Mommy, who adopted you?

This morning, five year old Luke lay covered up in my bed as I checked my email real fast before we went downstairs for breakfast. As I was typing, he suddenly said, "Mommy, who adopted you?"

Unlike Angel-Leah, Luke came to us at birth. He's never really known another mommy but me. While Angel-Leah has a small grasp on what adoption is, Luke has always just blissfully accepted life as it is. But I guess he's beginning to realize there might be something a bit different about his beginning in our family.

I left the computer and crawled under the covers with him, cuddled him in my arms and started to tell him about adoption, and his first mommy, how her life was and why he ended up with us, trying to make her sound as positive as I could, and making adoption sound as positive as I could. But half way through my story, he lost interest. He began to thrash and giggle, letting me know he wanted to move on to something else. I tried to continue on to the end, talking about how growing up in less than perfect circumstances, then embracing sin, can cause us to grow up with problems...When Luke said, "I know what you did! You grew up to be a foster mommy!!"

Hmmm, that's an okay thing to grow up to be! I'm a birth mommy, and an adoptive mommy, and a foster mommy. Sometimes, it's a gut wrenching, very sad thing to be. But most of the time, it's beyond beautiful. If there is anything I'd like to pass on to young girls today, it's that embracing the role of motherhood that God gave us is the most satisfying thing we could ever do. No job will ever give a woman the same sense of fulfillment. Why limit what God calls blessings, no matter how they come: by birth, by adoption, or by fostering?

Isaiah 40:28-40 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak...Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.