This morning as we were finishing up a leisurely breakfast, my children and I were talking about earning money for toys. A close friend of ours, who happens to be quite wealthy, doesn’t make her kids earn money. When “Lisa” wants to buy a birthday gift for her sister Isabel, the parents simply give Lisa whatever she needs. Case in point, Lisa was getting Isabel a PSP for her birthday courtesy of Mom’s credit card.

My kids immediately expressed how cool this was and how wouldn’t it be great to be adopted by Lisa’s family where they could get really cool gifts and money flowed easily without effort.

When my children expressed they would love to be adopted by Lisa’s family, I immediately commented on that there was no adoption plan for them to become another part of that family. That I could never let them go. I would be sad. I loved them too much to let them join another family.

As soon as I said those words… I wished I could just reach out there and pull them back.

In our home, adoption is always talked about with joy. Honestly, adoption rates up there as one of the best decisions of our lives and we believe it was the perfect path for us to build our family. It was “meant to be” and we use words like “joy, complete, enriching and happiness” to describe it. When we talk about our children building their families as adults, we talk about both adoption and biological means to build family. That is the perspective my children hear about.

We talk about their adoption stories but I will admit we focus on how happy we were. How this was meant to be. How God brought them into our lives. How we flew half way around the world to get them and how we all lived happily ever after.

In this moment… in the moment where I was explaining how much I loved them and how I could never give them up to someone else… I saw a moment flash across my daughter’s face. A moment where she realized, someone else gave her up. A mommy. And adoption became a little less about joy and for that moment more about loss.

I don’t think my daughter stopped and really thought about this realization she had. She didn’t talk about it, and she immediately moved on to something else. But I saw it. I’m sad that I experienced this loss of purity and innocence.

And I know the questions will come.

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