I experienced my first moment of overt racism just months before our adoption referral. The wife of an elder at our then-church and I joyously discussed the upcoming domestic adoption of dear friends of ours, SongOfSixpence and the King (although this time the baby was Blackbird rather than ThePie). Wife-of-the-Elder patted me on the shoulder, believing she consoled me, saying, “And they got a white baby.”

Yesterday, as I dragged my now five-and-a-half-year-old Tongginator into a local coffee shop, a man surprised me from behind, asking quite bluntly, “Where is she from?” I turned and looked at him for a minute with a raised eyebrow before sharing the name of our town, then adding, “but she was born in China” so that I could avoid the dreaded “But where is she really from?”

Adoptive parents are a diverse crowd, and our children are just as diverse, so I don’t know that it’s completely fair to create a list of specific dos and don’ts and say “THIS is what love in adoption MUST look like.” But… but… some overall concepts are universally true. While we may not agree on every single detail, and I may not be right on every single point, I do believe that sharing my list – the things that God has placed on my heart – will help you think more about God’s Truth when it comes to your own call to adopt.

Our daughter found it much less stressful to watch an edited version of our China adoption trip video, set to music, which she soon named her “China baby movie.” This started our quest to find songs that fit an adoption themed video. I’ve compiled a list below – some I love, some not so much – that seem to be favorites among the adoptive parent community.

But the most important thing my Dad ever taught me was how to build a successful family. Because you see, my Dad is not my Dad, but he IS my Dad. He taught me that family is larger than genetics, or geography, or bloodlines. I am an adopted son who never knew his birth father.

What if you couldn’t turn on the light, any light, not even a flashlight? What if you simply had no means of stretching across the span that separated you from what you desired? What if the person you wished to learn from couldn’t communicate?

Some words can really stop a parent’s heart… words like autism and cystic fibrosis and childhood cancer.  Two months ago, I held a friend’s hand while we waited to hear whether or not her six-year-old …

Two Fridays ago, as I dropped off yet another immigration packet update at our agency, I stumbled into an adoption placement. The director of my agency and I shared smiles during the paperwork hand-off as a young couple became parents for the first time, just a few feet from me. During my brief, two-minute visit, I watched the faces of those standing in the room, so filled with joy and hope, absolutely awe-struck while gazing at this three-month-old infant.

And what she’s learned these past five years as my daughter is that I pretty much drop everything to talk with her when she brings up the topic of adoption. When she says “I miss my Abu (her name for her foster mother),” I stop what I am doing, get down at her eye level, offer a hug and wait. I make no apologies for this… it’s what she needs. Except when she doesn’t.

“Do the Chinese celebrate Christmas in China?” Well, the answer to that is yes and no. A growing number of Chinese, especially young urbanites, celebrate some version of Christmas in China, but the central part of the holiday – the religious celebration of Christ’s birth – is not typically acknowledged nor even known because less than 5% of the 1.3 billion people living in China identify as Christian.