cic-adoption.jpg

Dr. Grazie Christie, a radiologist in Miami, and a senior policy adviser with the Catholic Association, writes a little about adoption as she and her husband have experienced it:

Sometimes we are praised for our generosity, but we know that the gift is all for the parents. Although adoption requires a trusting leap into the unknown and a conscious acceptance of any number of difficulties, the return in joy is dizzying. Often, though my daughter has been with me for nine years, I look at her and I am freshly struck with the utter unlikelihood of her person being mine to guard.
How can it be that I, alone among the women of the world, should have that honor? The improbability of this is shrouded in the awe with which we experience the tender care of God in our lives, showing us that, despite our great faults, he gives us perfect gifts.
But beyond (and above) the delight brought by the child herself is something else: recapitulating and, therefore, better understanding the mysterious way God makes us his own sons and daughters. Our relationship to our father God — the relationship that he chose to share with us — is that of adoption, not natural descent.
Read more here.

Dr. Christie will be among our panelists Monday night at the second in a series of conversations about adoption that the National Review Institute and the Catholic Information Center near the White House are co-hosting. We’ll have an adoptive mom, a birth mom, and a mom who helps connect moms. Come join us for a wide ranging conversation on the roles we can all play in supporting a culture where adoption is welcome, encouraged, supported, better understood ….

This past Monday night Elizabeth Kirk (adopted, mom who has adopted), a writer and research came in from Kansas, and Rabbi Mitchell Rocklin from New York helped us launch the series. You can watch the video here:

And note that if you’re not in D.C. and available to attend, you can join us via Facebook Live on the CIC’s Facebook page.