I don't remember when Tim and I first learned that we would have to travel twice to Ethiopia to complete our adoption. Everything seems so jumbled together now, but I remember thinking,
"This is terrible. It's going to cost us so much more money. Why are we being punished for other peoples misdeeds? This is not what we signed up for. Ethiopian adoption is supposed to be easy compared to the other countries."
I also remember when I first learned about what I now call The Big Slowdown. Ethiopia was looking to pare down its IA program in order to free up resources for children who would never be eligible for IA, and that could only mean a much longer wait for us. I cried myself to sleep that night.
Now I find myself cheering them on.
Ethiopia is chock full of kids needing the basic necessities of life, but so many of them are not really orphans. To be an orphan and eligible for IA, a child has to have at least one deceased parent and the other parent must be unable to care for them and willing to relinquish them (which is a separate process involving paperwork and at least one court appearance). Many kids are cared for by extended family after the death of both parents and never sent to orphanages. On the other hand, many kids go to orphanages or foster homes while both parents are still living because those parents are unable to make their way in life and care for their children at the same time. Imagine being in such dire straits that you and your spouse have to give your children away in order for any of you to survive. Now think of how easy it would be to convince parents in that situation to send their children to America for a chance at life without AIDS, starvation, and contaminated water being part of daily living. Many of you reading this may think that's perfectly reasonable. But that's not what adoption is supposed to be.
Adoption exists because we live in a sinful, fallen world. It exists out of brokenness. As followers of Christ we are called to glorify the God who heals brokenness caused by sin. We are not called to have a hand in breaking up families for the sake of fulfilling our desire to adopt.
Tonight I find myself praying that all the changes in Ethiopia's adoption process really do amount to something in the way of preventing fraud. (It is a government operation after all, and I have little faith in bureaucracy of any kind.) I hope The Big Slowdown means that no adoptive parents, including Tim and myself, will ever have to say to a child that the reason why their questions must go unanswered is because of a lie.
