How to Support Adoptive Families

I just returned from the Together for Adoption Conference in Phoenix this weekend. This year about 500 people and leaders in the adoption and orphan care came together to share ideas and learn more about how to best care for adopted families, children and orphans.

Such a great time to be with so many people who love what I love. It is also a time where I see people who are so much more crazy than I can ever be. At this conference, I'm considered a very tame, and almost boring, adoptive parent with my two relatively trouble-free European kids! You see, this conference attracts those radical people who adopt 12 kids, or those who bring home 5 kids under 3 years old, or who adopt children with lifelong disabilities and diseases.

I've heard a lot of adoption stories but in groups like this my mouth can still drop at the amazing grace these families have to adopt children with trauma filled backgrounds, or when I hear of the extent to which people go to bring their children home (like an unexpected 12 month stay in Siberia???)

Now I'm going to boldly speak on behalf of adoptive parents: What I have learned as I encounter so many unique and often mind-boggling adoption stories is that what adoptive families need most (and I count myself as one of these) is grace. We need grace. Whether it be to the far reaches of the earth we go for our kids, or the unique ways that we parent our kids, or how many kids we bring home, we need grace from others!

We need judge-free and grace-filled support group, whether you understand it all or not (sometimes, we don't even understand the unique challenges our children face or at times, the unique methods to help our children through these challenges)

It is an unusual and a road less traveled that adoptive parents take. So a loving response is welcomed as adoptive parents seek out God's will for their lives and their child's. How can you (and everyone) support an adoptive family? Grace! Grace! Grace!