Adoption Tribe

Posted by Traci at 1:36 PM

Five years ago I had a baby. Back then my definition of success included having a kid with perfect hair who sat still during Sunday school, obeyed the first time (EVERY time), knew all the words and motions to Awesome God, and was generally considered a genius. Fast forward half a decade. Things have changed.

Last Tuesday I met with a group of adoption moms (to eat tacos of course) and it was great, but just like every other time I’ve been around AP’s, there was a hunger to be together that I don’t see other places. I feel it, everyone feels it, we facebook and blog and email and text about it all the time – we need to be together. Why??? Well I couldn’t put my finger on it right away, but finally God showed me – it’s because our definition of success is soooo different. For adoption tribe, a successful childhood no longer includes perfect hair and even more perfect behavior. It can’t. Sin is a nasty thing, deeper and darker and harder and more hurtful than we would ever want to know, and for most of my life I’ve successfully avoided knowing. But as Beth Guckenburger spoke about during a recent conference, when we go into the abyss as Jesus did in Mark 5, we see the damage of evil up close and personal.

Some of our kids, as healed and glorious and loved as they are, may never be able to memorize any of the words or motions to Awesome God, their sweet minds altered by prenatal alcohol use. And that’s okay (turns out God already knows the words). But we need people around us who know that. We need people who can watch our kid have his eighth meltdown of the day and say “way to use your silly voice while offering him chewelry. You go mama!” We need people whose definition of a good day includes one in which we have poured ourselves out in love, one in which our feelings have taken a backburner and we’ve let our hands be the gospel, one in which we have chosen to connect while correcting. If we’ve done even one of those things during a day, then that’s success.

At the same conference Beth Guckenburger also talked about the importance of celebrating what God has done. She reminded us that as the slaves were being freed from Egypt, Miriam packed her tambourine and used it to celebrate God’s deliverance.