Adding three children to our family through adoption has been one of the biggest blessings our family has ever enjoyed. Sound cliche? I know. It is also absolutely true. So are many of the other things you hear about adoption:

* it can take a long time
* it is an adventure of a lifetime
* the bureaucracy (especially of foreign adoptions) can be exceedingly frustrating
* it demands patience like nothing else
* it is often expensive
* it is absolutely worth it

One thing you rarely, if ever, hear about adoption is this: adoption always involves pain.

Not sometimes. Not occasionally. Not potentially. Always.

For all the blessings it brings, adoption always involves pain because it always involves loss. Loss of a parent or parents. Loss of a family, immediate and extended. Loss of relationships. Loss of a culture (in international adoptions). Loss of a heritage.

All of those losses are eventually fulfilled within the adoptive family, as children are grafted into and become part of their new family, but none of them are ever completely replaced. This is obviously most true of children who are adopted when they are old enough to have memories of their birth families. It is also true of those adopted when they are too young to remember, because somewhere there are families with voids in them.

I write this not to discourage adoption or adoptive families. On the contrary, you know what tremendous God-given gifts are present during and after the adoption process! I write this that we might be mindful of the whole reality of adoption, not just the sugar-coated version we are likely to see depicted on TV or the web.

Like so many other blessings we experience and enjoy, in adoption joy and wholeness come through brokenness and pain.