Adoption

Meet my brother James and his beautiful wife, Erin:



And meet their four darling children:



They are very soon adding to this family; they're adopting two children out of the Congo.  I know, four children already and they're adopting TWO more?  Are they crazy?  Maybe.  But let me assure you, if anyone can handle it, it's this family right here.  They are incredible and have so much love to give.  So I'm all for them sharing that love with a couple children who so desperately need it.

So here's the thing - James and Erin have to take a total of ten international flights between them and the little Congo-kids before they're all together as a family, and that's not touching the cost of the actual adoption.  So I'm throwing them a little virtual baby shower - a shower where you think of a gift you would like to buy for each of these girls, and then instead of buying the gift, you donate the money to this YouCaring website we set up for the purpose.



I would sure be exceedingly grateful (as would my brother and family!) if I had some blog followers who would be willing to donate a few bucks.  It doesn't need to be much - a lot of little donations can go a long way, as I well learned earlier this year.  So if you have a special place in your heart for adoption, for The Congo, for me, please donate to this cause!



If you want to learn more about their family, feel free to visit their blog at http://neverlandfound.blogspot.com/  Also, I asked them some questions pertaining specifically to this adoption that I'll post below, so peruse that at your leisure.  And feel free to ask any questions of your own you might have!



Thanks all!!  (Oh, and here's their website you can donate to one more time!  Go there!!  http://www.youcaring.com/adoption-fundraiser/Fly-the-Olsen-Girlies-Home-/29619)

You have four biological children of your own already, why are you choosing to adopt not just one, but two more children?

Erin was told when she was 15 that she would not be able to have children of her own body. So, we went into marriage excited about adoption down the road once we were done with our PhD’s, traveled the world a couple turns, and become published fantasy authors—a penning team with a brilliant pseudonym like Olsendore or Galadriolsen or St’Ols-en (we had chatted about combining our last names to form that final one. So much fun for bubble sheets that would have been).

Then, surprise, a few months into our marriage, Gaebriel was on his way. Who doesn't have a story of a doctor being wrong, ours just happens to be a very happy story of 4 miraculous children.

A lot of people who adopt say that they didn’t choose adoption, but adoption chose them. They say that they were “called” to adopt. We never really felt like that, we feel like adopting is simply something that we have known was coming. It was a commitment we made early on in our marriage, and we just wanted to, but didn’t know how it would ever be financially possible. We took this job in Qatar because we were promised a December travel fund (to go back to the US for Christmas) and we knew that those funds would cover part of the adoption if we would just stay here and holiday in the sand. We have been blessed with 4 healthy children and when you are given a gift like that you can’t just turn your back on the millions of other kids who have no option for health with the environment that they are placed in. It was time to make this adoption adventure happen.

And we feel our family is not complete. Looking around at dinnertime and it feels like people are missing. I guess it’s not really choosing adoption, it’s choosing to welcome in members of your family who are out there walking around on other points on the earth. They already feel like members, we’re just not going to leave them out in the cold (or the hot as it is here in Qatar and there in Kinshasa).

And as for adopting 2 instead of 1. Well, they’re sisters, maybe even twins. So you don’t consider separating them. But it also occurs to us that probably during teenage-dom, if not sooner, they will question their identity and yearn for something of their homeland. We hope that it will help them that they have one another and that they aren’t alone as the only adopted child in our family.

What are you naming your children and how did you come up with the names?

Tzyphorah is just a strange name (I wish I could hear all of you trying to say it just now). James has wanted to name a daughter this for years as she is such a powerful figure in the Bible. And it turns out that it is a common name in the DRC. Tzyphorah teaches Moses in the ways of the people of God while he is figuring out his difficult identity of part royalty and oppressor and part oppressed by birth. She leaves the comforts of her home to go and battle the Pharaoh and to rescue slaves of Egypt. It also means bird, which is such a symbol of freedom that it seems to fit a little girl starting a new life.

Shiloh is Erin’s choice. It was a place that she had a very powerful experience at when living in Jerusalem. Shiloh was the place that the wandering temple in the wilderness (the tabernacle of Moses and post-Pharaoh crowd) first came to rest in the Holy Land. Most people would probably guess that it was Jerusalem, but the Ark of the Covenant and everything else was there in the capital of Shiloh for a very long time while the temple in Jerusalem was built. So it is a place of rest, a place of peace, a place of spiritual gathering. Also, Shiloh is the only place Erin ever had stones chucked at her head.

What are you most excited to share with these children when you bring them into your home?

STARS! We hear in Kinshasa that people always burn their garbage and so the pollution is intense. We’re excited to take them out into the middle of our desert and show them the stars. And while we’re out there we might as well introduce them to roasted marshmallows.

Swings. We have 2 in our backyard, doubt that they have ever gone wheeeeeeeeee!

What are you most excited to learn from these children?

You know how children have this innocent way of seeing the world that makes them ask questions like, “Mommy, watch close, can you see me hovering?  It is from the rocket boosters in my feet?” And Gaebriel could really feel himself flying “just a tiny bit.” He had been reading a book about magic and flight. They see the world through a lens and their questions let you into the world in their head, and it is so much better than the world in my own head. Well, Tzyphorah and Shiloh will not only have that childhood element, but they will also come from a spot where there is no electricity, where their days have been filled with piles of other children who experience this life in a way we never have, where their minds have been filled with a million questions and concerns that our biological children have never had in their little spheres atop their necks. I’m so excited to hear of those questions and to come to understand how they perceive the world.

And songs. They sing often in the orphanage. We have a few lullaby CD’s from the DRC, and I’m thrilled to learn the songs that they love.

What did you think the first time you saw a picture of them?

We were laughing and laughing because Shiloh has our 5-year old, Myriam’s smile. Myri has this way of smiling where she opens up her mouth really wide and scrunches up her neck and her nose goes all wide and adorable (but she says, “don’t call me adorable!”). Well, Shiloh and Myri share that smile. They looked like they belonged in our family. James’ first thought was how beautiful they are.  A close second was, “Those girls are as skinny as sticks!” and Erin thought “They need to come home to us, to a home full of sisters who love them already and a brother who will be a fiercely devoted to them.”

Then we thought together, “how in the world are we gonna do this???”

Having chosen to adopt internationally, why did you choose the Democratic Republic of Congo? And why aren’t you adopting domestically?

James has felt a huge connection with DRC ever since he began study for international affairs a decade ago. He learned of the horrific multi-state war, a war many call WWIII although it is rarely noticed in anything more than the periphery. Every index for measuring a country’s well-being puts the DRC down at the bottom, often the very bottom of the list. It is a massive, beautiful, gushing with natural resources place, all of which serves as a foil for the incredible human tragedy that takes place there. There just isn’t a place of greater need. Most social and family scientists will tell you nowadays that the 12 million plus children who are classified as orphans throughout the world don’t need to be adopted out of country, they simply need their parents to be given a hand pulling them up out of a terrible situation. It is estimated that if only true orphans (having lost both parents to death) were numbered it would be more like 30,000 and not millions upon millions. Too many families simply can’t feed their children and so they put them in orphanages so they won’t die of hunger.

When experts talk about this they will give you a few regions that are an exception to this idea of “keep the kids in their own country and support the individual families.” (through things like microloans and agricultural development) The DRC is one of these exceptions. There are so very many orphans and such a shortage of food that the world at large needs to help through both adoption and significant aid to the millions who will never get a ticket out.

We don’t just want to adopt our children and run. We want to unite our family in solidarity and serve this region of the world as a lifelong endeavor for lifting up those who are suffering knowing that we are all in a position of being the beggar at some point in our lives.

The other thing to say here is that we don’t see orphans with nationalities carved into their foreheads. There are children suffering and children not suffering, there is not a greater moral obligation to children of your own nationality. That said, many people feel drawn to adopt from certain places. They feel that they are meant to be foster parents for their local section of child and family services or they feel that they should adopt from the country of their grandparents’ ethnic origin. We simply felt drawn here. It was a lot like when we were deciding which languages to study at university. We just went with our gut and the knowledge that we had. Unfortunately you can’t adopt Hebrew or Arabic speaking children, that would have been nice to use some language skills in building our family.

Obviously much of this can’t be predicted, but how do you plan to deal with having a multi-cultural and multi-racial family? 

We have lived all over the world because we wanted to learn from other cultures. And in so doing incorporated practices from those regions as part of our own unique family culture, not to mimic or to tote with us as a stolen souvenir, but as real aspects of what makes the word “us” that we learned and in turn became during those segments in life. Religiously every faith other than Sikhism and Hinduism is represented in our families—OK a little exaggeration, my uncle actually stopped practicing the Baha’i faith a few years back. Our extended families already include multiple races. So, we don’t really see the word “multi” as all that intimidating.

That’s not to say that race isn’t a very real thing that is important to identity and even biological development. Most people see it as a real problem and a real roadblock to a close relationship when races don’t match whereas we see it as contributing to the richness of our family’s experience. I feel I am more of the person I want to be through my relationships with friends of different races and from different regions of the world who have opened my eyes to new possibilities. So why would adding that dimension to our family be anything other than extraordinarily enriching? We are immersing ourselves in the food, art, languages, dress, music, history and perspectives through local popular publications of the DRC, so we’re not all that concerned about us not being sensitive to cultural considerations and being radically flexible in coming to understand their different viewpoints. Most of our concerns about being mismatched culturally have nothing to do with race and everything to do with the depravity that they have experienced for the last years and the instant material wealth that they will be brought into. Almost every Westerner lives opulently compared to an orphan in Kinshasa. That’s gonna be a really hard adjustment for them and we haven’t figured out all of the ways to support them through that yet.

What has been the hardest thing during this adoption process?

Well, losing Dieu, the first little boy that we were matched with. That took our breath away. Still does to type it. Myri just asked for a locket so she could put his picture along with hers, “so I will always have him with me a little bit.”

Two other things hop right into our minds, too. The first is the paperwork. The bureaucracy and the difficulty of following all the steps just right so you can bring your children home. They are tedious steps (but I have to say not as bad as I imagined. Complaining about adoption paperwork is so universal; I figured it would be much worse.) But the second thing that comes to our mind is the adverse reactions of those around us when they hear we are adopting; from fears that the adopted children will injure our biological children to disapproval of a larger family or comments of neocolonialism and perpetuating white paternalism. No one wants to hear anything other than trumpets and drums from a parade band when they are having a new baby, it is the same for parents preparing to adopt. Just as when we had biological children, we were fully aware of the many things that could go wrong in conception, gestation, delivery, and afterward. Our eyes are wide open in this process as well and we know the difficulties that will surely lie ahead, but a little joy at a new life (or lives!) is surely just as important. Thanks be to all of you who have and will continue to celebrate these two brave beautiful little girls.