their REAL mom

Every other Tuesday morning is one of my favorite times – a moms group I attend at a nearby church. Been sitting at the same table, with the same amazing women for years now. LOVE it! This morning we had a great guest speaker. Like usual. The guest speaker began by complimenting all of us and affirming our roles as mothers. Like usual. And the speaker also referred to childbirth as such an honorable and miraculous thing. Like usual. Seriously. I bet most of the other moms in the room don’t even notice this, but I do. This morning the speaker said something to the effect of “how significant that God chose one way and one way only for every human being to enter the planet, and that is by a mother’s womb – and you are all mothers…” Every single speaker we’ve had this year has referred to the physical act of either carrying or birthing children as such a beautiful part of being a woman. Uh hum (me clearing my throat), what about women who are not married (single, divorced, widowed), and what about women who never get pregnant, or who never carry a child full term? And what about women who adopt? Not every mother is a mother due to carrying and birthing her child. I scanned the room and estimated there were nearly 60-70 of us in the room. What do these women really believe about adoption? What are they being told? Is adoption a beautiful, kind gesture? Something we should do in order to live out God’s heart for the orphan, like going on a mission trip, or donating our gently used clothing to the needy? Or is adoption one of the mysteries of God, one of the ways He grafts people together as a family, like the way He makes a husband and wife one in union? Is adoption a normal way for families to be put together?
I was irked. Not because the speaker stepped on my toes by reminding me that I never carried or birthed my children, because honestly that fact of my infertility is true and doesn’t offend me. What offends me is that it is assumed that women are mothers because of the physical act of conception/gestation/delivery, and it’s communicated as an afterthought that women are also “mothers” wink, wink, by adopting too. I wanted the speaker to say “by whatever means God chose to use to make you a mom, that fact is that you are a mom…” We need to hear preachers, and speakers, and teachers all talk about adoption as often and as naturally as child birth. Maybe less than 10% of the women in the room this morning have ever experienced any form of infertility, but it is dangerous for a speaker to talk exclusively about the physical nature of passing on our genes as what makes a mom a mom and an offspring an offspring. It’s dangerous because it cements in our minds that adoption has an *asterisk*, that is it a beautiful and special thing, but isn’t quite as valid and as real.
Folks! Do you realize that, as Christians, adoption is central to everything we believe? Do you realize that Jesus Himself was adopted by Joseph, and it was through Joseph’s bloodline that Jesus’ messianic lineage comes. So Jesus is truly Joseph’s son, not *son* wink, wink. And as a Gentile believer now grafted into the family of God, it is not through my genetic heritage but through my adoption that I am now in God’s family.
Adoption is real. It is binding. It makes people related who were once otherwise unrelated. And in any given room there are adoptees, and there are adoptive parents…and let’s always assume that. K?