adoption and the gift of new eyes

1 hour of uninterrupted time to read and sip hot coffee while my daughter did her biweekly PT routine.

That’s all I wanted. It’s what I thought I needed. 

But I needed something else.

The woman next to me interrupted my plan. I learned she’d loved the “special needs” population for 50-60 years.  At 14 she began working at a farm home that housed, loved and gave dignity to hundreds of children who society and even family didn’t know what to do with.

Her eyes pooled as she reminisced a lifetime of loving the disabled in various settings.  Mine were brimming -but with shame. I’d not loved them so easily.  Discomfort had shifted my gaze the other way too often.

So how did I end up adopting a little girl who’d survived brain cancer and  traumatic brain injury at 4 years old? Multiple physical and cognitive disabilities would render her needy for the rest of her earth life.

When we met her at 6, her developmental delays were not so obvious and her limitations seemed minor - “not too much to take on”.  While I’d never been drawn towards special needs I had always been drawn towards adoption.  

But each year the chasm between her age and abilities expanded.  I’m not sure when, but the realization that we had adopted a child with special needs settled in bringing waves of fear, denial and hard questions for God and myself.

[“Yes, I’ll adopt!… But WAIT God!… I don’t do “special needs! 

There are other people (like the lady at the rehab office) 

who naturally love them!”] 

To be honest, there was no sudden download of natural affinity for the special needs population.  (I asked!)  Instead God has slowly given me the gift of new eyes. 

He has removed cataracts and cleared my perspective. What at first appeared as a weight slowing my fast-paced life, I now see is God’s gift of slowing me to the unhurried pace HE prefers to walk.

Loving someone with special needs has increased my clarity in seeing God. She sees Him simply, purely and with childlike faith. Everyday. Like a forever 7 year old, she just.always.believes.

Choosing to love for the past 22 years has brought into focus what God sees as beautiful and worthy and important. (It’s vastly different than my natural, blurry eyed inclination!)  

Some days I lapse into seeing our daughter as having “special needs”, but daily surrender reveals the truth- we have been blessed to adopt a girl giving “special gifts”.  And somedays, God reminds me of these truths through the gift of an interruption and the clearer eyes of another.