Have you heard of the latest in adoption? You request the kind of child you want--male or female, age, types of medical conditions we're willing accept, and so on. Then when your adoption agency makes the match, you just download the kids from the web! No more jet lag, money spent traveling, dealing with 2nd and 3rd world economies. For that matter, no more high-profile trips to Africa and Southeast Asia to plunk down a million $$ at our favorite orphanage, just point and click--I love the internet.
I make this joke regularly as a way of expressing some of the discomfort I've experienced in the adoption process. It just feels weird to me to choose a child. To be sure, the adoption process is not at the point yet we often see portrayed in sci-fi movies, in which every last genetic detail of a child is customizable. Still, even choosing age and sex feels like too much choice to me, like I'm playing God somehow. After all, the 99.9% of parents in the history of the world have not been able to have much choice at all in the kind of child they have. Any other adopting parents out there share this discomfort?
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2 comments:
is it playing God, really, or is it more akin to you being given the chance to publish your desires to your Father, who delights in what you delight in?
I read what you wrote, and thought of when my daughter frankly tells me her desires. Hearing her desires delights me.
The granting of the desires is another facet, yet a child going to their dad/mom in continuous freedom and expressing desires toward anything is in and of itself beautiful. And good.
You'll soon know this firsthand, and I'm glad for you and Ally.
Yeah, I know what you mean. It feels unnatural to dictate so much. It feels like "playing God". But then...I wonder...does God really dictate like this? Seems like we might be accusing him of something unnatural, too.
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