room for more

after an absence of nearly 4 years, i got to have coffee with the woman whose sons i'd babysat for years growing up. the boys are 14 and 15 now, already a few years older than i was when i'd first gone to their house to watch them for an afternoon.

i swear she hasn't changed at all. she looks just the same as she did the first day i met her - dirty blonde hair just grazing her shoulders and a big smile, open and eager to laugh. she is really proud of her boys, talking about them as though they are heros in their own right. one is adopted; the other is biologically theirs. both are obviously enormously loved.

i remember the first time i found out the oldest was adopted. i had made a comment to lorilee that he seemed to look more like her husband every day. and then she told me that she and her husband were almost ready to tell him that he was adopted, so i should be prepared for any questions or any sudden changes in behavior. but there were none. robby didn't pay much mind to it.

evidently, he still doesn't. he's started to ref basketball games for middle school kids. he's too little to play the sport very well himself, but has found a way to channel his love for it into something active. lorilee, because she keeps in touch with his biological mom, recognized that this was the exact thing robby's birth mom had done with her love of basketball. so she'd asked robby if he wanted to know something about her. he said no.

i wonder what it's like to know you have a child and not have him in your arms. lorilee said that she and her husband see themselves often in their own biological son - how he makes decisions, what he likes to study, who he makes friends with. i think it's an incredible thing to know the biological parent(s) of your adopted child and to be able to watch for shared characteristics.

lorilee is an incredible mom. and she and her husband have raised two wonderful boys. i still think about robby's birth mom, though, and the choices she made. she never married or had children of her own. and yet, her flesh and blood, a little piece of her, is in the world.

what a big decision to make to entrust your child to someone else. i have all the respect in the world for anyone who's had to make that choice. i pray that god would be near to them. and i pray for peace and comfort in their hearts.

someday, if i ever get the chance, i'd really really like to adopt. i think our hearts were made to grow and expand to take in lots of people - adopted children or anyone - to love and care for. i hope i practice that now. i'd like to always be ready to take in more.