Are you my mother?

It was one of my favorite books to have read to me as a child, and is a favorite to read to my children. And it is how I wonder if my recently adopted daughter feels when she looks at me. I know it isn't. She isn't thinking, "who are you?" She is still limited to thinking, "this feels good," or "this feels bad". She doesn't even know the name of what feels good or bad. If she could speak, she isn't self aware enough to say whether it is a messy diaper, empty belly, gas bubble or exhaustion that is causing the "bad" feeling.
I guess it is possible that she connects my voice, smell, feel to "feels good" or to "the end of feels bad". I think she is comforted by me the way newborns are comforted by their mamas.
She doesn't know she's in the wrong (right) family. She has no idea that she is the lone black child being raised by a pack of wild caucasians. She doesn't know she's beautiful, doesn't know that she has an umbilical hernia, doesn't know she's constipated, doesn't know she has a dry scalp. She doesn't know that I don't know what I'm doing, even though she's the 11th child we've brought home.
But I know. And I feel a little inadequate.
Some adoption situations seem easier for the mind to fully embrace that this child belongs to the new parents. A child from an orphanage, for example, or a child who was likely to be aborted. But my little one was loved, and desired, if not to raise, at least to live. And there were people in her world who wanted her. Perhaps her birth-father, if encouraged, would have wanted to keep her with him. My situation is not as easy as a baby who has no one.
What I have is that her birth mom believed that our home was the very best place for her to be, superceding culture, race, geography, faith, socioeconomic status, and, ok - I'll say it, common sense. She believed that no matter how it felt or affected her, that putting this baby girl with us was the very best thing for baby girl.
She had a miserable nasty crappy time. Magnesium sulfate for 5 or so days, no food, transfusions, no epidural, emergency D & C afterward, ICU, headaches, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, not to mention frustration, anger and lack of understanding from her "support" network as they processed her decision with difficulty. And after all the horrible week she spent in the hospital, her reward was to go home with empty arms and a necklace she said was too special to wear.
And now I'm here with her incredibly beautiful darling baby girl, feeling inadequate, trying to figure out which formula to give her, and how to deal with the rash she has on her face and if it is normal baby stuff or if I'm showing my 'caucasian' ignorance of the needs of the skin of persons with African ancestry.

I love this baby. I love her mother. I love that Jesus gave her to me. After all she went through, our birth mom still chose us, chose adoption. But I'm horribly aware that all of who I am and can be as a mom, all of who we are and can be as a family, even all of who my wonderful husband is and can be, it's not enough. We can't bridge the gap between what is and what ought to have been. Her birth father and birth mother, loving her, loving each other, caring for her, bringing her up in her own family and world. We cannot heal, cannot forgive on her behalf, cannot fill the hole left.
We can overwhelm her with love and kisses and with the glory of us, but that cannot be enough. We cannot fill in the cultural blanks (that is a whole. nother. blog.), cannot heal the racial tension in our land that she will face someday.

What we can do, is show her at every opportunity, good and bad, that she has the option of giving it all, pain, confusion, whatever, to a perfect Savior-Redeemer-Healer. We can lead her to the cross. Over and over and over.

And I suppose that is where my adequacy, legitimacy, peace lies. I want to somehow reach across the nation and heal her mom, her dad, her mom's friends and family. I want to make it all better for them, but how can I, when I have the sweet spot, and they have a hole where she should have been?

This yoke is not mine. Even my daughter's happiness is not my responsibility. It is between her and the Lord. What is my job? Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with my God. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.