Emotions and Adoption

It's not uncommon for people to approach me and John about adoption. Recently, it seems there has been a steady stream
of adoption-seekers, wanting counsel/advice/prayer. This week, we received an email about a young pregnant woman in need of
a place to stay until her baby is born (she is making an adoption plan). Today at church an adoptive mother shared about her pregnant niece, and asked for prayer as they pursue adopting
the babies (twins).
In March, John and I will participate in the Adoption Informational meeting at church. I often wonder how God wants to use us in this regards, how would He have us to serve? Is it to promote open-adoption in a closed-adoption-minded society? Is it to merely help people through the process of adoption: the technicalities, finances, emotions? Is it to sympathize with those families who have relinquished children for adoption, still feeling the effects of their loss years later? Or is it to empathize with those facing the heartache of infertility, longing to have a child? How can we serve?
Whenever I talk with a potential adoptive parent, I think about the difficulties associated with adoption...the emotions that occur behind the scenes with closed adoptions (or international adoptions), or perhaps the emotions that confront the parents in the case of domestic infant adoption, as it has us. On an open adoption blog I frequent, I read this quote written by an adoptive father and author, Dan Savage:

"I was 33 when we adopted DJ, and I thought I knew what a broken heart looked like, how it felt, but I didn't know anything. You know what a broken heart looks like? Like a sobbing teenager handing over a two-day-old infant she can't take care of to a couple she hopes can."

From the same blog, a waiting adoptive mother posted: "As the due date approaches, everything seems to grow larger. Forgive the lame image, but imagine all the emotions of adopting as soap bubbles. Until recently, they were wee little bubbles on my mental landscape. One would float up from the depths of my heart, dance around in the breeze and occupy my attention for awhile, then--pop--it would be gone. A bubble of excitement here, a bubble of concern there. But now the bubbles are larger and more frequent. They hang longer in the air, jostling with each other for space. As my joy at the prospect of another child grows, so does my heartache for Ms B*. There are bubbles of affection for Ms B*, bubbles of anger at her circumstances, bubbles of frustration at ethical obstacles, bubbles of gratefulness for the support we each have, bubbles of love for Baby B*, bubbles of sadness for us all."
Wow. I can relate with that one. Funny how those bubbles still linger, even years after the adoption takes place.

*Ms B is pregnant, and has chosen the blog author to adopt her baby. 

Baby B is the baby.