What do Ozzy Osbourne and John McCain Have in Common?

Several months ago I was indulging in one of my guilty pleasures--looking at pictures of celebrities on msnbc.com. In honor of Father's Day, which was coming up, they had a slideshow of celebrity dads. I was quite surprised to see that of the 21 dads pictured, five of them were adoptive fathers.


Everyone probably knows of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. Sometimes when celebrities adopt I have to wonder how much of it is about publicity. (uh, Madonna?) But, after seeing that 20% of the celebrities in this slideshow had adopted children, I did a search to find out how many other less publicized celebrity adoptive families were out there. The website adoption.com had a list of celebrities who are adopted, have adopted or have placed children for adoption. Besides rocker Ozzy and presidential candidate McCain, the list of adoptive dads includes: Hugh Jackman, Al Roker, George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, Ted Danson, Magic Johnson, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Charles Bronson and Ronald Reagan.

Recently I've been thinking about the fact that adoption is so much more unusual than birth, and sometimes that can be difficult. I am often around pregnant women or new moms, and they usually end up talking about pregnancy, or childbirth, or nursing, or things that I might not ever experience. I don’t usually mind those conversations, up to a point, but I do often wish there was someone in the room with whom I could have a conversation about my different experience of “expecting.”

I thought it was great that on Father’s Day MSNBC decided to highlight adoptive dads. It made me feel a little less lonely and misunderstood, I guess. I often feel so abnormal when I’m around parents who have had children through pregnancy and birth. I’m not sure what this says about me, but I felt a little less abnormal because pop culture, through MSNBC's entertainment section, had acknowledged and celebrated adoption by posting that slideshow.

Pre-loved

So much has happened in the last few months already that I wish I had started an adoption blog back in April. Or March. Or maybe even last summer. The journey up to this point has been a bit bumpy, but there is a lot to tell, and it's clear that God has had His hand in it. I'll just have to catch you all up as we go.

The blog's title comes from a talk given by Ken Fong at Urbana 2000 (InterVarsity's national missions conference). It stuck with me as a beautiful illustration of God's plan for adoption. It is based on Ephesians chapter 1 where Paul says that God chose us and predestined us to be adopted as his sons. Ken discusses the legal understanding of adoption from a Hebrew, Greek and Roman perspective, and describes which perspective Paul was coming from. Throughout the talk he intersperses his own story of adopting his daughter.

To really catch the impact of this word "pre-loved", you need to watch Ken's talk. You can click here to get to Urbana's webpage with a link to the video of the talk. It is rather long (about 30 minutes), but if you fast forward and skip the first 12 minutes you'll get to the most relevant stuff. I wish I could find a transcript, but it is more powerful seeing the video--especially at the end when Ken's wife brings their daughter up on stage.

Mark and I know that God has a child for us. I could be wrong, and we're open to whatever, but I kind of think it will be a girl. She most likely hasn't been born yet, and quite possibly hasn't even been conceived. Friends and family have been praying with us for that child for months. She is pre-loved. We can't wait to meet her.