Thank you Tracie Loux! for being faithful and posting this, and so that we can link you from ours!
I’m happy to add another post to this series, written by my dear friend Dorean (wife of Brian from Guest Post part 2).
Why do I give (financially and otherwise) to help other people adopt?
There are many reasons I could give, but at the root of them all is just one thing.
I do it for the children.
I do it for the little
girl whose birth mother made the painful last minute decision to place
the baby for adoption. Imagine being this little girl’s parents getting a
call saying, “We have a mother in labor right now. If no one comes to
adopt her before the mother is discharged after giving birth, she will
be placed into foster care.” To fully understand this you need to know
that because of her race, and the policies of the state where she was
born, she stood a strong chance of spending at least the first couple
years of her life in foster care.
I do it for the young boy in a
crippled body who spent the first 10-11 years of his life in an
orphanage. He’s been home about two years, I believe. He is just now is
beginning to talk about what his life was like in his country of birth.
He recently shared of the horrors of hearing the door lock behind him
after being placed in a room with other boys, with no toys, books, etc.
He spoke of hearing the door unlock, opening slightly, bread being
thrown into the room, and hearing the dreaded sound of the lock again.
In his words, “The bread was old and didn’t taste very good, but it was
something to do.” With no one to love him and get him medical treatment
and physical therapy, he was unable to walk. Today he has parents,
siblings, an education, and is walking and running with the best of
them.
I do it for the little girl who
started her life in an orphanage because her birth mother drank alcohol
while pregnant, causing this little one to be born with developmental
difficulties. Had she not been adopted by age 4 she would have been
transferred to a mental institution where she would have spent the rest
of her life without love and without hope. Instead she is in a family,
surrounded by love, learning to love and to trust.
I do it for the little boy who, at
the age of five, was developmentally and growth-wise identical to a
newborn baby. Within months of being adopted out of the orphanage he was
growing at a remarkable rate and had begun to be mobile. He is now is a
rambunctious little guy you have to work hard to keep up with.
I do it for the children in foster
care, with no permanent home or family. Many counties in the US have
rules moving children to a new foster home every 18-24 months to make
sure they don’t get too bonded with their foster families, with the idea
that it would be traumatic for them if they got adopted and lost the
only family they ever knew. Stop and think about that: the goal is to
keep them moving enough they don’t get too attached. Is that what any
parent would choose for their child?
I do it for the children in Haiti,
living in orphanages, tent cities, or on the streets, with no hope for a
better life. I do it for the little girls in China, cast aside because
girls are not desirable due to political issues in that country. I do it
for the girls in Southeast Asia whose destinies are to become victims
of human trafficking before they even reach puberty.
Why do I give to help other families adopt? I do it for the children.
-Dorean Beattie
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