Should we take other people's kids?

If your life intersects with mine through Community Church, facebook, or twitter, you are well aware that much of my time and energy over the last few weeks has been focused on Haiti. Our church community is blessed to have some direct connections to people who live and work there, and we've been fairly engaged in what they've been doing since very early after the earthquake. I encourage you to check out the amazing work happening on the ground and give generously to Heartline.

I've been so engrossed in all things Haiti that I sometimes forget that not everyone around me is quite as preoccupied as I am. I'm not mad about that. I'm well aware that tragedy occurs everyday without me giving it more than seven or eight seconds of real thought, much less any investment of actual time, money, or energy. I'm obviously no hero for caring about Haiti (or for any other reason...well, unless you count my ability to perform Ice Ice Baby from memory, which is borderline heroic anyway you slice it). I can't completely tell you why I've been so captivated by this one. But here I am.

There is so much that I'd like to write about as a result of what I've witnessed, even at a distance, over the last couple of weeks. So much that I'd like to write about, but most of it is still a big swirl of stuff inside me for which I can't find words. Maybe soon.

Until then, something tangential has emerged that I can wrap some words around: children.

Over the past two weeks, I've watched from afar (but weirdly up close thanks to the disturbing and wonderful magic of the interwebs) moments and events that have been both soul-crushing and utterly inspiring. I've seen pictures of freshly orphaned kids having limbs amputated and witnessed (virtually) the unification of multiple families. It is simultaneously invigorating and devastating to be reminded that children are not exempt from the indescribably wide range of human experience on this planet.

The most beautiful and fascinating aspect of this unfolding drama that I've witnessed has been the forming and reforming of families changed forever by the arrival of Haitian children - orphans, but orphans no more. Against the backdrop of blood and bone and utter ruin, kids with no families were suddenly at home. Moms. Dads. Brothers. Sisters. All at once, and sooner than anyone expected.

We are connected by one degree of separation to at least four such families. These are folks (Americans) who were well into the process of adopting children from Haiti, still waiting on the red tape to play itself out so they could go get them. In the early days after the quake, the Haitian and U.S. governments worked together to expedite the last stages of these adoptions.

It made sense. These were adoptions that had been approved by both governments (and all sorts of other people - this isn't like buying groceries) which were just stuck in various kinds of waiting periods. If you don't know much about adoption, know this: it's as much about waiting as anything else. Lots and lots of waiting. So the powers-that-be agreed to set aside some of the waiting and get these kids out of Haiti and into homes they were headed to soon anyway.

And that lasted for a very short time.

Details are still not entirely clear - Haiti wasn't great at details before the capital city and virtually all of its infrastructure was completely destroyed - but essentially the Haitian Prime Minister declared that no child could leave Haiti without him personally signing off on that child's exit.

Obviously one of the legitimate concerns in Haiti right now is human trafficking. Our community has also been involved in the efforts of International Justice Mission over the past couple of years. IJM may be the most amazing organization on the planet at the moment. Imagine the Super Friends (only without Marvin and Wendy but with a pile of lawyers to go along with the butt-kickers) commissioned to end slavery and sex trafficking around the world. These people are kicking in doors and putting the baddest of the bad guys in the world behind bars every day. I can't articulate with enough passion how much I and my people believe in that cause. It's the Gospel - the cause we've staked our whole lives to - in action.

So we want the Prime Minister of Haiti - and everyone else who can - to protect the most vulnerable people in Haiti, certainly including and especially displaced and orphaned children. In that sense the Haitian Prime Minister approving kids leaving the country might not sound crazy. After all, we aren't talking about hundreds of kids a day. Under normal circumstances, it might be possible for the PM to review these cases in a timely manner and approve the legal adoptions that have followed all the accepted international protocols. Under normal circumstances.

These are not normal circumstances.

It might not surprise you to hear that the Prime Minister of Haiti has a few things on his plate today. And piled among the utter chaos he's managing is now the paperwork for kids who already have been legally adopted by families outside of the country but who are stuck in a Haiti that simply cannot care for them at the moment. Some of them have nowhere to go. There are a large number of them literally living at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.

Case in point: Ernest and his wife Debra, another couple we have multiple once-removed connections to, have already legally adopted their son Ronel from Haiti. Like many others, they were just playing the waiting game. Ronel was supposed to be on a military flight to Florida on January 22 with a number of other orphans granted humanitarian parole, but something got goofed up in the paperwork and he wasn't allowed to board the plane. He rode a bus to the airport expecting to fly home to his family, and he rode that bus back to the orphanage. He was devastated.

When Ernest and Debra found out about this, Ernest became one of my (and many other people's) new heroes and tunneled his way to Port-au-Prince to get his son. [The tunneling part may not be true. It's just how I like to imagine it.] That journey started nine days ago. Tonight Ernest and Ronel are sleeping on the tile floor of the U.S. Embassy for the seventh straight night.

Their paperwork is complete, despite it taking our highly efficient and compassionate government several days and four sets of fingerprints to make that happen. They're just waiting for the embassy to tell them that the Haitian Prime Minister has released Ronel. There are about sixty others, most of them orphans, waiting with them in the same predicament. We all thought they were coming home today because, in a twist that managed to shock even my no-faith-in-government system, the staff at the U.S. embassy apparently lied to them and said they were cleared to leave if they could find a plane. They found a plane. The folks at the embassy then said, "Oh, uh...we weren't serious about that. The Prime Minister still hasn't signed your documents." Yeah, me either.

Ronel and the other kids have been thoroughly checked by the U.S. government, granted humanitarian parole, and will be received into the U.S. under the watchful eye of immigration services. And yet they can't go anywhere because they either can't get the Prime Minister's attention or he's afraid to let them go.

Why would he be afraid?

There are a number of international aid and child advocacy groups, with UNICEF at the front of the line, that are prone to oppose international adoption in virtually all forms. If you've watched the national news much this week, especially in the wake of the debacle involving the Baptist group from Idaho, odds are good you've heard their point of view. In short, they advocate almost exclusively for these children to be left in their culture of origin. They passionately argue, in this case, that Haitian kids should grow up in Haiti, period. And they make the same argument in similar situations around the world. This is not my slant on UNICEF or like-minded groups - they are clear about their position.

This is something I've thought about more than just a little. Amy and I have known since before we married that adoption was likely in our future. In the ten years since, we've discovered two things: we make kids very easily, and we are more passionate about adoption after having three kids biologically than we were before.

For most of that time, we believed we'd adopt hard-to-place kids from the U.S. There were lots of reasons for that, and we never gave much thought to anything else. About two years ago, God began to do something in me that I can only describe as him sort of consistently grabbing me by the chin, turning my head, and saying, "Look: Uganda." It wasn't about adoption for me at first. I just suddenly was aware of Uganda. All the time. And then, over time, it became about adoption. That is a long overdue post for another time. For now, what matters is that it happened.

Since then, we've been dialed into Uganda, mostly assuming our next children will come from there. [I say "mostly" because we've well-learned to live by the closing line of the terrific move, Dan in Real Life: Plan to be surprised.] Our sweet friend Juliette spent four months living in an orphan village on the backside of Lake Victoria, mostly because she's about as upside down for the real Kingdom as anyone we know, but partly because she got on board with our passion for that people and place. Or maybe she was ahead of us. I'm not sure.

As all of that has happened, we've talked and thought a lot about what we're planning to do. We've not only answered other people's questions about the ethics of trans-racial, trans-cultural, trans-continental adoption, we've asked ourselves those same questions and then some. It is not a simple issue, and it doesn't take long for the romance of the thing to dissolve into the hard realities involved.

As I watch this international debate literally play itself out in the lives of friends and friends-of-friends, I'm also contemplating our future. We care deeply about culture. We have no desire to raise dark-skinned Norvells who have no sense of their history or culture of origin. It matters to us that our family - and even more than that, our greater community - have a long-term connection to Uganda or to whatever culture or country produces our future children. Honestly, we've steered clear of larger adoption agencies and sought out smaller, more localized opportunities for this very reason. As much as it's up to us, we want to do this in a way that allows the development of life-long relationship and mutual ministry between the people who our children grow up with and the people from whom they come.

That may all sound great, but I also know the reality of that will not be a fairy tale. It will be years of hard, tearful, and (since we're most connected to really hot countries) sweaty work, and we might ultimately be completely disappointed in any number of ways. I just choose to believe that if those doors are opened to us, we're right to walk through them no matter what's waiting on the other side.

So I get the cultural complications and ramifications of international adoption - at least I get them as much as I can from this side of the chasm. And, frankly, I don't get the dogmatic opposition to international adoption by people who claim to be interested only in what's best for children. I understand that raising a kid in his or her natural home and native environment is ideal, assuming that environment can sustain that child physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But for UNICEF and others to claim that's always realistic is, at best, ignorant and, and worst, disingenuous. They know better. 

They know that the large majority of kids in orphanages in Haiti and Uganda and other places ravaged by poverty and war and famine and genocide are there precisely because their original environment could not sustain them. Their extended families, villages, and so forth could not or would not care for them. And when the case for returning children to untenable situations can be made no longer, they begin to talk about international adoption as some sort of act of cultural aggression - an American enterprise certain to doom the future of already flailing third world nations.

And despite my passion for adoption, I understand that concern in its purest form. I want Uganda and Haiti to be healthier, hopeful places. I'm not interested in robbing those nations of their children or their futures. I'm not.

But here's what I'm also not interested in: I'm not interested in looking in the face of a kid without a family and telling him that he doesn't get a family - that he has to stay in a country literally torn apart by an earthquake and rife with abuse and neglect because Haiti will need him in twenty years. I'm not interested in telling the baby girls without mothers in Uganda that an international aid group thinks it's best for them to grow up in an orphanage so that Uganda has a chance at a more egalitarian future.

Does. Not. Compute.

Regardless of culture or country, we do not mortgage our children's present for anyone else's future. 

I understand that we must take great care in how we do this. And I know that people at both ends of the issue can do tremendous harm if they are not careful. I just don't find any rationale for laboring to subvert cross-cultural adoption that is ultimately and triumphantly loving to children. I am happy for UNICEF to exist and do all kinds of other good work (read here about their history on adoption and here about what they can and should focus on in Haiti and elsewhere).

I'm white, so feel free to discount my opinion accordingly. But let me say this: EVERY SINGLE PERSON I've seen on TV ranting against international adoption is white! [I never use all-caps or exclamation points...Can you feel me here?]

It is one kind of cultural elitism for a white guy to assume he can give an African or Haitian orphan a better home and future than that child has without a family (not because he's white, by the way, but because he's a Dad and can offer a family).

It is another kind of elitism altogether for a white guy to tell an African or Haitian child that s/he needs to just stay right there in poverty and despair because, well, kids should just stay with their own kind. 

So if God gives me a daughter from Uganda or a son from Haiti, I will teach them where they came from. I will take them there. I will pray for them to have vision for that nation and those people. I will encourage my blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids to have the same passion for Uganda and Haiti and the rest of the world - all of it, including us, groaning in anticipation of our adoption. And if and when God sends any or all of my kids to one of those nations - to stay or to find children of their own - I will weep and dance and shout that Jesus is the King of the whole world, and his Father is the Dad of all children everywhere, forever.

Well, I don't dance a lot, but I'll weep and shout for sure.

Comments

[Kristen]

Oh my word, AMEN AMEN AMEN. This is so well written. I agree on so many points.

[Michael]

Amen to all of that. Thanks for taking the time to write it, Thad.

[Ryan]

Really great thoughts, Thad. What I've seen over the last month because of Haiti has really challenged my thoughts on intl. adoption. My eyes have really been opened to how much these kids crave a family and would die to be placed in a loving home. It disappoints me to see so many people in power completely disregard that simply because they are glued to an ideal.

I would love to meet up with you sometime soon for lunch or coffee or something and talk more about your adoption journey and thoughts. Sara and I have been talking a lot lately about different options, and I'd like to just glean some wisdom and insight from you. Shoot me an e-mail when you get a chance and have some free time.

Later man...
Ryan

[Christine]

Another way to facilitate culture is through the practice of open adoption. International adoption makes that really difficult, but not impossible (especially when you are a determined fart, like I am).

We adopted our two most recent children from a disrupting adoption. They had been adopted from Haiti.

(speaking of being surprised - always knew we had Haiti in our hearts, just never suspected we would add Haiti to our home like this - surprise!)

My kids have always had contact with their first family in Haiti, but in their last home it was via someone who was profiting greatly from those interactions. We knew it was vital to cut that contact and pray for another way to open up communication. It took me six months, but I "found them" again, and found a contact who was only interested in helping us maintain that relationship.

Since the earthquake, we have lost contact. Our sweet missionary friend is kinda busy keeping hundreds of people alive in her front yard. Unless she finds a way to piss deisel, don't think she can toodle around town hunting down this family ... while others are in need of transport to hospital care. We wait.

But I WILL NEVER GIVE UP until I locate them again. It is vital that my kids have access to their first family, and then can choose the level of their relationship with them. Because of massive cultural differences, we need the go-between. It can be awkward - downright weird for all of us - and my now very Westernized children have to go through the process of trying to understand the differences.

At the time of the orphanage care and subsequent adoption, my children were facing starvation. Their family reached a point of stability again (for a multitude of reasons, which change daily in Haiti). Because of extreme poverty, starvation, survival-of-the-fittest, my children also have some extreme obstacles to overcome.

Life is messy and complex and poverty screws that up even moreso. I am praying that UNICEF will honor the need for balance - improving a country WHILE giving a safe and permanent "forever" to the already suffering and institutionalized children.

So far, though, they don't seem to care so much what I think. :)

[Patti]

This is good thinking and good writing, Thad. A mom at our old church has lately been guest blogging on the NY Times webpage about her family's adoption journey (an 8 year old, physically disabled girl from China) and I have been amazed at the vitriol many commenters have spewed. I didn't really know that international adoption could be so offensive; that people would find such bizarre reasons to hate people who pursued it. Adoption has always seemed such a straight-forward Jesus move to me, whether domestic or international.

[Erin]

As a mama to two Ugandan kiddies and one biobaby, i really appreciate you giving voice to my convictions about why adoption is not ideal, but necessary and beneficial in this broken world.

Much like Moses was adopted into Pharaoh's family and then returned to his birth culture as an adult to help set the captives free, it is our prayer that our kids -- our family -- will someday be catalysts for change in Uganda.

Thanks for posting!

[Darren]

Hey Thad --

This is a great post. Thanks for making it.

As Terri and I get the house ready to bring home #3 from Russia (hopefully within the next month), the stories I've seen on the news have really driven at this issue for me. I would love for these precious children who are a part of our family to never have experienced life in an orphanage -- no mama, no daddy, no one to rock them at night or hold them when they were scared. I'd love for them to never have experienced hunger or loss or grief.

But I can't change that. What I can do is give them a home where they don't experience those things again. And I think that's what Scripture means when it says we should defend the cause of the orphan. I truly believe Terri and I are the plan God had to provide comfort to our kids.

[Chase]

Groaning with you.