double major

I double majored in college. I mean, I only got one degree, but my advisor told me it was basically a double major. In order to get a degree to teach music, you have to get a degree to teach and a degree in music. It makes sense. I will mention here that my classes in teacher education were some of the stupidest hours of my life, including waiting rooms, having cavities filled, and mmmm, probably not kidney stones - those are in a class of their own.

In our process of becoming marginally less ignorant about being an adoptive parent of an African American child (that is our pursuit, it hasn't happened yet) it turns out that is a kind of double major as well.

There's adoption. Adoption is hard. A child has this family, that, no matter how wonderful they are, cannot erase the fact that his/her mother, father, family, are not in his life. Maybe they were sick, maybe they died, maybe they are wicked, maybe just weak. They are not there.

We are not great, as a society, at understanding that people grieve people they have never known. We don't get it with a miscarriage. We don't get it with adoption. Even if you never knew your mother or your baby it still really, really hurts. And the fact that you have a great family now, or whatever, doesn't make it not hurt.

So there's adoption, which is hard, and then there is the trans-cultural part. Because a trans-cultural adoptee hasn't just lost his/her birth mom/dad/family. He lost his culture. He lost the place he learns how to talk like a black man, walk like a black man, and dance like a black man. The very subtle innuendos that make culture, he now has to have a tutor for those. That's false. It's harsh and wrong.

On the other hand, (not saying the first two hands are in any way invalid) he has a permanent home. And that's a start. It is just important that we know that, in the natural, when we adopt him out of his culture, we place him at a disadvantage.

I have learned (www.answersingenesis.com) that there is no genetic difference between any ethnicity of people. There is one race: human. I've started to get irritated with the form that makes me pick one. It's not right. There is one race - the rest is culture.

And we are counter-cultural people. All of my children are being brought up to be different from the world (that whole "in the world, not of it" thing). We don't do what the culture says we should do. It's not how we make our decisions. American culture is not having 10 or more children, driving a 15 passenger van, wearing hand-me-downs or home schooling.

So my adopted child will also be double majoring: he/she will have a degree in feeling comfortable in the skin God gave him, and a second degree in belonging to a Kingdom not made with human hands, being a stranger and alien in a world that doesn't love us, but being confident in the One who made him.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Adoption, becoming a multi-racial family, is a whole different set of problems than we have any experience with. But even though the problems are new and different, the Answer is the same. Different problems; same Jesus. I do not have delusions that we can make all the pain of trans-racial adoption go away, but I have every expectation that Jesus can.