Dear Government Agency

Dear Government Agency,

My wife and I are currently waiting to be matched with our adopted children from Ethiopia, and we needed you to know a few things. I started to write this letter in anger.  This very letter almost included the phrase “pissed off” (well, technically, now it does, but you understand).  I would’ve used the words “ashamed”, “ridiculous”, “inept”, and “livid”.  I will not do so.

I could’ve made this a sarcastic piece, kind of like those open letters to people who made your burrito wrong or to Wal-Mart executives who don’t treat their employees properly.  Honestly, I enjoy and appreciate sarcasm immensely, and would’ve reveled in the bile of each jab as I bled you with a million tiny cuts.  After all, Americans are good at that now, right?  We savor each creeping word, each phrase turned just so, in order to ridicule and entertain, all in one glorious swipe of the pen.  As much as it pains me, I’ll pass on that letter as well.

Let me make one more clarification before I write the actual body of my letter. When I say “Government Agency”, I mean you:

-          United States State Department, which would issue our adopted children’s citizenship, granting them safe passage into our country.

-          USCIS, which would grant passports, allowing our family’s ability to leave our country, spend time in Ethiopia, and grant our newly expanded family’s ability to enter the U.S. again.

-          Ethiopian Ministry of Women’s, Children and Youth Affairs, which would grant release of our adopted children from their current technically legal families, officially declaring them orphans, and allowing them to become eligible for adoption.

-          UNICEF, which has advised Ethiopia and various other countries in order to strengthen their current adoption procedures, with the intention of providing the best care for the children involved.

-          Hague Convention, which provides guidelines and protections for all parties involved in the inter-country adoption process, from birth parents to adoptive parents, to (and most importantly) the orphans awaiting families.

-          Any other federal, state, or county agency whose systems and regulations are set up to support and promote orphans, which, in fact, like the previously mentioned agencies, ultimately do almost the exact opposite thing.

This is my message to you.

You are instruments of God.  Seriously, you are.  Romans 13:1 tells me so.

“For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God”

Please don’t forget that.  You have all worked together in thousands of instances to make inter-country or domestic adoption a reality for families all over this country.  I know you innately know this, because you use such appropriate language in your descriptions of your work. You use words and phrases such as the following on your websites.

“advocates”

“justice”

“welfare”

“equality”

“protection”

“supportive environment”…all of these for “the children”.

That is an awesome task, and in Ethiopia (at least)…and you’re blowing it.  Between 1999 and 2010, inter-country adoptions from Ethiopia grew at an amazing rate.  The numbers rose from literally 42 to 2,511 in that time.  This is the type growth that shows a response to the heightened need from forever families for the estimated 4.6 million orphans in this country.

Since 2010, however, this number not just creeped down, but plummeted, summing 993 adoptions in 2013.  I know folks who aren’t involved in adoptions are curious as to why.  You would probably answer that you want more families in Ethiopia to be able to keep their children, so you provide subsidies to them.  You might even answer that corruption has tainted the process, making for longer lead times to confirm the orphan status of these children.  You might even have enough pretense to say that it’s better for a child to grow up in his or her country of origin, regardless of whether he or she has a family or not.

My answer would be that you’ve confused your divine calling with political laziness, based on a secular worldview.  My only evidence needed is shown in the amazing documentary “Stuck”.  You can purchase your own indictment, and even watch a trailer at  http://buy.stuckdocumentary.com.

  I would encourage you and anyone else to watch this spectacle of shame and compare them to how well we support adoption as a whole in this country, because in a sense we do; it’s just focused on an ironic skew. Read these numbers and see how you feel about those ASPCA commercials and benefit galas, which successfully place upwards of 35% (2.7 million out of 7.6 million, average, annually) of all orphaned animals in the U.S. each year.  All the while, in Ethiopia, 0.02% of orphaned children were adopted to U.S. families in the year 2013.

Yes, while failing to heed your divine calling to be an instrument of God’s grace, you have (for many) become instruments of God’s wrath against this fallen world.  You have become evidence that Romans 1:18-23 is true.

            “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.  For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.  So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images….”

You don’t recognize God in your work, and your image of idolatry has become political idealism.  Here are a few examples from “Stuck” and our family’s own experience.

“Should this process be governed through checks and balances?” Yes, of course. 

 “Should they go through them 3 times?”  No.

“Should children be bought on the black market? “ Absolutely not.

“Should it take legal action and over 3 years to make an inter-country adoption possible?”  What do you think?

“Should you protect children from predatory behavior of evil people?”  Without question.  

“Should families with multiple background checks have to get fingerprinted every 15 months to confirm their identity?”  Probably not.

“Should children be matched with the right forever families?”  Yes.

“Should these children be left in orphanages until they age out at 16, only to be put out onto the streets?”  I’ll let you make that call.

Again, I would remind you or your unique and beautiful potential.  Consider these words from the Bible.

            “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” – Galatians 4:4-5

                “…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.  In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace….” – Ephesians 1:5

                “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”” – Romans 8:15

Hence, when you do your job properly, and as it was intended (because adoption is God’s idea, afterall) to be done, you become a key part of possibly the most potent display and image of the gospel we can see in this world of ours.  Adoption is the gospel, and this is the real beauty in it.  It’s not about bringing a poor kid into our middle class lives.  It’s not about condescending to a lower class, and thus, showing how “generous” we are.  It’s not about just having another child, because we could’ve conceived and born multiple children in the time we’ve waited.

It is about displaying the glory and the grace of God, through obedience to His call.

Honestly, this is all we are trying to do.  It is a simple thing, but it is a huge thing.  All we ask is that you focus on the truth behind your vocation.  Even if you don’t care about Jesus, could you at least re-focus on your stated intent – to help children?  I’m starting to feel guilty while pointing to the Church and asking “where are you?” when there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia alone.  Sometimes, I get the feeling that even if everyone in the Church would step up, you’d not allow the dream to happen.

My last reminder of your place is this.  Even if you ignore this need, all my words, and all the pleading of the adoption community, rest assured that you are STILL instruments of God.  This may sound odd, but you are instruments of God in that you are (whether you like it or not) producing suffering.

Your lack of action produces suffering for adoption agencies which are forced pull out of countries, due to lack of funds.  This produces suffering for the local citizens, who must endure hundreds of thousands of orphans (mostly uneducated and unskilled) who age out of orphanages each year, thus weighing on the social system of said country.  This produces suffering for that agency’s employees, as they (potentially) lose jobs.  This produces suffering for the families who await a referral, as they wait and wait and wait.  Lastly, this produces suffering for the ones who deserve it the least.  The children, for whom you advocate, whose only hope is a forever family, sit in the orphanages.

And they sit.

And they sit.

And they sit.

What does God do with suffering of His people (regardless of nationality)?

“It is for discipline that you have to endure.  God is treating you as sons.  For what son is there whom his father does not discipline…. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” – Hebrews 12:7 and 11

            “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” – Romans 5:3-5

I know and understand that this is not persecution of me or anyone else you want to help, for the authors were writing (at least in part) about religious persecution in these passages,  but when you takes your eyes off of your goal (and off of God), your lack of progress causes everyone involved pain, and yes, suffering, regardless of the degree.

Yes, your failure to do your job ultimately produces hope.  It is produced in, around, and within the adoption community.  Sadly, this is often the only thing we have left to cling to.  In our worst of times, we come close to despair, hoping in doubt, that this will ever happen.  In our best of times, we cling in faith, hoping in expectation of what God can and will do despite this fallen world.

I leave you with this.  You are instruments of God.  Will you be instruments that reproduce the image and message of the gospel?  Will you be instruments that display God’s righteous wrath against this fallen world?  Will you be instruments that produce hope through suffering?

Only God knows.

 

Our hope is in Him, and that is hope enough.

Sincerely,

The Adoption Community