My Kids are Not Lucky

I've heard it a million times.

“Your kids are so lucky to have you”

I know that this statement comes from a good place and from good hearts, but I can't help but think that it comes from a place of happy ignorance.

Let me, first, start off by saying that I appreciate the heart and the sentiment. Really, I do! But I feel like I have to take this opportunity to bring a little bit of reality into the situation.

My kids are not lucky.

And quite frankly, neither are we. Now I know that sounds drab, but it's true. Luck would be making a trick shot. Luck would be opening your Chick Fil A box of 6 count nuggets and finding 7. I am inclined to say that luck is something that is found at no detriment to yourself or someone else.

My kids are not lucky.

Our family is beautiful. Our stories have been intricately woven together and now we all sit at the same dinner table and read bedtime stories together.

But it is not luck that brought us here.

To get to where we are, as a family, there had to be pain. Fear. Uncertainty. Mourning. Terror. Loneliness.

No family should start this way.

I'm not going to go into what we've been through, but please understand that our family is the result of people, systems, and bodies that didn't and don't work according to God's design.

I will say it again. I love my family. But we are not lucky. We had all been stripped of a need, not a priveledge. Luck would be having a priveledge restored. Having needs met is just a right.

It's not a priveledge to have a family. It's a basic human necessity.

The fact that we are together is simply a meeting of needs. A righting wrongs. A restoring of rights.

Justice.

And it doesn't even end here. By establishing our family, the way that we did, we have knowingly flung ourselves into battle. We have invited chaos to the dinner table. We eat, sleep, and breathe “at the ready”. Always preparing ourselves for the next bite, wake, and breath. All of us.

We are not lucky.

But we are humbled.

Our decision to adopt has taught us many things. But the most recurrent lesson is simply humility.

We learn day by day and moment, by moment, that we are not qualified for this. Yes, we have trainings, degrees, experience.. but nothing can qualify for such a journey.

Nothing except a something, a someone, who is more significant than we are. Someone who is qualified. Someone to whom we listen and receive guidance and wisdom. Someone who heard our cries and comforts our distress. Someone who knows that we are not lucky.

God's design is perfect. And we are his design. We are perfect by default, not by merit. But the key to our perfection is in our imperfection. Because it's really not our perfection at all, but it always has been, is, and will always be his perfection in our imperfection.

We are not lucky. But He is perfect.

We rest in that.

So pelase, instead of saying that my kids are lucky, or that we are lucky (and please never say that to their little faces - this has happened), join us in prayer.

Put on your armor and stand next to us. All of us. This is not a war that we were meant to fight alone. And words of sentiment don't deflect arrows.

No one is turned away from our battlefield. Everyone has a role to play. We do not ask for only the strong, the fast, and the agile. We ask for allegience. That is what we need.

At the end of the day, He is still perfect. And He doesn't need your help. If all we had was God alone, we would still prevail. Because He is enough.

But he has invited you. Just like he invited us. And we all have different invitations. Ours lead us to defend His children by bringing them into our home. By advocating their cause.

To what has He invited you?

To adopt? To foster? To advocate? To walk aligside a foster or adoptive family? To give? To research? To babysit? To send a meal? To grocery shop? To hang laundry? To intercede?

They are all equally important in defending the cause of the orphan.

Join us.

Reach out. Offer to babysit. Offer a coffee date. Check in. Lend an ear. Lend a shoulder. Donate. Pray.

If you want to do something, but don't know how, ask.

Because we and our kids are not the only ones who are not lucky.