Most of my loyal readers know that my wife and I began taking foster care and adoption classes a month after we got married. I’ve shared how we both knew we were eventually going to adopt and we figured we should go ahead and get the process started, thinking we could come back to it later after we had biological children.

During classes we were shocked to realize that the foster care system prefers potential adoptive parents who aren’t planning on having, or for some reason cannot have, biological children. The general idea is that the adopted child will naturally take a back seat once the parents have “their own” children. My wife and I were shocked! To us an adopted child would be every bit as much our child as a biological one would be. (In fact, during my wife’s pregnancy I often worried I would love my adopted child more than my biological children) We were saddened to realize how often adoption was seen as a backup plan for couples.

Adoption was never a backup plan for us. It was always just as much of a plan A as having biological children. Always.

There are several reasons why that is true, but here are four of the main ones:

We discovered a need and saw it as an opportunity

There are over 110,000 kids in the United States in need of a safe, loving home. Through no fault of their own these children will never be able to be reunited with their original family. Adoption is a wonderful option to give these children the love and safety they need.

I know some adoptions don’t turn out well and not every ending is a happy one. I am sincerely sorry about that. You have no idea how much that hurts my heart. Humans are flawed. Families are flawed, no matter how they come to be put together. As much as we wish parents would always put their children before themselves, that is not always the case.

Children do not get an opportunity to choose which family they are born into. In the same way adopted children do not get the opportunity to choose which family they will be adopted into. That’s why we need more good, loving people to adopt. The only way the system will be changed is from the inside. That’s one of the reasons my wife and I got involved. We can’t change everything, but we can change the small part we can touch with our time, our influence, and our love.

There are 110,000 adoptable children in the United States. That’s a great need. Every single one of them matter. That’s a great opportunity.

We had love to give

My wife and I aren’t rich. But we are rich in love. We have love to give.

Love is strange. The more you give away the more you have. The more you spread it around the more it multiplies. The heart is a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets. But conversely, the less you use it the weaker it gets. The more you keep it locked inside the more it shrinks. The more you try to protect it the greater your chance of losing it.

Like I said, when my wife was pregnant with our biological children I was worried there would be no way I could love them as much as I already loved my adopted daughter. But I was wrong. My love didn’t have to be split. My love just got bigger. I love all my children with more love than I imagined one human would ever be capable of having.

We wanted to help share the pain

Loss is painful. Nothing can take away the pain of losing a family or a family member. Nothing removes or takes the place of loss.  But one of the things that makes loss worse is having to go through it alone.

Adopting a child won’t erase all the loss a child might feel, but it can give the child a place to take their pain. It can give them love. It can give them a place to heal. That doesn’t mean it takes all the pain of loss away, but if by opening ourselves up to pain my wife and I can alleviate even a little of the pain a child might have, then that is something we are willing to do.

I cannot speak for adoptive children. I cannot even speak for all adoptive parents. But I will say that my wife and I have both had to deal with the loss of family members, of friends, and of a child. We want to be able to use our experience and our love to help a child deal with their own sense of loss. If we could trade our own pain to lessen even a little of the pain of a child, then we will try to do so. I believe that is a deal most adoptive parents would agree to make.

Look at it this way, love is the supreme ethic and adoption offers the opportunity to bring more love into the world. Adoptive parents aren’t trying to replace the love of a birth family, they are offering the opportunity for more love. Adoption doesn’t replace love, it increases it.

We knew we would receive more than we gave

Adoption is difficult. Caring for any child costs in time, money and energy, and adoptive children are no different. But adoption also requires learning to deal with loss and pain in order to help a child who will deal with those emotions and that can also be difficult. All true parenting requires that you give your love away. But remember how I said my love got bigger? When you give love, love is what you get in return. More love than you can imagine. I’m not even talking about the love you get from the child, I’m talking about the love you get for the child. Your heart will grow. When you give love away it multiplies, and that is the type of transaction where you will come out ahead every time.

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My wife and I have been blessed to be able to share our story publicly. If you are interested in seeing more about our heart for adoption, you can watch here: