(Please remember that this is just a piece of my definition of adoption. For my full definition of what adoption is, you can read this whole series of posts here.)

Adoption is a choice. It is a choice in a lot of different ways.

Adoption is a choice for parents who are unable to care for their children. It is a way for them to provide for their children. For some parents adoption is a choice instead of abortion. For some parents adoption is a choice instead of extreme poverty and suffering. There are many other reasons a parent could choose adoption for her child. It is certainly never an easy choice for birth families, but it is a choice.

Adoption is a choice for parents who want to expand their families. For some people, adoption is a choice instead of infertility treatments. For some people, adoption is the only choice to become a parent. For some people, adoption is a just another way to bring a child into a family.

Transracial adoption is a choice. It is choosing not only to love, parent and make your own a child that is not related biologically to you, but also to love, parent and make your own a child that does not look like you. It is choosing to take on issues like racism, prejudice and white privilege. It is to care about a culture other than your own. It is taking on the criticism of those who see color of skin as a way to segregate people. It is complicated.

Some people choose to adopt because they feel that it is not right for them to bring another child into the world, when there are so many children in the world already who do not have loving parents and safe homes. There are many reasons why parents may choose to adopt.

For Josh and I, adoption transformed from a choice to bring a daughter into our family (after three sons and not being able to have any more children), into choosing an entirely different life than we had once imagined. We chose to adopt older kids, special needs kids and sibling groups after realizing what a huge need there is for adoptive parents, and how much we truly enjoy being parents to a large family. We chose to adopt children of any race. We chose to adopt eight children and add them to our three biological sons.

We chose to give up the ability to be just another face in the crowd, and to instead draw the constant attention of others wherever we go because of our family make up, and be a sort of walking billboard for transracial adoption. We chose to buy used cars and live without name brand clothes, jewelry and other luxuries so we can buy mass quantities of groceries and pay for band instruments, karate lessons and braces.

We chose to pay less attention to the things that the world sees as important and decide for ourselves what is truly important.

Our life would surely be different if we had chose to only have two or three children. We would likely have much more spending money and more free time. I would certainly have much less laundry and a simpler chore chart to reconfigure every week. We would probably get invited to more people's homes for dinner. We would be more accepted and get less criticism from those who make different choices. But we would be missing out on so much more.

We chose to dedicate our lives to raising children, and to advocate for the very many children left behind.

Adoption is a choice. For us, it has been a wonderful, amazing and life-changing choice that has blessed us in countless ways.





*If you have not yet participated, make sure you visit this post and enter the fun giveaway for National Adoption Month thanks to Curls.