My youngest daughter was brought home from China when she was almost two years old after a whirlwind three-week trip to pick her up. Looking back on that time, I underestimated the intensity of what she was going through to adjust to her new life. From the beginning, she found comfort in the arms of her dad and nights were spent with her snuggled closely between the two of us. We quickly became familiarized with her need to be held almost all day and night, reassuring her that we were not going to leave her. I remember distinctly that I could not step into another room for more than a few minutes before I would hear the pitter patter of her feet and she would vigilantly come in to double check that she had not been abandoned. What I didn’t know at the time, is that she was only beginning to experience and process through the magnitude of loss in her life.
Like so many other adoptees, my daughter lives day to day with an obvious imprint on her soul from her past. In seeking to help my adopted children, I have realized that the adoption world does their best to help adoptive families prepare for potential struggles or to mitigate current ones, but they often bypass the most important thing that can truly minister to the heart and lives of an adoptee. Throughout the Bible we read that God sees the trouble of the afflicted and is a helper and defender of the fatherless (Psalm 10:14; 68:5). We don’t have to turn far from God’s promises to us to find answers that bring hope and healing for grieving adoptees.
Grief and Loss
Every adoptee’s story starts out differently regarding who they were born to, where they were born, how old they were when adopted, and what circumstances lead up to their adoption. Yet, there remains a similarity for them all in that there is always some element of loss. The loss of parents they might never know, the loss of siblings that they won’t be raised with, the loss of the country that they were born in and accustomed to. This can cause overwhelming, or maybe lingering grief, that they feel and don’t know how to resolve. Throughout the years I have encouraged my children that it is okay to feel sad about what has happened in their life and what they have lost, but to learn how to respond to those feelings in a God honoring way.
We can help the adoptee to know how to respond to these feelings of grief and loss by pointing them to God’s Word. Thankfully, the Bible acknowledges the pain associated with grief, but also gives us answers to our grief. In the book of Psalms, we are told that God is near to the brokenhearted and saves those crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). We do not have a far off and aloof God who is unaware of our sufferings, but instead one who is near to us in our sadness and desires to bind up our wounds, comfort us, and help carry our burdens (Psalm 147:3; Matthew 11:28-30). We are promised that He sees our affliction and knows the trouble of our souls (Psalm 31:7).
Teach Adoptees to Lament
Our task as counselors or parents is to help the adoptee learn how to grieve in a godly way and learn to express or communicate the sorrow and loss they feel through biblical lament. They may be in a habit of stuffing their pain, numbing it, or covering over it and lack the skill to start verbalizing it. We can help teach them to open their hearts to feel and express their pain and tell it to God in a way that moves them toward trust in Him.
You can introduce your adoptee to the vulnerable and honest expressions of grief and loss in Lamentations and Psalms and help them to use the words of these authors to mirror their own pain. Show the adoptee how the authors recall their own afflictions and bitter wanderings, how their souls remember their former hardship and dark places (Lamentations 3). Often the writers express their doubts that God notices, remembers, or is present (Psalm 10:1). They question the goodness of God in the circumstances of their lives (Psalm 73). Surprisingly, they speak about their grief openly and honestly asking God to be gracious to them in their bodily distress and burdensome pain (Psalms 31:9-10; Psalm 13).
As the adoptee starts to identify with and take comfort in hearing their grief put into words, they will then need to be pointed to the transition that takes place in Biblical lament when the authors turn from their expression of sorrow and makes a declaration of trust in the Lord. Halfway through Lamentations 3, the author declares that he chooses to remember and believe in the Lords’ unceasing and gracious love which is displayed to him through a compassion that never fails (v. 22). He resolves to cling to God’s faithfulness, with the assurance that God’s provisions will be supplied to him afresh every morning (v. 23). He decisively puts his hope in God because He knows that God is good to him and is indeed the only lasting source of happiness and satisfaction (v. 24,25). Finally, he confidently knows that although the Lord has allowed grief in his life, He will also show him kindness and love in accordance with His character (v. 32).
Trust God’s Plan
At times, adoptees can doubt in the goodness and wisdom of God’s plan for their lives. The enemy can sneak in and prolong their grief by causing them to fixate on what could have been. During these times, the passages of lament in the Bible can speak to these doubts. The author of Lamentations 3 aptly describes his anguish coupled with doubt, and yet he comes to the proper place of acknowledging and submitting to God’s sovereign plan over his life. He concludes that nothing in his life can come to pass unless the Lord has commanded it (v. 37). He rests in God’s sovereignty because of what he knows to be true about God’s character.
As the adoptee begins to move through the process of lament and into trust, we can lovingly reassure them that what God chose for their lives is part of His wise and good plan. Isaiah 40 is a powerful chapter in the Bible that can speak to the adoptee of the greatness and sovereignty of our God. Isaiah brings our attention to creation so that we may find comfort in God’s plan. He exhorts us to lift our eyes up and see and acknowledge the One who has created and named all the stars. It is because of the greatness of His strength and power that none of them are missing (v. 26). He has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand and weighs the mountains in a balance (v. 12). This same God of Creation is the one who has written the story of their lives to include adoption and can be trusted to do what is best!
