**This post has been in the works for weeks. Thanks to extra time on the couch this past week recovering from surgery, I've finally been able to wrap it up...for what it's worth. :)**
When we dreamed of our referral, we envisioned an aids orphan, a child in need of a family. Our referral was much different than we imagined (isn't that often the case). We got "the call" about a little girl who was "slightly outside of our parameters" (how often is THAT the case). When we heard her story, we immediately wrestled with the idea that she was not an AIDS orphan, or really an orphan (technically considered a "half orphan"). She HAD a family, a family who loved her very much. There is no doubt that she is the daughter that God created for our family, but we wondered then & still wonder today what could have been done to prevent a family from feeling so helpless, so hopeless that they turned to Hannah's Hope (HH) & relinquishment. At the time of our referral we wished that child sponsorship or something of the sort could be the answer for the little girl we saw in the picture, but she had already been relinquished & her future set on adoption. It broke our hearts then & it breaks our hearts today. Now, we see the all important need for organizations who help families who are hopeless. Yes, there are still orphans who are really still in need of families, but all too often "orphans" are children with families who love them very much but simply don't have the resources to take care of them. We've got to find a way to help families stay intact.
Another aspect that, in hindsight, we know should have been different is the fact the HH handled both her relinquishment & her adoption. In order to provide the utmost transparency & ethics, two different entities or orphanages should handle each aspect of the adoption. If I had a list of advice for PAPs (potential adoptive parents) this would be near the top. Make sure that the agency you use is not in the habit of such practice. We knew that HH did this even before we entered the Ethiopia program, but we were ignorant to the implications of this. It opens up all sorts of opportunities for persuasion & such of the birth families when the business side of international adoptions get intertwined with the personal, relinquishing side of adoptions. Please don't get me wrong, we do not know if any persuasion or inappropriate conversations happened between HH & our birth family, but we will always wonder. Based on so much of what we know now, their situation really was not that desperate. Why did they so quickly turn to relinquishment? We may never know, but we will always wonder. Did HH provide them with any options other than a quick adoption to a waiting American family (& a lot of money in AGCI's pocket)?
The only thing we have known to do with our situation is to work & work until we established contact with our birth family outside of our agency. We want to honor them and we want them to still be a part of our daughter's life. They chose this plan for her & we chose to step in, but ultimately we still believe that when God formed her in the womb of her birth mother, He knew she would one day be in our family. This was God's plan & we are so thankful for it & blessed by it everyday. However, we feel like God wants us to take it a step further. He showed us this aspect of the plight of orphans for a reason...so we could be a voice for those that don't have a voice. We are still not sure what this means for us. Did our agency do anything unethical in our adoption? We don't know. We sure hope not.
We truly believe our story will have a good ending. Yes, we may wonder how old she really is & know she is way older than we were originally told, but we have a child who loves us very much & loves being in our family. However, we have seen others whose story isn't quite so rosy. Others have way deeper issues & struggles to overcome or just deal with. Other older children who have missed the language threshold & can't catch up academically due to the language barrier. Others who thought they were coming to America for their education & not for a "forever family". Others who were told parents died only to find out that wasn't the case. Adoptive families who aren't told the child's true age or family situation. It's child trafficking, plain & simple. The adoption agencies profit & the families on both sides of the ocean lose...and the children lose. True orphans remain in orphanages while children with families are adopted. And children get ripped from their communities & families, needlessly. All because visions get blurred by dollar signs. We truly believe hearts start out right...with a passion for helping orphans, but then our human nature gets in the way.
As adoptive parents, we walk a fine line....wanting to be a voice for the adopted children & birth families who don't have a voice...while still protecting our daughter's privacy. I've always tried to "keep it real" & not hide the things we've struggled with. I've quietly walked away from list-servs of other adopted families because I lost faith in our agency & got tired of all the ignorance & dreamy thoughts that people have about the adoption process. I don't think we've got a great case that the embassy is waiting to hear about. Sure we weren't told our daughter had a heart murmur until we were standing in front of the glass window at the embassy & they asked us, "Do you still want to move forward?". For us it was just a heart murmur, for others it has been much more life changing news. Nonetheless, it was deceit...deceit in the name of "orphan care".
