Writing isn’t supposed to be therapy–at least not the kind that happens outside your journal. But sometimes it is.

This was certainly the case with my recent post about adoption. I was always a little bit conflicted about it, aware that it didn’t express my whole heart on the matter and could easily be taken wrong. But writing it, publishing it, and getting feedback on it has helped me work through more of my thoughts on the matter, thoughts buried so deep they went largely unexamined.

I also realized that my disjointed thoughts would probably make more sense if I put them in the context of my personal story. So here goes.

Jenny playing with friends at the beach.

I have felt called to adopt since I was 12 years old. It was 1989 or ’90, and information about the plight of orphans in Romania leaked out of the country and into my heart, which had already been smashed to smithereens by the civil war going in on Liberia.

We had been back in the States for a year and a half, and I had NOT adjusted. Pile onto the culture shock the fact that I had no way of knowing whether my friends and heart-family in Liberia were dead or alive, the fact that while my Liberian friends were facing starvation and massacres the kids at my suburban middle school didn’t seem to care about anything beyond their IOU sweatshirts and aptly-named L.A. Brats hightop tennies, and the fact that America was about to enter into its own war, and I was a MESS. The reality that children were suffering in orphanages overwhelmed my little soul, and I resolved that I was going to do something about it when I grew up.

I didn’t want to go back overseas, though. As unhappy as I was with American culture, I had Had. Enough. I wanted to help people, to relieve suffering, but my broken little heart wanted nothing more than to go back to Wisconsin, bury my psyche deep in the rocky soil of my rural hometown, and hide, pretending that the years in Africa never happened. (A feat I have managed to accomplish quite effectively, BTW.) Thinking about it just hurt too much, and the idea of going back? Never, my twelve-year-old self vowed. It was Too. Hard.

Fast-forward ten years. I had, as previously mentioned, pulled off my lifelong goal of moving back to my hometown, getting married, and having a Normal Life. But news from Liberia, which was still deep in the midst of a brutal civil war, still decimated me. It got worse after I had a baby of my own. I would hear my baby cry, his hungry cry, and the thought would cripple me: what if I had nothing to feed him?

I became excruciatingly aware that this was the situation many of my childhood friends found themselves in. Somewhere in that time period, we had gotten news that the woman who had cared for me in Africa was in serious distress. We scraped together every penny we could find and sent it to her. By the time it arrived, she had lost her voice because of all the air in her stomach–she had been going without food so she could feed her children. She recovered, but the thought of my sweet, tender-hearted nanny starving herself so her children could eat just about slayed me. (The fact that she had already lost children because of the war didn’t help, either–this was just the fresh pain.)

My empathy began to shift. Of course, of course we have empathy for children. Any conscientious adult would want to help them. But oh, what their mothers go through!

Over time, my focus began to shift from the suffering of children to the suffering of women, because the latter is widely responsible for the former. This is the fact that has informed my passion and my work.

Still, as a woman who loves children and whose heart breaks at suffering, I want to adopt. In fact, while some people will call me nuts, I can honestly say that the primary reason I stopped having biological children was to leave room and resources in my life to adopt someday. I often feel like I struggle to raise my 4 children well, but I am praying and working on becoming a better mother, for now and for the future. I’ll swallow hard and go on the record: I hope that I never have an empty nest, while there are children who need one to nestle into.

So, adoption has always been on the radar.

After Liberia’s civil war ended in 2003 (thank you Jesus!), exiting new possibilities began to emerge. Perhaps our family could adopt from Liberia! After all, my background and relationships with Liberians in the States would provide a great means for the kids to stay connected with their culture and country of origin. And–I’ll be gut-level honest–I’d get to feel like I was doing something for the country that had cradled me for four years, giving back in some way, without actually having to go back. I’d do for my Liberian generation’s babies what I would want them to do for mine, if the tables were turned.

The more we researched it, the more it seemed like the perfect choice. We planned to start pursuing it once our youngest child started kindergarten, in fall of 2011.

That is, it seemed like the perfect choice until Liberia declared a moratorium on international adoptions in January of 2009.

*poof*

So, I have had to work through my thoughts and feelings on the matter. I have had to look hard at my motivations, my excuses, and yes, that bleeding, wounded patch of my heart that’s just desperate to reconnect with “the land I lost.”

So here I am. One bleeding, weeping mass of empathy, trying to figure out how to best stanch the flow of suffering. I cry for the children who suffer alone. I ache for the children who lose their homeland. I anguish for the mothers who can’t feed their children, for the fathers and siblings and families who are left behind. And I pray that God will use me, fix me, heal me, guide me, so that I can do something. 

Because frankly, I’m a bit of a mess.

Just like the world around me.

Have mercy on us, Jesus, and strengthen us to follow you!!!