This Is Us: TRUTH about adoption and foster care

So... there's no denying one thing about me.

I am a huge advocate for vulnerable children.

This advocacy has led me to work for schools that serve lower income children, nonprofit ministries and today as coordinator for my church's adoption and foster care ministry.

It's led me to lead workshops and panels and write many, many blog posts about adoption and foster care.

It's also led me to become an adoptive momma.

Okay so... I'm kind of a fanatic about this issue.

So you can imagine my surprise and joy last year, when I viewed the first episode of one of my favorite shows and was immediately pulled into an amazing adoption story. For me the storyline of Randall, the adopted son of the leading characters in This Is Us, has brought the issue of adoption to prime time - finally.

For a girl that grew up on the '80s sitcom Different Strokes, that featured two black boys adopted by a wealthy white guy, I think a story like Randall's is overdue.

In Randall's adoption story we see the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the heartwarming and the heartbreaking.

In his story we see TRUTH.

Because adoption is the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the heartwarming and the heartbreaking. Take it from an adoptive mom of two like me.

As if last season wasn't enough, this season of This Is Us has peeled open a new layer of truth - the truth of foster care. Randall and his wife Beth have decided to enter into the world of foster care, taking in a teenage girl whose mom has been incarcerated. We watch their new life unfold, and while it's still a Hollywood depiction, we see truth.

Here I want to point out 3 TRUTHS that I've witnessed in This Is Us...

1. Love can't always move mountains, but it can get us over mountains together

One thing I love about This Is Us is Randall and Beth's marriage. They are honest and loving and real in a way that makes me love them both. They are educated and smart and successful AND they are absolutely and unapologetically African American. Beth rocks her natural hair with graceful poise, while telling Randall off like a million-dollar-an-hour corporate attorney.

So of course they take on their foster care placement with poise, authenticity and love. They take it on like they take on all of life - with ride-or-die togetherness.

When my husband Anthony and I decided to adopt, we did so while wearing our most fashionable rose-colored glasses. I truly thought that love would conquer all, and that no matter what challenges our adopted child faced, we would stare down and tear down those challenges together as a family.

Today, I realize that love does not conquer all. The love I have for my children doesn't take away the ache in their souls for their birth families. The love I feel for them doesn't make them feel less different from their peers and classmates being raised in their biological families. The love I give my children doesn't eradicate their feelings of abandonment.

And yet they desperately need our love. Adopted and foster children often worry that they were relinquished by their birth parents because they are damaged, unworthy - unlovable. After all, if they were beautiful, smart and perfect, their birth parents would have wanted to parent them.

For this reason, our children need to feel loved and accepted by us, no matter what.  They need to know that even when they mess up, we still love them. They need to know that we love them enough to stay with them - forever.

That we will never leave them.

Not ever.

2. Adoption and foster care will bring great highs and great lows

Last week in This Is Us, Beth spoke those words almost verbatim while she and Randall discussed their new foster daughter. She mentioned something along the lines of, "Well everyone said this is how it would be. They said we'd have lots of highs and lots of lows."

I can remember the joy of "Gotcha Day" - the day we brought our adopted children home - like it was yesterday. By the time we adopted, I had already experienced giving birth to my oldest son Kalin. I already knew the joy of childbirth and parenthood.

And yet adoption brought a different kind of joy. On the day we officially adopted Christian I looked into his big brown eyes, and I marveled at the beauty of my new baby boy. He was gorgeous, and we had nothing to do with it. He was a mystery, and I was thrilled, knowing I'd have a lifetime of discovering who God had created him to be. It was exciting in a new way, and I couldn't wait to begin this new adventure.

I felt a similar joy, excitement and wonder when we brought our Joelle home two years later. Who is this precious baby girl? I wondered. Again, I couldn't wait for this new adventure.

Both times, however, I was ill-prepared for the challenges of this adventure. I wasn't prepared for the heart-wrenching conversations, for seeing my child crying himself to sleep, for the contagious angst and sadness of abandonment and separation from their first families.

I was ready for the highs, but dear God, so unready for the lows.

And now I lean in to God DAILY for the strength to make through the lows, knowing He is able, even when I am not.

3. Adoption and foster care requires ALL of me - FOREVER

When Beth pulls out their ancient baby monitor, to keep tabs of their newest family member throughout their first night together, I smiled and nodded. I get it. They know they will grow to love and accept this young girl, but on that first night, she is a stranger to them and their precious biological daughters. This small gesture reminds me that parenthood, and all its weight and responsibility, never ever end.

We don't put away the baby monitor when the baby grows up.

If I've heard one thing over and over again from older parents, it's that you never stop being a mom or dad. No matter how grown our kids become, we still love them and want to the best for them and kinda want to do it all for them - forever.

Case in point... Monday night my son went to a Tennessee Titans game. The weather had just taken a turn for fall, and Anthony said to me, "Did you check to see if Kalin took a jacket to the game?"

I chuckled and said, "You know I was dying to text him and see if he had a jacket, but forced myself not to. At some point my big boy's going to have to figure out when to wear a jacket to a football game."

So if Ant and I are any indication, we parents have to release and allow our children to grow up and become adults. Yet we still want to guide them, advise them, help them find their way. We still pray as hard for them - maybe harder than when they were little, when we could trace their every move.

Adoption and foster care are no different.

You never stop having the conversations about their birth mom's choice to place her was a loving choice. How she chose life for him, when she certainly had other alternatives. You never stop reminding them that their moms probably think and wonder about them every day - and a whole bunch on their birthdays. You never stop reminding them that they were placed for adoption because of sin and imperfection in the world and in their birth parents' lives, not because of their personal sins and imperfections.

And sometimes, it seems like you'll never stop wiping tears.

But just like we have become the number one supporters in our 20-year-old son's life, instead of holding his hand and clearing his way, we will one day move to the sidelines of our adopted children's lives. They will move away, build lives for themselves, delve into their passions and callings, and we will hopefully be consulted occasionally for advise and support. They will always be our children, and we will alway fight for and with them. Yet, we will do it by invitation only.

And we pray they invite us often.

After all, in our hearts, we still haven't put the baby monitor away either.