About 14 years ago, I was a
bridesmaid in a wedding for a very young couple. They were still in college and
I was a few years older. At the exchange of vows, all the bridesmaids and
groomsmen stood on the altar as the priest asked the couple the traditional
questions.
“Will
you accept children willingly from God and bring them up lovingly according to
the law of Christ and his Church?” he asked.
“We
will,” they answered. The priest turned away slightly, and as he did, the bride
turned to her maid of honor, rolled her eyes, and shook her head ever so
slightly.
“No kids,” she mouthed, as her maid of honor suppressed a giggle.
“No kids,” she mouthed, as her maid of honor suppressed a giggle.
I
remember being so struck by the bride’s response that for a moment I even
forgot about the metallic green dress with the balloon skirt she was making me
wear.
It
wasn’t that I believed everyone should have children, or even that she,
specifically, should have a child. Rather, it was her blatant dismissal of the
question. The priest wasn’t asking the couple to start their family right that
moment, but was rather asking whether they would accept children. At age 20, the bride and groom had at least two
decades to think about having children. To make a point of saying absolutely no
seemed to me to be a rejection of the sacrament.
Just
two weeks into my own marriage at the time, I saw the questions and vows as the
Church’s way to encompass just about every possible event that life could throw
at a couple. Good times and bad. Sickness and health. Rich and poor. Young man
and young lady — none of us knows what the future holds, but will you promise
to stick with this other person as you find out?
The
couple has been divorced for about five years now, but the bride’s firm shake
of her head is still with me. I think about it whenever I’m tempted to make an
absolute statement about the plans I have for my life — especially one that
starts with the words, “I’ll never…” or “I will always.”
Bill
and I have once again become licensed to foster and adopt. I feel surprised
about this decision — not in a shocked-to-be-pregnant kind of way; more in a
I-can’t-believe-I’m-parachuting-from-this-airplane kind of way. After Jacob,
then Liam, then two foster children, then Jamie—who we first fostered, then
adopted, then Teenasia, who we fostered for a second time, I had thought we
were done with the “accepting children” part of the vows. The children had been
sent by God, were accepted, and were in the process of being raised lovingly
(at least most of the time). Wasn’t it time to move on to something else? A
part of the vows, perhaps, that would not involve the addition of 14 more socks
to our family’s laundry each week?
Our
surprise decision to adopt again came to us early this past summer. We were
admiring the foster baby of a couple from church. As the baby grabbed my
finger, her foster mother said to me, “Did you know there’s a record number of
foster children in the system and that Children’s Service Society is desperate
for more foster parents?”
I
had not known this. I glanced at Bill. He hadn’t known it either.
In
the weeks that followed that baby’s finger-grab, Bill and I talked about little
else besides whether or not we should foster or adopt one more. Could we be
good parents to four? Were we good enough parents to the three we had? What
would another adopted child mean for Jamie, not to be the only adopted one in
the family? What would it mean for Liam, who sometimes already felt squished in
the middle? And what about the emotional toll that foster care invariably
brings— we had been hit hard by the system when the court ruled that Teenasia’s
father’s anger management classes were enough to warrant Teenasia’s return to
him. What if we had to go through that again?
As
we talked, however, signs from God started showing up, just as they had the
first time we were thinking of fostering. We’d go to church and the homily
would be on welcoming the stranger. We’d visit our favorite prayer Web site and
the reading of the day would be Jesus’ admonishing the disciples, “Let the
children come to me.” Newspaper and television stories on foster care and
adoption seemed to appear on a daily basis.
But
mostly, what caused us to fill out the paperwork to once again be licensed for
foster care was that we really couldn’t think of a good reason not to. There
were too many kids out there who needed a good family, and for all of our
faults and foibles, we knew we were a good family.
And
maybe too, it was that question a priest asked us 14 years ago as we stood on
the altar.
“Will
you accept children willingly from God?”
We
said we would.
Even
if it means 14 more socks each week.
