Your Name

To our son, the boy who was born with no name.  

No child deserves to live the first year of life without a name.  And yet, that is how your story began.  With nothing to identify you.  We are not sure why your birth mother did not name you.  Perhaps she was trying to distance her heart, not wanting to become too attached to the baby she knew she would not keep.  Or maybe she understood what a great honor it is to name a child, and was saving that as a gift for us, the ones who would adopt you.

Whatever her reasons, she could not have possibly foreseen that the adoption process would take so long.  That for nearly a year, “Baby Boy” was officially recorded on your birth certificate, social security card, and medical insurance card.  Every time I took you to the pediatrician, the nurse would open the door to the lobby, look around at the parents and children waiting there, and call out, loud enough for everyone to hear:  Baby Boy?  Sure, those two little words were benign, seemingly harmless by themselves.  But the message they communicated?  You do not belong to a family.  You are not significant enough to have a name.  You are indistinguishable from every other orphaned child in the world.  Unnamed.  Unwanted.  Unimportant.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have been further from the truth!  When that happened, I wanted to hold you close and protect you from those words and everything they meant.  I wanted to announce to everyone in that waiting room that you do have a name.  That you are wanted.  Chosen.  Loved.  It’s just that we were waiting for the legal system to catch up to what we already knew with certainty:  that you were our son.

The Silent Ones

We are a community of mothers who love our children powerfully and passionately. Who want and dream and envision only the best for them and their future.  And together, when we see first-hand how difficult this job of parenting can sometimes be, we stick together.  We are a tribe of warrior mamas who defend each other in the fiercest battles.  Sisters who support one another with practical resources during the most difficult seasons.  Kindred spirits who refuse to let another one fall.  We encourage one another, as often as necessary, to keep pressing on. 

Some of us have children with chronic or life-threatening health issues. The ones whose children are facing such a terrifying medical diagnosis, that we know, intuitively, that there is no way we can do this by ourselves.  And when we openly ask our community of mothers for help, the response is almost always immediate and powerful.  Neighbors bring meals.  Church leaders and family members gather to pray.  Friends wear the special t-shirt that symbolizes their esprit de corps . . . their camaraderie.  Mothers who are further along in the journey, those of us who have traveled this way before, share our experiences and hard-earned wisdom, extending a hand up to those of us who are just starting out.  We are reminded in so many ways that we are not alone.

Some of us call ourselves the lucky ones, the mamas of children with genetic disorders or developmental delays or heart defects. The ones who have the incomparable privilege of watching God’s plan unfold in unexpected and miraculous ways. (1)

Some of us have intentionally chosen the hard and rocky path.  We have stepped into the brokenness of foster care and adoption, opening our arms and our homes to welcome children who have been traumatized, neglected, abused, forgotten. Children with immense emotional and behavioral challenges that wreak havoc in our families.  

At the beginning, we were excited about where this journey would take us, knowing that we, too, were the lucky ones.  We just knew that we would have the incomparable privilege of watching God’s plan unfold in unexpected and miraculous ways. But now, years later, our blog posts have become fewer and fewer.  Our posts and pictures on social media are pretty much non-existent.  Once upon a time we were the most vocal, the most passionate, the biggest advocates for orphaned and vulnerable children!  But now?  Now we have become the silent ones.