Lost and Found

 Here is Yi Ai You on her first birthday at the YiYang SWI in Hunan Province, China.

And here is Xanthe Mary Mei Dopp, age 10, at her ballet class on costume day in Kaysville, Utah.

Sometimes I am mad at her birth parents.  Xanthe lost so much when she lost her mom and dad, her ancestry, her heritage, her language and her homeland.

Other times my heart overflows with compassion and grief for her parents.  They lost so much when they lost their daughter, a link in their family chain.  They lost a tiny baby, but also they lost everything she would become.  Adopting a child from so much loss and uncertainty is different, I would think, than having a newborn placed in your arms and knowing that her birth parents planned this for her, and that his baby is now YOURS.  I know that Xanthe is MINE, but there are times of doubt when I question the validity of my claim, so great is the empathy I feel for any parent who has to abandon their child out of poverty.  I feel guilty.  It's like we rescued Xanthe from a sinking ship, but we couldn't rescue her parents, and to this day they're lost in a sea of sorrow.

 Sometimes when I watch Xanthe dance, or see her face light up when she laughs, I wish so hard that her birth mother could stand by my side and we could watch her together.   I knew before Xanthe was here, that she was missing from our family.  I knew she was ours long before she was in our arms.  I used to despair that we would never, in this vast world, find our daughter.  By the grace of God, we did find her, and because of that, her birth parents' loss isn't total.  Their baby is safe.

Our baby is safe.