adoption Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

“Why do you want more kids?” people ask me when they find out we’re planning to adopt. “Don’t you think you have enough already?”

I don’t know how to answer this question because I don’t know how many kids is enough.

Do I have enough kids to drink all the milk before it goes bad? Yes.

Do I have enough kids to make our own basketball team? Yes.

Do I have enough kids to finance our orthodontist’s dream trip to the Caribbean? Yes.

So…is that enough?

I find myself stumbling over answers because the question is all wrong. It infers that the reason for having children is to fulfill something in us, and people should only have the minimum number it takes to be personally satisfied.

When people say to me, “Don’t you have enough kids already?” the assumption is that I am somehow unfulfilled by the number of children in my home now. I need more children in order to be happy, and isn’t that selfish and irresponsible of me?

Why on earth would I want more?

The simple answer is, I don’t want more kids.

I do not want to add broken children to my manageable home. I do not want to risk my own children’s emotional or physical safety in order to take on someone else’s “problem.” I don’t want to pour my heart into a child who might hate me in return. I don’t want the lice. I don’t want the attachment disorders. I don’t want the sexual aggression, the lying, stealing, manipulating—any of it.

I am not lonely, or bored, or in need of affirmation. I don’t want more kids because I have some kind of superhero complex, or because I’m such a great mother. I don’t want more kids because somehow, five kids is not enough. Oh, no. Five kids is enough, and some days, I am not sure I can handle one more.

(Of course, I said that when I had one. And I said it when I had three. And now I have five and I really, really think it’s true this time.)

I don’t want more kids because I think I can handle more. I know the truth: in my own humanity, in my own weakness, I can’t.

I cannot love more than enough children. I cannot have Christ-like compassion for the child who shreds me with her brokenness. None of us can.

What wrecks me is this: God doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in what I can handle. He seems to care more about what He can handle.

And that just blows the question out of the water. At the end of the day, fostering is not about me. It’s never been about me. It’s not about my ability as a mother, my desires as a human being, or even my comfort level as an American.

It’s about what God has called me to do through His power working in me to love my Savior by loving His children. It is the thing that makes the “wanting to” irrelevant and the “able to” inconsequential. God wants, and God is able. That is enough.

Enough kids

Do I want more children?

The only people who ask that question are clearly not God because that is not a question God ever asks.

God does not ask if we want to love unwanted children (James 1:27). He doesn’t even have the consideration to ask us if we’re able to. With all the audacity of the Lord of the Universe, He assumes that if we’re breathing, we can do better than just think of ourselves and do for ourselves because He did better, and it is His power at work in us equipping us to be and do like Him. Not our strength. Not our ability (Ephesians 3:20).

It’s scary to believe it. I do not like to jump into the unknown and hope to heaven I land on supernatural wings. I am afraid, and that fear would make me turn tail and run if not for this: my fears do not excuse my obedience to God.

Fears are the stuff of shadows anyway. Worst-case scenarios rarely happen. The worries I toss about in my head are minor in comparison to the actual, horrific suffering of real children, right now.

I look at my home, my godly, patient husband and my compassionate, loving children, and I know that I cannot allow imaginary hurts to keep us from infusing living hope into a child’s present, perpetual, real-life.

That doesn’t mean hurts won’t happen. We will do everything we can to prevent them, but love doesn’t always come out clean. Our five kids might feel the sting of it

But for our sixth child, it will hurt much, much less. Infinitely, eternally, less than life hurts now.

That is the thing that keeps me pressing forward when my heart fails. Do I want more kids? No.

What I want is to get to the end of my wants. I want to get to the end of controlling and taking on only what I can do. I want the immense privilege of seeing what God can do through me. That fills me with unspeakable, illogical joy at the prospect of being used as He wills. I have a Christ-like love for a child who is not my own and all the anticipation of Christmas at the gift—the privilege—of being his mother, no matter the cost.

Why do I want more kids?

That is why.

I have been dying to tell you the wonderful news: Five in Tow is about to grow! Jeff and I are excited to announce that we’re expecting.

I know you probably thought we were done having children. Five certainly is a handful, at least that’s what the Costco sample ladies tell me when my kids clear out their toothpicked cheese cubes in one fell swoop.

There’s also the small part about how motherhood didn’t come easy to me. It took me about…well, five kids to get broken in to this gig, and for some time prior to that, I threatened to pack up my children and send them to Argentina.

But, this child, this sixth child, is something different. This child is not growing in my womb. This child has been growing in my heart since I was old enough to notice that not all children have it good.

Not all children are safe.

Not all children are wanted.

Not all children are loved.

And not all people who can do something about it are. Including me.

Many years ago, before I was married, I wanted to adopt all the babies. I had lived in third world countries and worked with street children and orphans. By the time I was nineteen, I had seen more unwanted children than I could bear. I determined to do something about it.

But then I got married. And pregnant. And pregnant again, and…every time I thought about adding another child to our home, life would get crazy and I would wonder what on earth I was thinking.

I began to believe that I really am terribly busy, and I have used those Costco ladies as my justification for passing up many opportunities to be Christ to this hurting world. I have my hands full already, thankyouverymuch.

But God’s been talking to me about being the Word, and it’s all terribly more self-sacrificial than I am comfortable with.

So I read all through the Word looking for some fine print that would exempt me from anything harder than where I am right now. What I found was Jesus telling poor people to care for poorer people. Jesus telling busy people to stop and bind up the wounds of the hurting. Jesus telling moms who pounded out their daily bread to feed the widows and the orphans with some of it. Jesus saying, “Hey, the harvest is ready, but the trouble is, none of you are willing to stop what you’re doing and labor for me.”

So we stopped. We prayed. We talked to our kids. We did the next thing, and the next thing more. Now, we are knee-deep in the foster licensing process with the intention of adopting a child out of the system. We have to get the licensing part done before Jeff deploys, which is so insane, our case worker is developing a twitch. But we have a set of fire extinguishers in our kitchen and fingerprints on file and a whole lot of friends and family with permanent hand cramps because they had to fill out pages of references forms on us.

It is labor, all of it. But with the labor comes great expectation, abundant joy, and a good share of nausea.

I hear that’s normal for expectant parents.

Hopefully, we can act like a normal family for a few weeks longer so we can wrap up the foster-licensing process. Jeff will deploy, and even though it’s not ideal to welcome a new child to the home while the father is away, we’re kind of over waiting for ideal. When it comes to foster care, there is no ideal.

Our hope is to foster-adopt, so we are praying that the Lord will bring us the right child right away so that we can begin the legal process as quickly as possible. Jeff will be getting orders to a new duty station soon after he completes his deployment, and we need to complete the adoption while we’re still living in Texas…or we might lose the child and have to start the whole thing all over again.

But even if we cannot adopt, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to love and invest in another child for as long as God lets us have her. When you think about it, that’s really what parenting is all about.

Won’t you pray for us? We’re expecting God to show up big time because this whole thing is crazy-scary and infinitely bigger than us. Those are exactly the circumstances God seems to like the most, when I have nothing of my own to offer and He gets to remind me why He’s God, and I’m not.

Pray particularly for this sixth child who may, at this very moment, be experiencing unspeakable trauma at the hands of those who are supposed to love him. Pray pray for the family who is so broken, a child isn’t safe in their care. Finally, pray that we will remain steadfast and diligent as we labor to make room for one more.

Six in tow? I kinda like the sound of that.

(why) I Don’t Want More Kids

We’re Expecting!