The Nameless & the Named

Isaac and I continued our tradition of visiting the Chinese Pagoda on our nearby waterfront for Birth Mother's Day. I love that his face lights up when we go there!  This is his piece of China. This is a place that he loves to wander and explore. He runs to the pagoda and automatically looks for flowers to place (and now that other adoptive families are doing the same, it's fun to see who got there first with their flowers!).  When we left today, he jumped into my arms, waved to the park and whispered "bye". 

The reality is, there is emotional safety in not knowing who the birth parents are. I have no clue why decisions were made that allowed Isaac to be my son. The little bit of information paints a vague picture and gives me no names. The anonymity allows my brain to develop it's own story and there is a pretty narrow scope between vilification and romanticization; sadly, neither extreme allow his birth parents to be who they actually are or the grace to make the decisions that they made.  If I'm honest, it takes some effort to make sure that my son's birth parents don't become nameless surrogates to the life I now have.  

With my daughter though, it is different. I have her birth history with names, dates, reasons, signatures. My heart absolutely dropped when I saw her bio-mother's name on the birth certificate. "Oh my lord, she has a name." In the middle of my clinic day, I felt absolutely sucker punched.  Having that beautiful name flipped the technicolor switch in my heart--like going from black & white in the Wizard of Oz to full color. If she has a name, she has hair and eyes and a beating heart. Hair that my daughter possibly has; eyes that have seen our child if even for just a moment, both in awe and grief; a heart that beat life into the teenager that I will call my own.  The depth & breadth of loss and the personal and cultural ramifications of why my new daughter is indeed becoming my child is widely overwhelming. It wasn't just any mother in Albania that 'lost' her child...it was *that* woman, with *that* name.

So on this Birth Mother's Day we will work to honor both women--the nameless and the named; both who created the children that call me Mom. More importantly, we diligently pray for them--that if they don't already, that they would come to love the Lord deeply and that we would be a completed family in heaven: our big 'ole American-Chinese-Albanian family worshiping at the feet of Jesus.