How to love, serve, and pray for them
In the past year of our adoption journey, God has used His people to build us up in truth and to encourage us in the hard times. I have also experienced good-intentioned words and statements that are hurtful and discouraging. Your language matters – it can build up and affirm or tear down and discourage – and it reveals your understanding of adoption. It’s hard to know what you don’t know, so I want to share a few things I’ve learned. I hope these things will influence how you speak to and treat those impacted by adoption. However, to understand the complexity, you must hear from people other than adoptive parents. We have stepped into someone else’s story, and most of the details aren’t ours to share. When you also hear from adoptees and birth parents, you will begin to understand a more well-rounded adoption narrative. While I have only a limited and imperfect perspective to offer, I hope that it will work to equip the Church to love, support, and pray effectively for those impacted by adoption.
Joy and Grief
We experienced similar joy in welcoming babies through birth and adoption. With all three of my children, I have been overwhelmed with the love and kindness of the Lord. They are perfect little gifts that I do not deserve. I remember rocking my first baby and feeling completely unprepared for how much I’d love him! That love was such a big, strong, and powerful emotion that it hurt sometimes. Those immense mama feelings are the same, regardless of how your children come into your family.
Adoption, however, has a new complexity. To speak of our joy – and not acknowledge the grief felt by birth mothers and adoptees – wouldn’t give you an accurate picture of adoption and all the people involved.
Those first months were full of wrestling with the conflicting emotions of joy and grief – mourning with my baby and her birth mother for what they each lost and rejoicing for what I gained. I felt so much remorse over that. But, I get to be Mom to this beautiful baby girl and am incredibly thankful for this gift. I cannot redeem the painful pieces of her story, but I get to be a part of every messy and beautiful aspect of life with her. I can point our girl and her first family to our perfect Father, in heaven. He created them in His image, loves them, and wants a relationship with them. Joy and grief exist together. Both emotions lead me to thankfulness and reliance on the Lord.
The Hero of the Story
Adoptive parents are not heroic for loving their children and the parents that birthed them. Imagine how it would make an adoptee feel for someone to applaud their parents for being their parents. Instead of making adoptive parents look like heroes, remember the true hero of their story. Look for ways that you’ve seen God’s provision and remind them of His kindness. When they are overwhelmed with the brokenness around them, refresh their understanding of the One who knows, loves, and redeems. We are not in control, but He is. We can’t redeem her story, but we have the opportunity to point her to the One who can. And even when we can’t see what He is doing or how He will fulfill His promises, we know He is faithful. He is who He says He is. He will do what He says He’ll do.
Be the Village
The friends that have walked alongside us through the past couple of years have been invaluable. They were willing to bear our burdens and gave us strength and encouragement. They rejoiced when we rejoiced, mourned when we mourned, and lightened the load for us. The most significant way we received support this last year was through friends who were unafraid of complex emotions and built us up with truth when we felt discouraged. We shouldn’t have to bear burdens alone. God created us to live in community, and we thrive when we can count on our village for encouragement, truth, and help.
As friends to adoptive parents, you should be willing to ask these questions –
How are you doing emotionally and spiritually?
Don’t be surprised when their answer is not what you expected. Maybe they’re feeling more grief than joy at the moment that you ask. Maybe they’re overwhelmed and exhausted. Adoptive parents – ALL parents – are allowed to struggle. It is an opportunity for you to step in and be there with them, love them, and build them up in truth.
What can we do to love and serve you right now?
We will need to celebrate and serve adoptive parents differently than we do biological parents. And, like all things, their needs change through the seasons. The best way for you to love and serve them is to ask them what they need. Offer the things that are on your heart, but allow them the opportunity to say no or give you an alternative. If they can’t give you a practical way to help them, then continue to be there with them. They need reliable friendship.
Ask the questions, and allow them to give you honest answers. Be the village. We find strength when we’re united. Together, we trust our Father for protection, provision, and hope. And He is trustworthy.
Pray for Adoptive Parents
I hope this prayer helps you intercede for your friends, as they walk the unique challenges of life as an adoptive parent.
Father, you are our rock, the Most High God, our Redeemer.1
We come to you on behalf of our friends
asking that you would build them up and strengthen them for their adoption journey.
Establish them in love and security, so they may boldly enter
into relationships and display selfless love.
We ask that You would make all grace abound so they will have sufficiency in all things –
at all times – and can abound in every good work.2
Allow them to love others as You have loved them.3
Your divine power has granted them all things that pertain to life and godliness,
through the knowledge of you who has called them to your glory and excellence.4
Give them strength and courage as they walk into the unknown.
Allow them to feel your presence so they don’t fear the future.
You will never leave or forsake them.5
Lord, when they grow weary, renew their strength.6
Your grace is sufficient and your power is made perfect in their weakness.7
Help them trust You and believe Your promises.
Fill them with hope and assure them that no hardship will separate them from Your love.8
Use me to speak truth into their lives and love them well.
Unify us in our diversity, so that we may experience the richness of fellowship
with one another and with You.
We love you, Lord. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
- Psalm 78:35
- 2 Corinthians 9:8
- John 13:34
- 2 Peter 1:3
- Deuteronomy 31:6
- Isaiah 40:31
- 2 Corinthians 12:9
- Romans 8:35
Brittany K. Miller 