My brother Steve and his wife, Rhonda, are the proud parents of three boys and one girl. Their daughter, Hannah, is the only one who was born to them. All three boys -- Caleb, David and Joe -- were born somewhere else, and Steve and Rhonda had to go find them. Put bluntly, the boys all were adopted, as teenagers.
Stop and think about that. For a child to be available for adoption in his teens, you can depend on it that the adoption process will be anything but smooth. Chances are higher than 99 percent that the child has been in the foster system for a while, and has moved from one home to another.
You can depend on behavior issues as the child pushes and tests the limits you've put in place. You can expect trust issues; after all, every time this child has trusted an adult, the adult has vanished. And you can bet your munsbüscher that there are going to be some challenges forming anything sort of a bond.
It takes an mountain of patience to adopt a child in his teens. It takes depths of love that the human heart rarely plumbs. It takes sacrifice to do it -- all that you have to give, and then more.
Anyone who sees the orphan standing alone, and then puts her hands on the orphan's shoulders and says, "This is my child" is a person who lives and moves in the very heart of God. She is someone who has discovered what it is to be shattered by the depth of humanity's need and to be cut on the shards of a child's pain.
It is because of such people that God is merciful to us all.
Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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