Adoption...Can We Love Them As Much?

As we explored foster care and adoption one question came up for us over and over again.  Could we possibly love them as much as our biological children?  When our biological children were born, there was this immediate overflowing sense of love.  A love that words cannot even begin to describe.  A love so deep that your heart aches to its very core.  Now when we first learned that we were expecting  it was exciting but over nine months time our love grew and grew along with them until we nearly burst with the anticipation of their arrival.  Even though it felt like this unconditional love happened all in that instant in reality it grew for ten months as they each grew in my womb.  Upon their arrival each baby reciprocated our love and trusted us to meet their every need.

Adoption is very very different.   When you foster children in your home the initial plan is always to return them to their biological parents.  Appropriate extended family placements are always a second choice and if no one is able to take children then they are available for adoption by foster families.  There are no guarantees that any child will become a part of your family no matter how much you love them.  As foster families we naturally guard our hearts.  The process takes time, years in fact.  We wait as parents attempt to change behaviors and jump through legal hoops to bring their children back home to them.  During that time we love but we love as if the child isn't ours, because they aren't, and we guard our hearts and brace ourselves for the heartbreak that easily could come.  Children long to return home to the familiar no matter how dysfunctional and loving others only brings deep emotional conflict and feelings of disloyalty to their "real family.  In our experience even babies mourn the loss of the familiar and of that connection with their birth families.

So this is where we begin...skepticism instead of trust, fear to love again from both parent and child, deep sorrow and emotional scars and pain.  Parent and child have endured years of the ups and downs that the system offers.  Somewhere along the way, we came to the realization that we had to stop guarding our hearts.  We had to open ourselves up and give them all the love that we had so that we could all start to heal.  It would never work if we didn't.  And even when we did there are no guarantees that there will be happy ending.  We can give them all the love we have but only God can heal their hurting hearts.  In the meantime we will be there as they work through each hurt and as they ache for the family that they lost.

These two adore each other and do not know or understand the words biological or adopted. 
They just know the deep love of being family.

Can we love them as much?  With adoption the love grows differently.  It is the kind of love that sneaks up on you slowly and quietly.  It is the kind of love that takes time and one day you realize that you would miss them deeply if they weren't there.  Its the kind of love that makes you realize your family will never be the same and you will take the good times with the bad times and wouldn't want it any other way.    Our family may look different than even we expected but we love them all just as much.

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11