Celebration and Grief

The party began when the pizza delivery guy arrived. That afternoon, we’d joyfully met with social workers and signed papers to finalize the adoptions of our youngest children—the last step before a judge would stamp the documents and legally make them Hoffs.

Now, alongside a dear friend and her children, it was time to celebrate. For the rest of the evening, the walls echoed with laughter. Between slices of pizza and bites of cake, the kids made crafts, swung on the swings in our living room, and had a minor Nerf gun war using umbrellas as shields.

Everyone from my friend’s littlest toddler to my 28-year-old son was in on the fun as we feted the near ending of our younger kids’ eight-year odyssey in government care and their adoptions into a family to whom they had come to mean everything.

But then came the next night.

As I tucked one of our younger kids into bed, tears began to fall. Sometimes a joyous occasion such as signing adoption papers can bring up tremendous grief for a child who has already lost everything that most mattered to them—their first family.

For the next few hours, I held this child as they sobbed. There are no words you can say to mend a child’s truly broken and mourning heart other than to let them know that in their sorrow, you are beside them. It’s OK to cry.

It doesn’t mean they don’t love our family—they do. They were genuinely eager and happy to sign the adoption papers. Love isn’t a competition, and it doesn’t occur in isolation. Love and grief can coexist in juxtaposition.

It took me a while to understand this. For me, adoption is the most joyous of joys through which God brought my children to me. Adoption, to me, is pure celebration.

But over the past 15 years since our journey in older-child adoption began, God has shown me that my perspective differs from my kids’.

For them, adoption was born of the most heart-wrenching, brutal losses. That this loss of their original families came after very difficult, tumultuous years isn’t a factor in their heartbreak. God created little kids to bond with and love their parents, and when they are taken from them, their hearts often shatter.

The way grief is expressed isn’t always clear-cut either. It was a very challenging parental learning curve to realize that some hard things our family faced, including years upon years of intense defiance, blasting anger, behavior issues, or significant attachment struggles were actually expressions of profound grief. When I finally made that connection, a deeper sense of empathy and compassion grew in my heart.

This is something that God, our loving, tender Father, consistently and perfectly shows to us, the children God adopted.

Psalm 147:3-5 tells us, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”

Many are familiar with the part about the Lord healing the brokenhearted and binding their wounds. But it’s the word “understanding” that leaps out at me.

When we go through the hard things of life—and feel the resultant very big feelings—our Father isn’t just there to bring healing and slap a bandage on our wounds. He understands the hurt, sorrow, and losses behind those wounds. He gets it, whispering, “Go ahead and cry. I’m here.”