Growing Into The Land
November is National Adoption Month and, of course, Thanksgiving.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard on TV, in the news, or on talk shows where adoptees are interviewed and are asked well-meaning but sometimes stigmatizing questions.
Things like: You’re lucky to be adopted! Do you have contact with your birth family? What was it like in foster care?
For an interracial adoptee like myself, there’s the question of whether their parents are properly exposing them to the culture, heritage, and history of “their people” because adoption tore them away from it.
Adoption, as beautiful as it is, is layered and complex. It carries grief and grace. The ideal is that a child should be born into a stable family with a mother and a father.
That’s where gratitude and thanksgiving come in. I was grateful not to be bounced from home to home in foster care because I was adopted into my foster family as a baby, but I lamented not having a father growing up. But I was grateful to have a loving adoptive family.
See what I’m getting at here?
Culturally, I didn’t grow up in mainstream black culture. But my adopted mom, who is an educator, exposed me to a lot, and I was able to look at black culture and history with a personal yet objective lens. Yet growing up, I had to deal with peers who often told me I wasn’t black enough, was racist, or a traitor because of my family.
And then there’s the trope that sometimes popular media proliferates that seems to imply that being adopted is a scandal or subtle shame to the family.
“Your mom and I have something to tell you, Steven.... you’re adopted”.
The reality is that there are tons of kids in foster care today. According to the CCAI Institute, there are well over 350,000 children in the foster care system in the US. Over 100,000 are waiting for adoption. Many of them will wait at least three years.
These aren’t just numbers. These are all kids who long for a place to belong. And look forward to the day when they can be grateful for it.
Cambridge Dictionary describes belonging this way:
A feeling of being happy or comfortable as part of a particular group and having a good relationship with the other members of the group because they welcome you and accept you.
Belonging is invariable and inevitably connected to gratitude.
Most of the time, unless it’s a family member adopting a family member, adoptive families have to go through a pretty rigorous process. That includes getting to know the child deeply and understanding them. Adoption isn’t just about a family accepting a child; it’s also about a child receiving a family.
Bonding and belonging. Basic human needs.
And even after adoption, more must be done. Adoptees must grow into their identity. They learn the quirks, culture, traditions, rhythms, and ethics of the family. Adoptees must build their place through love, behavior, and mutual trust.
Adoptees have to decide if they will be willing participants in a family that they weren’t born into. That’s covenant, not sentimentality.
Identity is formed not by being born into a family but by being chosen to be part of one.
Does that mean adoptive families are better? Of course not. My family has its fair share of drama, pain, and struggles, just like every other family. I’ve been hurt, held grudges, and wanted to oust or dismiss other family members because of what they did or didn’t do. And I’ve wondered many times what it might be like to grow up in another one or in my birth family.
But beneath it all, I had to settle that my family that I settled in was a good one, or there’d be no reason to practice gratitude.
In a lot of ways, the Pilgrims coming over in the Mayflower had to make this choice too. They had no idea what they would face when they came to America. But they decided to settle and make it home regardless of what they faced.
And they faced a lot.
Even amid bitter hardships, they made a very conscious, and perhaps counterintuitive, decision to declare a day of thanksgiving.
They choose to look beyond the land and see the Creator of the land. They decided to look up and give thanks to Him in the blessings that they DID receive from it. And their Creator, by nature, is good.
America and adoptees carry stories of fracture, reconciliation, and healing, just as they carry stories of responsibility, work, and gratitude.
Who are we and what are we becoming? Those are the questions that everyone asks, adopted or not.
It’s directly connected to identity, progress, and place. This may be why the Scriptures use adoption as the picture of salvation, because adoption is the story of being wanted, welcomed, and given a new identity.
An identity in Christ, A place in the Kingdom of God. And work to do in building and growing His kingdom.
And gratitude arises from a secure identity. Not luck, charity, or indebtedness.
At the end of the day, adoption isn’t about luck, charity, or being indebted. It’s about belonging to a story bigger than the one you started with, and choosing to make that story your home. That’s true for adoptees, and it’s true for a nation like ours. Gratitude doesn’t come from getting everything you ever wanted. It comes from knowing who you are, where you stand, and the One who holds your place secure. And from that place of settled identity, we can give thanks with clear eyes and full hearts.
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Jordan Blackwood
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