Category Archives: Adoption

Adoption and the End of the Idol of Competence

Our son has been with us for just over a month now and so far adoption has felt a bit like jumping into a plunge pool – I knew intellectually what we were getting ourselves into, but no amount of thinking can prepare you for the gasping shock of going under the water.

Teething, a virus, and now all three of being down with covid has amplified what was always going to be a rough ride for the three of us. I feel stretched beyond limits I‘ve never really pushed before. To be ill when your child is ill, I have discovered, is brutal – especially when the double-whammy of building attachment and covid remove most possibilities of outside help. We’ve battled, with fevered and aching bodies, to help him sleep, knowing that the only chance of getting the rest we also need is in the fragile bursts where he is able to sleep through the pain he is too small to understand.

I don’t want to be overdramatic. We are ok. I think we are through the worst now and we have had moments of real joy too. I am sure that what we are experiencing is relatively normal for new parents, and far less complicated than the start of many adoptions.

I wonder, though, whether this is a bit of a purgation for me. Being ill, sleep deprived, and desperately trying to get this tiny stranger to stop screaming has dredged up the ugliest parts of me. I am confronted with the truth that for all I can present a kind and compassionate image – there remain deep areas within me that I am scared and ashamed of. I teach my students that the real test of character and leadership is who you are under stress and when no one is looking. I am not passing that test with flying colours.

All of which is bringing me face to face with the idol of competence. As idols go, it’s relatively benign and highly rewarded – it drives me to work hard and serve others. But the truth I can no longer avoid is that I have constructed a large part of my identity around being good at coping, at solving things, at producing good work. Which is all fine until I find myself – as I do now – pushed beyond what can be achieved by effort and planning and technique.

Which is why I am not desperate to move on from this stage. I’m looking forward to things settling down and to us all getting a bit more sleep, for sure. But I think, ultimately, this is good for me. I trust that God can use this time of pressure and stretching to do some deep, refining work to form me into who he has made me to be.

Painful as it is to have those ugly parts of my character exposed, I know that ignoring them won’t help or heal anything. Humiliating as it is to confront the idol of competence, like any idol, it is obstructing me from full, flourishing life in Jesus. So, it’s good to name it, and good to break its power.

But here’s the tricky bit. How do I break an idol of competence without relying on my own competence?

If my issue is an overreliance on my brain, strength and will-power in achieving my own self-improvement, how do I change that without relying on thinking, or working, or willing my way into change?

What does growth look like when my tried and tested methods of growth are the problem?

I sort of know where I want to get to: dependence on God – surrender to his will – a total reliance on Him and not on my own capacity, capability or creativity. But how do I get there without treating it like a problem to fix or a project to complete?

Surrender could mean something passive – just leaving it up to God to sort me out. But I worry that a passive understanding of surrender can become a sort of spiritual cop out absolving me of any responsibility for my own discipleship. I think God wants to involve me in the process rather than just zapping me into conformity.   

My guess is that what I’m after is a sort of active surrender. I don’t know yet what exactly that means. Maybe some good first steps will be things like taking the small, daily decisions to yield, and to acknowledge my need, my dependence. To own the humbling failures and the new limits that come with having reduced capacity for work. To be present to God in the joys and anxieties of caring for a baby. To choose over and over to trust in God’s goodness and not my competence as the bedrock of by being and doing.  

It’s funny, I have prayed for greater dependence on God for many years. I’ve been acutely aware of how easily I can make this whole discipleship thing a self-help project that relies too heavily on my own competence. I’ve made my bed, so I’d better lie in it. Painful and disorienting though this exposure and idol-shaking is, I want to seize this moment – not primarily with grit and will-power – but with gentle, humble embrace.

Adoption and Ambiguity

Since spring, we have been working our way through the adoption process. Through most of that period, it has all felt sufficiently distant for me to assume that I’ll probably just be ready for it when the time comes. But now that dates and decisions are getting quite close, I’ve been wondering if I need to be a little more proactive about getting myself as ready, mentally and emotionally, as I can be. So, I’m going to see if writing about it helps. 

To be honest, as far as I can tell, it’s all just feeling very ambiguous.  

On quite a practical level, there are all sorts of uncertainties, around matching and timing and most obviously around the particular needs of the child who we end up welcoming to our home. We know that this will dramatically change our lives, but we have no idea quite how. We know that it will be really hard, but we have no idea how hard. 

Then there are the uncertainties that I imagine all new parents feel around our capacity and preparedness to be the attuned, nurturing carers that this child is going to need. We are bringing all of our idealised hopes of the sorts of parents we want to be, all of the baggage (good and bad) that we carry from our own upbringings, all of reading and learning that we’ve been ploughing through. And we have no idea if it will be enough. We have no idea if we will be up to the task. For two high achievers who struggle with perfectionism, this is all a bit uncomfortable. 

And combined with all of those uncertainties is the ethical ambiguity of adoption itself – at once so beautiful and so tragic, so redemptive and so deeply wounding. The more we learn about trauma and attachment, the more cautious we are of seeing adoption as anything more positive than the least bad option for children in dreadful situations. I think we need to sit with the uncomfortable reality that by adopting we are participating in the breaking of bonds that ought never to be broken. 

Of course, we remind ourselves, adoption will be the last resort for the child that is placed with us. There are children who need a safe home and loving family – and we hope we can give that. But we’re feeling the brokenness of it all – the cycles of trauma and abuse, the entrenched generational injustices, the chaos, the bleakness, the poverty of love, the unimaginable grief and shame and powerlessness that must come with having a child removed from your care.  

Hard as it is, I think it’s right that we sit with all the brokenness and that we look it in the eye. It forces us to interrogate our own motives, it heightens our sensitivity to any hint of a saviour complex and it makes us wary of telling an adoption narrative that is all neat and saccharine and happily ever after. 

So, as I say, lots of ambiguity. But right now, sitting at my desk on a grey October Saturday, that ambiguity feels alright. I’m feeling it, for sure, but it’s not heavy or debilitating. It feels contained – tethered and held in check – present but not dominant.  

It brings into sharp focus what is probably true of all life this side of new creation – that clunky juxtapositioning of joy and pain, redemption and brokenness, beauty and tragedy. Life is ambiguous, uncertain and mostly out of my control. This has always been the reality, our adoption journey hasn’t altered that. But what getting ready to adopt has done is remove the option of insulating ourselves from that reality. That’s not easy, but I trust that it is good.