I stood in the middle of an ashen covered field and watched
the brightly dressed children run from one end to the other. High up in the
Andes mountains in a remote Ecuadorian village I had never felt so free and
purposeful. It had been a long and tiring week, and while I was ready to go
home, I wished I could do this every day. At fourteen years old I behaved more like
a 30 year old woman than a teenager. I was confident and sure of myself that I
knew everything (or at least almost).
This was my very first mission trip, and since my church was not
participating in a trip that year, I had volunteered to go with a local neighboring
church. I only knew one other girl on the team, but that didn’t matter to me
because I had been waiting impatiently for years to participate. I was always so ready to grow up! Getting on
a plane with a bunch of strangers to go to a strange third world country where
no one spoke my language—Sign me up! I had no idea the effect this trip would
have on me once I arrived. It was my first time back in Latin America since I
was small child. As we went from village
to village and worked in the different schools, I felt like every child there
could have been me. Was I really that
close to having this as my life? If I had not been adopted, would I have been
put in an orphanage? Or forced to work on the streets and sell candy, or pick
pockets like so many of the children I was ministering to? It was this, “What
if?” that caused me to feel crazy so many times in my life. But it also drove several other unexpected
things.
My fear of, “what if” caused me to grasp ever so tightly to
the family who had saved me from it. As a teenager I may have been ready to go
anywhere and do anything at a moment’s notice, but as child I hated the idea of
leaving home. I was convinced that my family desperately needed me, and that if
I left home something bad might happen. It was so much a dependence on them, as
the thinking that they were depending on me.
I was afraid that if I caused too many problems they may regret adopting
me. I wanted to be something they could
show off and be proud of. Thus I became
a type A perfectionist who was fiercely independent with a need to prove
something.
This was magnified in high school. If you have ever been in a minister’s family
then you know that it is like living in a glass house. In the small corner of Georgia (where we moved
at the start of my sophomore year) everyone knows everyone, and our church was
the largest Baptist church in the county. I had spent most of my life
homeschooled, and was very much an introvert who liked to spend hours alone in my
room reading a good book. Being a new girl in high school is tough. Being a new
girl at 15 in a town of a few thousand people, who is the preacher’s daughter,
never been to public school before or lived in the south is a nervous breakdown
waiting to happen. Can you say culture shock?
In all
my craziness I found making friends difficult.
I was so different from everyone around me. The pressure was on to stay
physically beautiful, maintain a 4.0, be at church every time the doors were
open, and NEVER SHOW WEAKNESS. Maybe if I was perfect then people would like
me. Maybe then my parents would be proud
of me and not want to give me back. What if I let them down? What I failed to see was that they were so
loving that never would have crossed their minds. My friends just wanted me to be down to earth
and act like a normal teenager instead of a perfect one.
Growing up I have had many adopted friends. In those friends
I have noticed that they either shared my extreme type A want to please their
parents and be perfect nature, or they looked at the “what if” very
differently. They saw the “what if” as “What if my birth parents really loved
me and didn’t want to give me away? What if my life could have been better with
them in my life? What if I could just find them and maybe feel like I belong?” Usually I saw this manifested in a more
rebellious nature, and a person who is more indifferent about things than
needing to be perfect people pleasers.
In doing research for this blog I wanted to see what mental disorders
adoptees get labeled with. Some traits I came across consistently were:
unsocial, lack of identity, insecurity, feeling alone, withdrawal, anxiety, and
even aggression. These were made worse in children who were adopted at an older
age, or those whose birth mothers had been drug addicts or alcoholics. They actually have a mental disease called
Adopted Child Syndrome, a dissociative disorder which has been used as a
defense for many murder trials where the accused killer was in fact adopted.
To be quite honest I don’t know that I really buy into being
labeled as one thing or the other. I’m definitely not a psychiatrist, and I
know that many of my own personality traits and those described above are not
reflected solely in adoptees but in many other children as well. I do believe one thing to be true. Adoption
is hugely popular right now, especially among the Christian community where
well known speakers and musicians speak on the subject and adopt many children
as well. I must confess though that I
grow somewhat irritated when I see these with their books, and their doctorates
and so on speaking for those who have been adopted. They will never know what it
feels like to be labeled as “adopted,” and everything that comes with that. So many
times we here from the parents and how wonderful it is to adopt and go out and
get your child. That is all well and good, and I want to adopt in the future as
well. We need to remember though, when you adopt that child you are permanently
altering their future. Just because you put them in your family doesn’t mean
that everything is instantly better for them—we aren’t pets. The future you are
giving them is sure to be far better than anything they could have hoped for,
but they will have pain and difficult emotional issues. Healing
takes time, and you have been given the unique role of being the stitches to
their brokenness. True forgiveness and
healing, however, can only come from the Lord. This is why I believe so many “successful”
adoptions still result in broken and hurting adoptees.
“What if” I had never
been an adoptee is a future I am glad God never planned for me, and I will take
whatever struggles that come with that label. I am so thankful to serve a God
who remembers even the abandoned ones.
