Brokenness Aside
Parenting children from broken pasts can have moments of great joy, as well as moments of great heartache. Sunday afternoon lunch was one of those latter experiences. While Tony hurried with two of our crew in tow for a soccer game immediately following church, I took our other three home with a 12-pack taco box in hand from Taco Bell. As the four of us sat around the kitchen table talking, my youngest daughter starting crying seemingly out of the blue. She began to share that it bothers her when her classmates repeatedly ask her if she is adopted. As she recounted what those times tend to look like around the school cafeteria table, she then blurted out, "I mean, what kind of mom just gives her child away?!." My oldest son, who remembers quite a bit from his first nine years of life in Ukraine, responded quickly, patiently and kindly, "She didn't give us away. She just couldn't take care of us. We were taken away because of that." ...