The Story Behind the Birthday

I'll never forget that look. Eyes wide open. Glazed with shock. Expressionless.

My little boy was whisked from his orphanage home of eight  months, away from familiar faces and language and food, placed in the arms of a complete stranger and driven down the mountain to the capitol city. A quick night in a hotel then on to a plane and several hours later, poof! He’s on completely foreign soil surrounded by complete strangers. 

Do you recall a time when you felt really out of place?

Thinking about all this - abrupt and overwhelming change - makes sense of that first image I have of my son. 

From this side of the adoption process, in the tumultuous wake of the storm that is infertility, we are elated and consumed with relief in these moments of arrival and reception. The ache, the void, the intense longing for a child is being filled. A young mother’s childhood dream is coming true! But...

Recently, my wife and I were talking about what it must be like for them, for the children being adopted, especially those being quickly transitioned from a sense of normal (no matter how awful) to another time and place all together. Our Gabriel from a Guatemalan orphanage. Our Lydia from the hospital just hours old. Our Abby from the hospital room and out the back door, screaming.

We typically think that they are so blessed to have a family that loves them, that chooses them. And they are! But the deeper soul realities for those children - our children, all three -  leave them confused, anxious, afraid, displaced (though relocated)… 

Today he is turning 15! Believe me when i say that he has come so far. Each of them have!

Today’s celebration infers so much more than what it did for me and my wife when we were teens. Growth and transformation has required so much more for him and our daughters. Our families were relatively stable, our pregnancies wanted, our futures fairly stable and rooted in a nuclear family. The process from womb to family to home to future was relatively seamless, a stark contrast to the stormy and uncertain beginnings of those we have chosen to be ours, chosen to love and cherish and hold.

No doubt, adoption in its truest form is a beautiful thing. Really beautiful!!! And I would recommend it whole-heartedly! 

But it does not come without a cost for those tiny vulnerable lives, a cost that must be paid in order to move forward, yet no less traumatic.

The adopted child is typically seen as the luckiest recipient of the process. (Yes, there is a cost far beyond financial expense.) We may even go so far as to demand their profession of such rich fortunes as to inherit such an awesome family as ours...all the while unaware of the pain they bear beyond the reaches of their own comprehension. 

So today, the Happy birthday greeting and celebration comes with a profound sense of awe in the forces of Grace and Mercy in the lives of this young man and his sisters. The giving of gifts honors so much more than normal childhood development and the passing of another year of survival and accomplishments and gains. 

Understanding the story beyond the face is a lesson I have been learning the past couple of decades for certain. If this is wisdom, then i’ll have some more please! For this simple piece of education has brought and will yet bring such wealth, such fullness of relationship. There is much more to learn, and much more of them - of him - to know.

With that thought and that anticipation I say, “Happy birthday, Son!”

Who's backstory can you take time to learn this week?