Adoption & Christianity: What I’ve Learned

I set out to write a series about adoption and Christianity for several reasons. I’ve been curious about how Christian families who adopt see this act as an outgrowth of their faith since I spent time at Restoration Church, an evangelical church in New Hampshire.

Restoration was the first place I met foster parents and foster children, which struck me as significant; none of my friends outside this church were foster parents (including me, of course), even though we were all roughly the same age. I wanted to find out why the folks at Restoration felt drawn to this particular role.

I also admired their commitment and tenacity. The children that they took care of came from difficult backgrounds and often required special attention. As adoptive father Benjamin Corey mentioned and foster mother Joanna reiterated, raising adoptive and foster children is night and day different from raising biological children. Both Benjamin and Joanna engage in “therapeutic parenting,” learn ways to help their children cope with grief and trauma, and work hard to show their children that they could be trusted as parents.

Then, my friend Larry shared his side of the story: the pressure he felt as an adopted child in a Christian family to do something great, and even to be someone he was not–a priest. The theme running through all three stories–Benjamin’s, Joanna’s, and Larry’s–is that adoption and foster parenting is not a bed of roses. It’s not a straightforward, simple ministry, and it requires a particular person.

As I spoke with folks about this topic, I found myself thinking that the flip side to this specific calling to be an adoptive or foster parent is the calling to be a biological parent. Many, many people become parents, and many become parents without any special preparation or even any desire to be parents. And while there are plenty of negligent, unloving, and downright terrible parents, there are also plenty of parents who find themselves made better by parenting.

So I started looking for a second theme: how has adoption and foster parenting changed the parents that I spoke to? How did it force them to grow and change positively?

Benjamin has learned about disability law and ESL practices to help his daughter, who has learning disabilities. Joanna found ways to help a foster daughter who used to roam around at midnight–she bought her shoes without Velcro so that Dana had to ask her for help. Both Ben and Joanna grew in ways they didn’t expect to become better parents.

Larry’s perspective reveals that his parents didn’t reach him in the same way these parents are striving to reach their children, and since I didn’t speak with Benjamin or Joanna’s children, I don’t know if they feel the same isolation that he did. It’s possible that adoption is better for parents than it is for children, though the circumstances these children come from prove that adoption is in many cases good for children, too.

I don’t know that I’m any closer to understanding what adoption signifies to Christians, or how to solve the problem of children who need parents. In the best cases, adoption and foster parenting is a selfless act, perhaps inspired by faith, that requires continued selflessness and perhaps even more faith. But the connection between faith and adoption is complicated not only by the parents who choose to become foster parents or adopt, but also by their children, who may or may not share this faith as children or adults.

It’s a tangled web that involves biological and adoptive family, and it requires special care and attention to the children caught in the middle. It’s much more difficult than I imagined. I remain impressed by the foster and adoptive parents I’ve spoken to, and even more by their children.

If you want to read more, you can find the entire series here.

Now, please share in the comments what YOU think and know about adoption and Christianity. Have you adopted? Are you adopted? Was your experience similar or different to the perspectives here? Are you considering adoption or foster parenting? Do you see it as a calling, or as something else?