A Minute With Nikki - Thoughts About National Adoption Month

It’s November! Perhaps my favorite month of the year. The weather is always cooler, the leaves are changing, we begin to get ready for the holidays and, my most favorite of all the awareness months, November is National Adoption Month. The Facebook posts and graphics are abundant. People are coming out in droves to speak about adoption through Orphan Sunday services, adoption awareness events, information meetings for specific adoption agencies and urging us all to be fervent in prayer for the 153 million orphans worldwide. I’ve blocked the afternoon of November 21^st off to be at Jackson County Family Court in Kansas City, Missouri, with 500 of my closest friends (in a waiting area where I’m certain fire code is set at 150 people). We’ll all share in a community adoption celebration, a group adoption of foster children into their forever families, and countless private adoption finalizations, scheduled every 10 minutes with every judge and commissioner in the country. November is the one month a year that all who have a heart for adoption come together in fellowship and prayer. It truly is a wonderful time of the year.

In light of this excitement, an adoptive mom and adoption social worker can’t help but think about what she is doing to help the orphan movement. I mean, really doing to help. I find myself asking when it’s time to adopt again. Or, moreover, IF it will ever be time to adopt again. Conventional wisdom states that everyone wants to have more than one child, right? Specifically in my family where the situation is such that we have an only child (who, by the way, is on the precipice on teenagedom.) And what could be better than a sibling who can share the unique and miraculous experience of being adopted? 

But at this time financially and emotionally probably a second adoption is not on the table for us. Life is happening. I work two entirely different career jobs and have a husband who owns his own business. We’re both working a lot and trying to keep ourselves, and more importantly, our daughter’s heads above water. Another $33,000 adoption – whether fundraised or not – isn’t in the cards.

So we talk about options. And I may have to accept the fact that my dream family isn’t going to look like what I thought it would. Me, the one who at age 8 had a collection of Cabbage Patch dolls (not one of which was Caucasian) and had a plan for what her future family was going to look like. And, let me tell you, it comprised of more than one adopted child.  Maybe my “perfect” family isn’t going to be the definition of what I thought it would look like.  I suspect that’s the case with many of you as well.

But the one thing that comforts me this November 2014 is my ever deepening of the understanding of what it means to be committed to the orphan movement. Now, more than ever, we must see that it is the collective responsibility of society to do something for the orphans. There are so many ways to make a difference this November (and every day from here on). Pray, help fund someone else’s adoption, take a mission trip, help out at a fundraiser, and even perhaps adopt a child of your own. Whatever your passion, just do something. I implore you all - own a role in doing something for the orphan population.

Do I want to adopt 6 kids from 6 different countries? You bet! Is that going to happen? Probably not. But I am energized this November in accepting that there is a lot more I can do to make a difference. 

Nikki has been working as an adoption social worker for the past 10 years.  The consummate single gal was married in 2012 and started an adoption process to adopt a 10-year-old with special needs from China soon after.  Nikki loves writing home studies in the Western Missouri area and preparing families for the realities of adoption. - See more at: http://joyinthejourneyadoption.blogspot.com/2014/08/after-placement-issues-eating.html#sthash.2aVLiQN9.dpuf