“Do you love him as much as you would if he were your own?”

People do ask this question of adoptive parents.

And when they ask, we reflexively answer “yes!” How could we otherwise? We must defend our child, our decision, and our family. It is threatening to think that our love for our adopted child might be incomplete.

But underneath, maybe we wonder. Do I really love him as much?

“Will I love her the same as my birth child?”

For families considering adoption, it’s a frightfully serious question. You know that a huge supply of love is required to get through the enormous job of parenting. What if you adopt a child and then discover that the wellspring of love you need isn’t there?

Does the mysterious and powerful biological connection of parent and child bring with it this wellspring of love? Does a lifetime supply of parental affection come with childbirth? We don’t go around asking pregnant mothers “Do you think you’ll love her?” We assume the love will be there. But with adoption, we doubt and we ask.

“Do you love them as much?”

It strikes me that this is really an odd question.

How do we measure love? In inches or pounds? Can we line up our children side-by-side and measure the amount of love we have for each? Could I draw a graph to analyze whether I love my two adopted sons as much as my two birth daughters?

Of course not! Love cannot be measured like square feet or flour. When we ask this question, we are trying to measure love with feelings. We are asking if we feel warm attachment and connectedness to a child, whether it feels like he belongs to us. Our worry is that we don’t know if an adopted child will feel like our son or daughter, if we’ll experience the bonding that parents are supposed to have with their children.

Guess what?

All parents, birth and adoptive, fluctuate in how attached they feel to their children. Sometimes we feel deep affection, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we feel closer to one child, sometimes to another.

I have four children. Two are adopted and two came to us by birth. On a day-to-day basis, I feel closer to some than others. But my sense of emotional attachment isn’t connected with how they entered our family. Instead, my feelings for my children are probably more dependent than I would like to admit on how much I’m receiving back from them.

Each of my four children has a different package of temperaments, personality quirks, strengths and weaknesses. Each has different needs and different challenges to overcome. Each of my children tends to resemble a certain weather pattern: calm, sunny or stormy. The truth is that it’s just more fun to be with some of my children than others. Some are easier to love.

“Do you love them the same?”

I love each of my children in different ways. I have learned that one responds to gentle teasing. One is helped by backrubs and wrestling when frustrated. One needs time alone to recover from family conflict.

Each of my children is different. They each draw out different feelings from me and demand different kinds of love from me.

But when I say “I love all my children the same,” I speak the truth.

Because “I love them” doesn’t mean “I feel connected to them today.”

“I love them” means that I am firmly committed to each of them, that I will seek their good to the very best of my ability and strength. For the rest of my life.

“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:2)

Jesus does not love us because our sweet dispositions make him feel good. He started loving us while our backs were defiantly turned to him. His love is made of action, sacrifice and determined commitment.

We imitate him.

Some children are easy to love. Others don’t naturally draw out heaps of warm affection. But if you don’t constantly experience warm, close feelings toward your child it doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. And it doesn’t mean that there is something defective about adoption.

In one of God’s good surprises, not feeling close to your child can be a special gift. Those children, birth or adopted, for whom we don’t feel overflowing natural affection give us opportunity to imitate the sacrificial love of Jesus. They push us towards determined commitment to someone who is not giving us warm-fuzzy feelings back. They train us in unconditional love.

We do love our children. We have determined to love them even when it’s hard. With adopted children, we have even signed papers binding ourselves to them.

If there really is a way to measure love, just maybe those children whom we fear we don’t love ‘as much’ will be shown by God’s measurement to be those we love the most. We choose to give ourselves to them, offering our best to them, sacrificing for them over and over, even when it doesn’t feel good, even when we don’t always feel like we’re getting a lot back. Jesus is our model. As we learn this life of love, we learn to follow him.

What greater love is there than this?

This Month, Archives

• October 2006, Treasured Possession
  
  

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