at us, and probably wondering what our story is.\u00a0 My husband, Loren and I, have adopted three daughters.\u00a0 Hope, 6, is African American (first generation actually, since her birthparents were born in Zambia and Kenya and met in the US).\u00a0 Bella, 3, is half Caucasian and half Latino\u2026but she is blond headed and blue-eyed and looks an awful lot like me.\u00a0 And Ava, the 8 month old whose infectious laugh totally makes up for her ear-splitting scream, is half black and half white.\u00a0 Her coffee-with-cream skin and loose curls pay tribute to that fact.\u00a0 We are about as diverse as families get, I guess.\u00a0 A unique reflection of God\u2019s creativity and beauty.\u00a0 And I wouldn\u2019t change it for anything.<\/p>\n

But adoption, any kind of adoption, is complicated.\u00a0 And sometimes, while you\u2019re living your very normal life with three precious children, you have a moment that threatens to undo your carefully crafted idea that everything is as it should be.<\/p>\n

Recently, Hope casually said to me at the dinner table, \u201cMommy, wouldn\u2019t it be fun if my birthmom was my mommy?\u00a0 Because we look alike.\u201d\u00a0 Ouch.\u00a0 I looked across the table at Loren and could feel him trying to bandage my open wound with his eyes.\u00a0\u00a0 I gathered my thoughts a little and said, \u201cI know it\u2019s hard for you sometimes that we don\u2019t look alike but do you know that it\u2019s one of my favorite things about our family?\u00a0 And I love being your mommy, so it might be fun for you but I sure would miss you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know it might be easier for Hope if I looked like her\u2026easier for all of us, maybe.\u00a0 Just eliminate the pain, right? But then again, I know it isn\u2019t my job to eliminate all of her pain.\u00a0 And as frustrating as it can be to watch her suffer, I DO know that God lovingly placed her in our family because it was part of his good plan. \u00a0As hard as it is for me to understand, my God was there as she was conceived, loving her in the perfect way that only the Father can, and allowing her to be born to parents who loved her, but because of that, would place her for adoption\u2026knowing she would hurt because of it.\u00a0 He also planned for my womb to be closed and for us to begin the process of adoption at just the right time so that Hope would become a part of our family\u2026knowing that we would, at times, hurt for her and with her.<\/p>\n

The thing is, this part of our story, this pain, is no less beautiful than the other parts.\u00a0 It\u2019s messier for sure, and harder guaranteed, but it is not out from under the protection of his hand, and no less orchestrated than all the rest of it.\u00a0 But we live in a broken world. And the reality is that Hope is a part of our family because things are not as they should be.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not exactly sure what to do with that.\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s uncomfortable.\u00a0 And oftentimes, I would prefer just to pretend we are normal.<\/p>\n

But, I can\u2019t.\u00a0 And that\u2019s part of what God is teaching me in this lifelong process of adoption.\u00a0 My children are learning, at a very early age, about brokenness.\u00a0 They are already grieving losses and they are looking to me to guide them through that.\u00a0 And what I want more than anything is to point them to the One who came to redeem the brokenness of the world.\u00a0 If I try to ignore it, they learn that brokenness is unacceptable.\u00a0 And I know that in order to really understand the life of faith that I so want them to embrace, they will have to embrace brokenness.\u00a0 Their own and that of others.\u00a0 And let that brokenness lead them to Jesus.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s a mom to do?\u00a0 Later that night, I pulled Hope up on my lap and assured her of those things I know to be true.\u00a0 That she was placed by God in our family.\u00a0 That she was not a mistake.\u00a0 That it\u2019s okay to be sad.\u00a0 That God has a very special plan for her life.\u00a0 And then, I let her scamper off to play and went and had a little cry in the shower.\u00a0 Because these truths don\u2019t make it hurt any less.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>

Though Amanda wants to stress that she is \u201cnot a writer,\u201d you can read more of her musings on life, faith and motherhood at her blog<\/a>. She has an article, also about adoption, that will be out in the November issue of <\/em>Thriving Family<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"