"Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved stnading beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home."
John 31:25-27
On Friday, the priest brought special attention to this part of the long Gospel story. She pointed out how, suffering and almost at the point of death, Jesus thought about the well-being of his loved ones. From that hour until the writer's present, the beloved disciple and Mary are together and a new support to each other. The priest continued that this is an example of making something wonderful out of dark and difficult times, and challenged us to create something meaningful of the Good Fridays of our lives. She gave a number of potential examples, including "bringing someone who has no family into your family."
Now, from the context, I think she was thinking more along the lines of inviting an elderly neighbor to Sunday dinner, but from my perspective it looks like a perfect description of our goal right now! For the first time, I felt kind of lifted up and energized by a Good Friday eulogy (because I don't think they're trying to be uplifting!). Had you ever thought of the Passion Gospels to include support for adoption?!
This description of adoption, probably because it is about adults, makes me think about the web of community. About how when we will take a child into our home, we are also taking into our hearts her mother, her family, her tribe, her community, her people, her race. To me, this feels like a beautiful and exciting thing. It is, perhaps, a little bit like a marriage or a deep friendship: how you care for someone, and by caring for them you meet more and more people who also care about them, and therefore gain a chance to learn about them and how those other people think, and some of these connections develop into relationships of their own, and gradually you change and adapt to each other in those places where your lives overlap. And all the while you love your spouse or your friend so much.
The widowed and heartbroken Mary needed the protection that her eldest son would have provided, as well as emotional support in her loss; I imagine that perhaps John had no mother or wife and Mary cooked his meals and listened to his stories, which gave him strength and inspiration in his new work. Our bonds and our love for each other are constantly growing and changing. Adoption does not feel like putting a blank child in a hole labeled "second child," but reaching out and connecting our web of love and relationships to a whole new web of love and relationships, swirling and centering on one little child.
Those thoughts make me feel all tingly and excited about our potential future as a family -- who knows what kind of future or how far distant or what it will look like, but that's part of the magic. But it also makes me start thinking about something darker.
It seems like a lot of concern in the world of prospective adoptive parents is about ownership. I hear that there are families who chose international adoption over domestic, because they don't want to have to have a relationship with the birth families and feel like they can avoid it by adopting internationally. Or who go ahead with an open adoption, but immediately try to close all the doors that they can, because they want to be the only parents and the only family. I admit that I haven't talked with any families like this, just read about it, but to me this seems like fear, and it seems like wanting full ownership of the child and her love.
I can't understand this at all. I mean, I can hear about it and try and figure it out and empathize, but I can't find it within my own heart anywhere. I think the part of the reason for that is that I don't feel like parents, myself included, ever own a child or the child's feelings or the child's love, even when they are tiny babies, whether or not they are biological children. By my proximity, I make myself the focal point in Emerson's life, and by my actions, I form our relationship and his attachment to me. What other love and relationships he forms are up to his own personality and needs and actions, and (obviously if they are not causing him actual harm or putting him in danger) are a blessing and support to him.
And even more importantly, no matter what other relationships he forms, none of those other loves affects or diminishes our relationship and love! Adoptive parents who fear that feelings about birth parents will take away from their own love are viewing love as a finite resource; from a perspective of scarcity. Love is not a pie. Children do not have a bucket of "love for parents" that is divvied up to all the different kinds of parents who are standing in line! Every single relationship forms its own whole, new, limitless wellspring of love and growth.
I can speak passionately about this even though I am not yet an adoptive parent, because I have been in this situation from many angles already. First of all, I'm a teacher who has loved many, many children. Was I somehow using up my child-love for not-yet-born Emerson when I cared for my students? The question seems ridiculous. As a teacher, I also knew students who learned deeper lessons from me, confided in me, received emotional comfort and support from me. Was I taking anything away from their love for their parents? Few parents would fear the love and support of teachers, but I do hear parents talking about wanting to fulfill all the roles in their child's life, believing the children don't need any other teachers or anyone outside the family.
I've also been on the other side. For instance, when my son was about a year and a half old, he suddenly fell in love with one of the other mothers in our playgroup. He had his own name for her, he wanted her to be the one to feed him snack -- when we were at parent/child swimclass, she always ended up with two toddlers in her arms while I stood there by myself! I could have been jealous that his exclusive love for me was ending, or try to make a big deal about being really fun so he'd splash back over to me. But did his love for her in any way take away from his love for me, even when his enthusiasm and his body were away from me? They did not. I was so happy that he had found the confidence to smile up at someone new, and that he had found such a kind person with whom to experiment with beyond-mama relationships.
When I was growing up, I had more parents than traditional; my love had to be "stretched out" three ways. When I remember back to my very littlest, I could not even understand why this was a problem. Two men called themselves my "daddy," but that didn't mean that I mixed them up in my heart. I could not have loved either father more if the other one hadn't been there, and each man himself created the relationship I had with him. I had three wellsprings of unconditional love and support, and too often the question seemed to be how I would divide them into two. We can only divide the finite; to contemplate how to apportion out the infinite is absurd.
I hope my children's lives will be full of people who love them: parents of all different kinds, and godparents and grandparents, and aunties and cousins of all descriptions, and teachers and friends passing by.
I embrace Jesus and John and Mary's view of love being ever-changing and growing, adoption as multi-faceted. I embrace Jesus' teaching that love is infinite, all-encompassing, and surpasses all our understanding. I open my heart and step forward.
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