Where God Lives

On Friday our Craigslist ad was flagged and removed. I don't really know what happened. Some strange things have been going on with us and craigslist lately though so I was kind of shaken up about it on more than one level. On top of that, it turned into a sort of crash course for me on how craigslist works, and a crash course for the craigslist help team on how adoption works.

When I first submitted the ad to the help team to figure out why it was flagged, the immediate response was that it was flagged because we were trying to buy a baby and that's illegal. When I clarified that I did not have it in a "for sale" category of the website, I was then told it was because I was trying to circumvent the legal process for adoption by doing something shady on craigslist.

Not a single one of the team of helpers had ever seen anything like my ad, although I, myself, have seen at least a half dozen in my own searching. Only one of them knew that this was a legitimate (and perfectly legal) adoption process. We're not circumventing anything, we're home study approved and working with Lutheran Social Services of MN. We're on the waiting list to go into their "book" - and in the meantime we're making an attempt to do our own outreach, to let everyone know what we're doing, and hoping to connect with someone who wants to connect with us. This is a perfectly legal, and actually normal - in this country - way for adoption to work.

What a learning experience, for all of us, I am sure.

Speaking of learning experiences, we got to spend the afternoon today with members of Todd's family who have up close and personal experience with adoption as birth mother and adoptee. What a gift that was! We (well, I did -- Todd was off playing kickball with the kids) had a wonderful time learning their story and picking their brains. They are wonderful people with a beautiful story and we were both struck by how much love is in that family. There is a sense of wonder that I feel every time I watch a family (my own included) band together in hard times and demonstrate what unconditional love means. God lives there, in all that love.

It's interesting because, at the advice of our adoption worker, I've been reading this book:

This book tells the stories of birthmothers who surrendered children, mostly between 1940-1960, and it highlights perhaps better than anything else ever could the reason that adoption works the way it does now. As I've been reading it, I've been thinking a lot of my paternal grandmother who would have been a birth mother during this time. I keep wondering if any of these scenarios were things that she experienced, and wishing that she were still here so I could ask her about it. These were dark years in adoption, and I feel blessed and happy that our experience will likely be so much different. That we are pursuing adoption in a time of openness and understanding. That we will likely have a relationship with our birth family free of secrets and shame. When we were interviewing for our home study, I kept telling our adoption worker that I have no secrets. There's nothing off limits for me. My life is an open book - and that extends here. Adoption is something we will be proud of, and we hope to make our children proud of it as well.

Sometimes, we get things right. We realize that we have a broken system and we fix it. We hope to be part of the solution, and to bring positive things to other peoples lives. We may have to blaze some trails along the way, but we've never shied away from that before. Besides, we have God here, in all this love.