New Perspective

Our first meeting with Common Sense Adoption Agency in Camp Hill, PA was a bit more intense than I first thought it would be. I have to admit my view of adoption was a bit skewed. I was just like Crystal, intrigued at the friendliness of the staff and their heart for these children. I was pretty shocked at their feeling of responsibility to the children they had helped place in homes even the point of giving up their personal time to assist in doctors appoints or even counseling new parents about the intensities of being adoptive parents. And that's exactly where my skewed view of adoption was changed. I'm not sure why I thought any differently, probably for the same reason we think that being a CSI is so cool and easy- they catch the bad guy after just one hour, he's tried and convicted- TV makes it look so easy and certainly every adoptable child is just the perfect little person with no character flaws and they all have blond hair and blue eyes. No the shocking reality that I learned that evening was that 97% of adoptable children have been sexually abused, that many of them come from homes that are more meth labs than homes and that the reason they are adoptable is because their birth parents have either given up their rights as parents or have lost their rights because of something they did. Because of this there is a lot that we must be prepared for and for this reason we have a lot of classes we need to take both online and in Camp Hill. Right now we are reading Adopting the Hurt Child by Gregory Peck and learning just how extensive the physical and emotional damage that this little person may have endured. It's a sad and sobering reality but honestly, I believe God built us for this.