Why international?

Why should we adopt internationally?

I’ve been asked this question and asked myself this question several times. The answer is: because it makes a very big statement.

There are a couple different lines you can take when thinking about international adoption.
1. There are children here in America that need a family why not them? Especially when overseas adoption is so much more expensive and there is more corruption in other countries…
2. Haven’t these children already lost enough in losing their family? Now you are going to take away their home country and culture? How can you add that tragedy to their life?

I acknowledge both of these as valid points and I have thought a lot about them, but I would like to write about them another time. Here is what I think outweighs them both.

People who adopt internationally cross great distances, spend inhuman amounts of time in airplanes and airports, navigate foreign lands full of people speaking foreign languages with foreign cultures, eating strange food, negotiating government bureaucracies of two countries, spend huge sums of money, risk life, limb, and personal comfort, and separate their own families, for what?

We’re doing it for a little boy named Jordan.

What does that tell you? Maybe that Americans have too much free time and money. Maybe that we are so full of ourselves that we think we can “rescue” him.

What I hope it tells you and what I want to tell every person we meet on this trip and at home is that Jordan is worth it. Every penny, every second I spend on him is worth it. He deserves it.

People drive Hummers and Ferraris to make a statement about their wealth. People get weird piercings and tattoos to make a statement about their non-conformism. People choose clothes, makeup, hair style, jewelery, their house, their spouse, their church and their food at least partially by what statement their decision makes to the rest of the world. My choice was to do something extravagant for an orphan boy half way around the world. God willing, I’m going to make him my son.

The statement I want to make is that every single child deserves a loving family and they deserve extravagant sacrifices if that’s what it takes to make sure they all get one.

I feel something like I did when I was a new father. Instead of watching the miracle of my first daughter growing in her mother’s womb and being born I am watching the miracle of God bringing Jordan to us. I want to stand on top of the world and hold him up and say, “This is my son! Though he was left alone, I chose him and I love him! He is precious and beautiful and deserves my love!”