When we decided to adopt out of foster care, we were there for that reason— to adopt. I wanted another child. I wanted to rescue a child who needed me. When we were placed with an infant who had suffered neglect, I knew I had found her. After all, the Bible told us to care for the widow and the orphan, and there we were doing the thing.

Then, her family came calling, and it looked as though she would return to them. Not only were we faced with the pain and suffering of untethered attachment, now I had to face my own ugliness. No part of me wanted to feel compassion for these people. I wanted to give them zero access to this child, and I wanted to forget that they existed. Isn’t it funny how the very thing that terrifies us is often the thing that the Lord sends us right into?

God’s people are not a people of complacency, or at least we should not be. 

Each day became a battle of wills, mine versus His. I will not feel this thing you want me to feel for these people. I will not allow this child to go with them. I will not be easy to work with. I WILL NOT.

I did. I will never forget that first time I invited her dad to church with us. The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could catch them, and they left me stunned and in utter agony. “Why don’t you come with us to church on Easter? It’s her first one, and I would hate for you to miss it.” He came. The looks. The questions. The “you are so strong”s and the “I don’t know how you do it”s. Well, me either, honey. I have no control here! Isn’t that the truth of it, though? We just really don’t have any control. 

I can’t even remember how many times I packed and unpacked her bags. I planned more vacations those three and a half years than I ever had before and most of them were supposed to be “reunification” days. I just didn’t want to be at my house without her when she left it. Then, it never worked out with her dad, and for a while it looked like we would adopt her.

Then her mom showed up. I was fuming. Where had she been? Can this really happen? What kind of mother…

How fickle our faith can be. I had allowed the Lord to steel my nerve and supply my strength to love and have compassion for her father, and now he was gone. “I cannot do this again,” became my heart’s refrain.

I met her mom, and she was so kind. She also aged out of foster care herself. She was abused her entire life. She was scared of going back to prison. She was scared of losing her new baby. Everything about this woman screamed fear, and my resolve to deny her any of the Lord’s compassion crumbled beneath the weight of reality. Not only was I intending to deny her the compassion I was commanded to give her, I was ready to deny myself the freedom of living with my hands open to what the Lord brought before me. I was too weak to continue down this road my own, He had to carry me, and through me he would just have to carry her.

I just prayed, as only a mother can. 

Our daughters’ mom did not show up to court the day of her termination hearing. Instead, she sent a single piece of paper via her attorney.

It was a termination of rights which she signed herself and simply stated “please leave her with her family, she loves them.” 

People ask me all the time what it was like to adopt through foster care, and it was honestly brutal. I don’t know if I will ever be the same. I feel like I spent the whole of my life’s emotional longevity in those three and a half years. So much of adoption focuses on the child, and while they are definitely the priority, the severing of one family and restitching of another is gruesome, and affects everyone is touches.

I have no idea where her mom is today, but I know her name and we talk about her daily. Each Mother’s Day, we will continue to celebrate her bravery, selflessness, and compassion. We will celebrate how the Lord calls us to love and care for all the orphans, even the ones who aged out of care and have made hard choices because of a lack of support. 

In the end, motherhood is a lot of things: napping, packing lunches, making breakfast, driving constantly to dance class just to sit in the parking lot for hours, consoling, listening, admonishing, the list is perpetual.

But Motherhood is also compassionate, always.

The mother of my child taught me this, that to look beyond my own desires is to be a mother, and for that lesson hard-taught, I will forever be grateful.

Written by Lynsey McDaniel