When my wife and I adopted our daughter from Ethiopia in 2010, we did so full of hope. In the years since, we’ve faced ugliness that has robbed us of our optimism—and left us fearful for the future of our country. We love our daughter more than we love our own lives. But the idealism of 2010 is gone. Then, we thought our family reflected the future. Now we know that was naïve. Now we know that while the promise of Galatians—the promise that we are “all one”—is true in the Kingdom of Heaven, in America it does not yet apply.

There are three fundamental, complicating truths about adoption. First, every single adoption begins with profound loss. Through death, abandonment, or even loving surrender, a child suffers the loss of his or her mother and father. Second, the demographics of those in need of loving homes do not precisely match the demographics of those seeking a new child. Adoptive parents are disproportionately white. Adopted children are not. Thus, multiracial families are a natural and inevitable consequence of the adoption process. Third, American culture has long been obsessed with questions of race and identity.

Combine these three truths and you will not only begin to understand the challenge of adoption, you’ll also gain insight into a darkness in American culture, a darkness that scorns even the bond between parent and child. I know this firsthand. Amid the stories of adoption in America is the story of my family—the story of my youngest daughter.

I’m an Evangelical Christian, and ever since I was a young man, two Bible verses have tugged at my soul. The first comes from the Book of James, and defines “pure” religious practice in part as looking after “widows and orphans in their distress.” The second, from the Book of Galatians, declares an eternal truth: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” As a result, my wife and I not only felt called to adopt, but we believed that race was no barrier to unity for a family of genuine faith.

And so, in the summer of 2010, we journeyed to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to pick up our youngest child, Naomi Konjit French. As with every adoption story, hers begins with profound loss. Her unwed mother surrendered Naomi to her grandmother and grandfather and then disappeared from her life. Her grandparents were subsistence farmers, barely able to eke out a living. Then, her grandfather died, and Naomi and her grandmother began to starve. By the time Naomi was two years old, she weighed barely more than 14 pounds. That was her condition when she was abandoned again—this time lovingly turned over to an adoption agency. Her grandmother simply couldn’t keep her alive.

Think about the trauma. As a toddler, she’d already experienced death, starvation, and abandonment. And soon enough, she’d experience displacement. This American family arrived, scooped her up, and flew her halfway across the Earth. Within a day she was in a new land, living with people she did not know.

From the instant we saw her, we loved her with our whole hearts, but any adoptive family can tell you (indeed, any family at all can tell you) that love does not heal all hurts. There is pain that can last a lifetime.

I will never, ever forget the moment when we told our daughter her story—when we held each other and wept shamelessly and publicly in a pizza parlor in Middle Tennessee. (Parenting tip: Never have the tough conversations in restaurants.) It was a hard night, but our bond has grown, and we can speak more freely about the difficult past. In fact, one surprising consequence of that conversation is that Naomi has developed even more curiosity about (and pride in) the country of her birth. It was as if lifting the veil of secrecy freed her to embrace her heritage.

Day by day, we love each other and we fight through that pain, the consequence of trauma and loss. How does a little girl attach to a new mom after losing a mother and a grandmother in rapid succession? How does a father bond with a little girl when the only man she was ever close to died before she was old enough to speak? And early childhood malnutrition carries with it developmental challenges that can last long after she regained her health and strength.

All of this is hard, but many families face far greater challenges. And, as we remind ourselves daily, we’re blessed beyond measure. Naomi is growing up in an intact home with siblings who love her deeply. She’s part of a church and a school community that are dedicated to helping her flourish. Her parents have good jobs, and the days of material deprivation are long past.

But hovering just outside the frame—and sometimes intruding directly into our lives—is a disturbing reality. There are people who hate that our family exists. Actual racists loathe the idea of white parents raising a black child, and ideological arguments about identity raise questions about whether a white family’s love can actually harm a child of a different race. And, sometimes, people even question whether adoptive parents truly love their children, claiming that parents adopt to “virtue-signal” or simply to ostentatiously demonstrate their open-mindedness.

Read More

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]