Ef Ay Quez

As Mark and I have opportunities to tell more and more people about our adoption, there are a few questions that we are asked quite often. Over the next few days (or weeks, or months) you are going to enjoy our answers to the questions most frequently asked.

Today, I'll start with the most basic...

Why are you adopting?

This is perhaps the hardest question - of all the questions - for me to answer. Because for me, it just seems so obvious.

There are children, all over the world, living with no parents. NO PARENTS. Think about that. What must life be like as an infant, a two-year-old, a 10-year-old, with no one to call "mom." What is it like when no one rocks you to sleep...or brushes your hair...or bakes you a birthday cake?

I'm pretty sure that none of us can even begin to imagine what these children, and their communities, are facing. The obstacles. The grief. The hopelessness. The extreme challenges of being a child with no family. Of being a community with no parenting adults.

And we just can't let this go on. We can't turn a blind eye. I can't pretend it doesn't affect me.

So, perhaps, the easiest answer that I can give is that I can't imagine NOT adopting. I am compelled and called and I MUST do it.

Because I KNOW that there is a little baby out there WITH NO MOTHER, I can't JUST LEAVE HIM THAT WAY.

I am capable of being his mother, so why wouldn't I be?

It seems strange, but MY baby, MY son has already been chosen for me. MY child is already (or will soon be) living without a family, and is waiting for me like I am waiting for him.

Sadly, there will be millions of other children who do not get adopted. I am not saving the world here. Adoption is a lifeline to ONE child. A lifeline that will make all the difference.

And there is one (or maybe two!) child that is MINE. And I have to work hard, and move toward him, and find him, and give him a mother, and a father, and a family.