Belonging

Most of you know my story. It's a story of how infertility led to the miracle of adoption. Our daughter could be no more ours had we actually conceived and birthed her. She is one of us. She is our child. Plain and simple.

And for the most part she loves the fact that she is adopted. She knows it is just another way God creates families. She knows that her birth mother hand-picked us to be her parents. She knows God has a special plan for her life. In our prayers each night she hears me thank God for bringing her into my life and making me her mom.

But adoption does come with some challenges. This past school year she had a project that required her to research her family heritage. The kids at school were sharing all about the interesting places their ancestors had come from, and although Hannah used our lineage--which by the way isn't' all that interesting, she knew that her true genetic heritage was a mystery. Is she Russian? Is there some German inside her blood? Maybe she has relatives living in a small tribe in Ethiopia. Could she be related to royalty? She will probably never know. She has decided that she is in fact Irish. I suppose it is possible she is a bit Irish, but highly unlikely! I don't think I'll start calling her O'Hannah any time soon!

These moments, when adoption is accentuated, break my heart a little. She is MY daughter. But these moments remind me that we have a natural desire to belong. We need to fit somewhere. A few weeks ago Hannah and I went to a local amusement park with my brother and his family. As I was downloading the pictures from that day, there was one of all of us. Hannah took one look at the picture and said she didn't look like she belonged to this family. My heart ached. She said she looked like some random friend we brought with us to the park. Didn't belong? Just some random friend? She is MY daughter. Hannah is bi-racial and compared to the rest of us in the picture she does look different. She has darker skin and darker hair. The rest of us are fair and somewhat freckled.

She may not have my nose or my skin color, or thank God my horrible eye sight, but she does have my heart. She has my love for laughter, the same over-the-top desire to perform for anyone who will watch, my lack of math skills and a little bit of my sloppiness. Yep, she is MY daughter and she does belong!

Father in Heaven,
I pray for this precious child. I pray that she will know how much she is loved and that she does belong. I pray that she will see the beauty in adoption and that she will know Your hand has held her from the moment she was conceived. And that although you knit her together in another womb, You were the one that hand-picked us to be her parents. I thank you for hearing my prayers and for making me not just someone's mother, but Hannah's mother.
Amen