This morning my 4 year old son asked my mom if I came out of her tummy. This is a very interesting question since I am adopted. As proud and open as I am about my being adopted, it never occurred to me that my children would one day ask about it. I started thinking about how to explain it to him so that he would understand. He loves to watch cartoons about Bible characters like Moses, Jonah and so on. So, I think that I will tell him when he asks again that I was like Moses. I am hoping the conversation goes a little like this:

“So, Mommy didn’t come out of La La’s (my mom’s grandma name) tummy. Do you remember the story of Moses? Well, Moses had two mommies. They both loved him so much. Moses’ first mommy loved him so much that she hid him for as long as she could from the bad Pharoh that didn’t want the Hebrew baby boys to live. When he got too big to hide she decided to put him in a basket and place him in the river, praying that someone would find him and love him as much as she loved him. Then Moses’ second mommy found him and immediately fell in love with him.

That is kind of how La La became my mommy. I had a first mommy that loved me very much, so much that she decided to pray to God that there would be another mommy that would love me as much as she loved me. She couldn’t take care of me so she decided to let me have a second mommy. That is when God brought La La into my life, before I was even born. La La and Pa Pa have loved me since before they met me. My first mommy still loves me, but she knew that God wanted me to be with La La and Pa Pa.  So, just like Moses’ first mommy trusted God by putting him in a basket in the river, my first mommy trusted God that He would take care of me.”

I hope that the conversation goes at least a little like this.  My son is known to throw random questions in there. I am sure that we will have more conversations and will get pretty detailed as he gets older. It is also our desire to adopt children in the future as well, so he will become well acquainted with the process and what it entails.

The other thing that this tiny conversation brought to mind this morning for me was how wonderful adoption is. You see, my birth mother was considering abortion. She ended up choosing life and choosing adoption. There are so many people out there that ask, “How do you feel about your mother giving you up?” I try not to take offense to that question, since clearly they are just curious. However, they don’t realize what they are saying. My (birth) mother didn’t “give me up;” that is way too negative. She chose to give me a wonderful, positive life. One that she couldn’t give to me. She made a very unselfish decision to go through pregnancy, the resulting delivery and the post-partum issues all so that I could have the amazing life that I was given. So, the next time that you meet someone who says that they are adopted, remember to word your questions better. “How do you feel about your adoption?” would be fine; not everyone has had the same experience as I have.

I want to change the way birth mothers are viewed. It is the hardest thing to be without your baby. My second son was in the NICU for five days and that was torture. At least I was able to be with him and hold him and I knew he was going home with me. I can’t comprehend what she went through leaving the hospital and not having a baby with her. I can’t comprehend how she answered questions about where her baby was. I don’t know anything about her or who she was/is. I really don’t have a desire to know her either (that is usually the second question that people ask).

If we want abortion to stop, then we have to give women who aren’t ready to have a baby the encouragement to place their children/babies up for adoption. We have to come up alongside them and support them the whole way. We have to be loving and non-judgemental. We have to be there when they are crying and scared. As family members we have to be supportive. Too many grandparents and aunts/uncles are raising the children that these women could have placed for adoption as infants. I understand the idea that extended families should/could raise these unplanned babies, but there are so many couples out there that want babies! It is so much harder to adopt out an older child. If that mother had been encouraged and supported in the decision to place her unborn child for adoption, our foster care and older infants/toddlers would have already had stable homes.

Moses’ basket reminds me of the trust that we are to have in our Father, our Heavenly Father. Will you help a young mother with an unplanned pregnancy put her trust in Him? Will you help her with her basket? Will you pray with her that God will provide a loving family for her baby? Will you be there for her when her body is wondering where the baby is and her mind knows it will never be with her? Will you love and support her decision to give her child the best possible world she can give him?

My birth mother had at least some of that support (that I know of). My life would be so incredibly different if she had chosen to keep me and of course I wouldn’t even be here if she had gone through with an abortion. Please be the catalyst in a woman’s life and help her through the most difficult decision she will ever make. You never know who might be in that basket.

However, there are two people that I would like to know. They are the couple that housed her for the few months (and probably helped her afterward) of her pregnancy before she gave me to my family. This started me thinking. Every time I watch the movie “The Blind Side” I am struck by her (Leigh Anne Touhy) amazing obedience to the Holy Spirit. Most people would have tried to find him somewhere for him to stay, much less invited him into her wealthy life. That brought me back to the couple that took my birth mother in. I don’t know what the specific circumstances were, but they obviously listened to the Holy Spirit and did His will.

Why is this post titled, “Shame on us?”. Because we as a collective whole, probably wouldn’t do what Mrs. Touhy or the couple that took my mother in did. There are so many pregnant girls out there that are in horrible situations. They turn to abortion because they think they have no other choice. Their lives are so filled with uncertainty that they choose not to bring a baby into their world. They don’t even realize that there are thousands, or millions of people out there that would like to adopt that baby. If more people would open their hearts and homes, how many babies would be saved? The life of Michael Ohr was worth what Leigh Anne Touhy did, he turned out to be an amazing athlete that went back and helped his fellow neighbors where he grew up. What about all of those babies, what could they turn out to be? It is immeasurable.

By the time a woman is 40, there is a 25% chance that she has had at least 1 abortion. It is estimated that 53 million babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. How many of those babies could have been saved if we as Christians had opened our home and supported a girl/woman who was experiencing an unplanned pregnancy? I hope that I get to pay it forward one day and host a woman in my home and help her make a decision that is life altering. Then I feel like I will have honored that couple and in a way, the sacrifice that my birth mother made.

I had an argument with a guy that I worked with about 2 years ago, the argument was about abortion of course and the health-care debate. I proposed to him this: If we are going to have socialized medicine, then why not stop abortions but allow a woman to be induced at 25 weeks and then the baby would be in NICU until they are healthy enough to be adopted. Sounds great to me, health-care is taken care of by the state and the baby is saved (I am actually using sarcasm for the first part of this statement since I don’t agree with socialized health-care).

Many people said that abortion on demand would end unwanted pregnancies and would only be used as a last resort. According to http://www.texasrighttolife.com/about/145/Abortion-Myths unwanted pregnancies have surged, not diminished. I personally don’t understand how in 2011 when contraception is so available that there are still unwanted pregnancies. However, I know the answer to that question. The prolific availability of contraception and the availability of abortion on demand has given the green light to people who aren’t in a committed (married) relationship to engage in pre-marital sex, often producing a pregnancy that was not planned. And, the attitude is, “well, I can get an abortion”.

So,  back to the baby in the NICU. Ezekiel was born 4 weeks early and had some challenges that bought him 5 days in the NICU. Those were some of the most excruciating days of my life. I can’t imagine what it is like for those mothers of the super preemie babies. No one wants to leave the Hospital without their baby. My opinion, is that every baby matters and every babies life deserves a chance. If they were given a voice, I’m almost certain they would say, “let me live, I promise I will love you, I will make your life so full, or I will make another persons life full. Please give me a chance, I’m just the size of a blueberry, fig, lime, grapefruit, but my life has so much potential. No matter what size I am.”

So, I found out on the 4th of July that I am pregnant again. Yeah, fireworks for sure. I have two boys already, a 3.5 yr old and a 10 mos. old. That is pretty much the reason that I was a little bit, well, I was freaking out. I have always said that I wanted to space my kids out and on and on. Obviously that wasn’t God’s plan! So, hence the name of my first post. We don’t learn anything from life being easy.

Back in the day, as in, when my Grandparents or Great-Grandparents were raising kids they had such a harder life than we have now. Seriously, have you ever seen the evolution of the washing machine! My hands and finger nails are very glad that I don’t have to hand wash anything that I don’t want to.  I have seen a great documentary that interviewed people that were 100 years old at the turn of the century. Their lives were amazing! But what was even more amazing was their take on the hardships that they endured. They didn’t bemoan the hard times, they just treated it like that was that. I’m thinking, here I am frustrated that my wi-fi isn’t working faster… man do I have a lot to learn.

So, as I worked through my shock of finding out that I am pregnant for the 3rd time, I found myself realizing why abortion is so prevalent. It amazes me that I am married and my husband has no say in the pregnancy at all. He is completely at my mercy. If I don’t want to have this baby there isn’t anything he could do! That seems so insane to me. But, it is the crazy truth.  As I am talking to God about how upset I am that the timing is, He says to me, “Why do you get to have it easy? This is not what I want for you, I want you to work on a lot of things and this is how I am going to help you.”

Therefor, I find myself seeing that Abortion has been an alternative to having a harder life, or having a challenge that a person can overcome. Let’s face it, raising children is hard and it is challenging. But, there is a generation of people who don’t have to deal with the consequence of their actions. How are you supposed to grow as a person if your problems are always solved in the least challenging way? (I know that having an abortion is very emotionally challenging to a lot of women and men, so I am generalizing a bit and focusing on the lack of the day to day challenge of raising a child) This takes me back to the 100 yr old people. The view they had was so refreshing, not complaining, not woe is me, but as though the challenge was there and they overcame it.

I saw this new baby for the first time yesterday on my doctors sonogram machine. It was a white smudge that was moving with a little bitty smudge that was moving really fast… his/her heart beat. This is when I truly had to repent to God for my amazing lack of humility and belief that I deserved something other than what He has chosen for me. That baby will be welcomed into my arms and even though my middle child will still be a baby himself (he should be around 18 mos) God will give me the strength to rise to the occasion and be the best mommy I can be to my children. So, no Life isn’t Easy, but having a God that gives me strength and that loves me and cares about my feelings, sure does make it better.