Finding the Right Words

I decided that starting Friday, the day after I was officially chosen to be S's parent, I would tell anyone who asked me directly that I was planning to adopt a 14-year-old girl, even if the person was not someone I knew well. Most people who know me at all know I'm in the process of adopting, but I have only told a few the details of my decision about S. Although it's not a "done deal" yet, it is time for the community to get used to the idea--and in a small community like ours, S is likely to have contact with many people who live here in one way or another. And, in any case, more people may know about my adoption than I think--I have no idea how many people from my community are reading this blog (though I suspect not many, as most of the people who respond to it via e-mail are friends living in other places).

This weekend, I ran into a community leader who knew I had been planning to adopt, and I told her my plans after she asked. Her first question was, "Is she white?" I was offended, but I also felt sad for her--she didn't realize this was an inappropriate question, or at least the wrong way and time to ask about S's race. I said, "Yes. I was open to adopting a child of any race, but I was aware that there would be additional challenges in this community if I adopted a child of color." The woman went on to tell me about friends she knew who were adopting out of foster care and were open to adopting siblings. Because of this, they are more likely, she told me, to get white children. The implication was that white children were what they preferred, but that they would settle for a child or children of color if that's all they could get. It was a strange conversation, and I listened to the story without knowing what to say.

Then, another woman I knew walked into the conversation, and the first woman asked her, "Have you heard Argie's good news?" I relayed the news, and the second woman was truly happy for me. She asked, "Have you met her yet?"

I said, "No, that's the next step. And, it could be that after meeting, we'll decide this isn't right, but so far, it feels very right. We have communicated only once, through her therapist."

There was a moment of silence then. The first woman, the community leader, asked me then, "You mentioned a therapist. Has she had a hard life?"

I was dumbfounded by this question. Has she had a hard life? What 14-year-old living in foster care has not had a hard life? And then I realized, even an educated community leader may not be able to fathom the kind of life S has had. Even someone whose job it is to help people in crisis may not have any idea what it means to adopt an older child.

Of course, on some level, I knew I was going to need to educate the community about foster care adoptions when I had a child. I've already started that process with my circle of friends and with others in the community with whom she will definitely interact. I've already been subject to all kinds of inconsiderate comments. But most of the people with whom I have spoken have some sense of what foster care means--that children who are taken from their families have been abused or neglected in ways most of us cannot really imagine or understand. It was strange to realize that this knowledge would not be common sense for everyone, especially people in positions of leadership in the community.

This morning I read the gospel, in which Jesus tells his disciples that they will be persecuted in his name. He says, "They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict."

Before I go on about this passage, I want to make one thing clear: I don't mean, of course, to compare the process of educating the community about foster care to the torture the disciples faced in a time and place when following Jesus was a crime. We don't live in that world, at least not in the U.S. In some ways, our world is more complex, because many Christians, if not most Christians, are following Jesus in hateful, exclusive, or easy ways--they are more likely to be the ones doing harm in the world rather than the ones being harmed, and they are certainly not risking their lives for their beliefs. (I include myself in this group, of course; although I strive not to be hateful or exclusive or to live an easy faith, I know I do all of these some of the time, as most of us do).

But I was struck by Jesus' statement that God would give God's followers the words to say, words that won't be resistable or contradictable. When I relayed the story about my encounter with the community leader to my sister, she said, "It's too bad you didn't think to say, when she asked about S's race, 'does it matter?'" Of course this would have been a good answer. It would have forced the woman to think about, and communicate, what she meant. It might have opened a conversation about the racism in our community and how we are all complicit and called to do something about it. Instead, I gave her an easy out.

I hope that as time goes on, I'll be able to hear and know the right words, the words God wants me to say in situations like this. In today's epistle, St. Paul provides a somewhat harsh indictment of certain members of the Thessalonian Christian community who are not working, not contributing to the community's well-being. It's important, of course, to have humility--none of us are working hard enough--but this reading, too, seems relevant to my encounter this weekend. Like all people of faith, I am called to high expectations. I need to expect myself and others to the hard work of contributing to the community. In terms of my encounter this weekend, it would have been OK to say, "Isn't it sad that you even have to ask about my child's race? That shows how much work we all have to do to make this a more affirming and less racist community, one in which every child can celebrate and learn about who they are."

Someday I hope to have the kind of strength I need to make such statements honestly and openly, to think of what to say and how to say it in the moment. But even if the right words don't come in the moment, we can all be powerful witnesses to God's vision of the "new Jerusalem" we all have a responsibility to help create, as described in today's Old Testament reading: "They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them...The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain."

Unfortunately, even if everyone put down their arms, so to speak, and stopped doing things that are destructive or hurtful, this would not be enough. There is so much healing that needs to happen to make up for the harm we've done in past generations, the harm we're doing today. We are called to attend to both the past and the future at once, in each moment of our lives.

Perhaps this is the mystery of parenting in general, but specifically of parenting a hurting child. We have to help them learn to do no harm, to stop the cycle of hurt that is so much a part of all of our lives, of our society, of our world. We have to help them learn to be participants in their own healing and in the healing of the world. We have to help them to view the possibility of a future world significantly different than today's.