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God does not play dice with the universe: He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
- – (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Good Omens)
We’ve all seen it. The advice from others telling us that our child will come when God sees fit. The overjoyed adoptive mom who feels from the first moment that God meant this child to be with her. The ubiquitous “It’s in God’s hands.”
On the other hand, doesn’t God help those who help themselves? If God meant for a child to be with her adoptive mother, does that mean that God meant the child’s birth mother and/or the child herself, to suffer a great loss? And what about those adoptive parents who *gasp* don’t necessarily believe in God? Does God help them?
I once read a manifesto by an adoptee that included a statement to the effect of, “God didn’t mean for this child to be taken away from his biological parents so you could parent him.” My reaction — How the heck do you know?
If you skipped over the quote at the beginning of this post, please take a moment to read it. It may be irreverent, but the more I read it, the more I think it’s true. No one knows what God’s plan is. Although I believe with great certainty that there is a God, I make no claims to understanding how He (or She*) works. I can rarely figure out what God wants for me, let alone what He (or She) wants for Jack’s birth mother, Jack, or any of the millions touched by adoption worldwide.
I don’t believe we can say, either way, if God means for one or more children to end up with the parents they do. Frankly, this goes for biological kids too. Did God mean for a child to have abusive parents? It boggles the mind, when you think of all of the permutations.
I could easily write thousands of words on this topic, such are my thoughts. The question of God’s plans in family building is one I philosophize about regularly.
What got me going this time? A post at Grown In My Heart, and the comments on that post. The commentators focus on the getting a baby part of the equation. I’ve always focused on the baby getting parents part. Sometimes, birth parents would be great parents if they chose to parent, but sometimes they wouldn’t be, or aren’t. In those cases, is it God’s will that the parents lose the child? Or is it God’s will that the child has the best parents she can have? You can twist the question around all sorts of ways.
I don’t know if God meant Jack to be my son. I don’t want to believe that God means for Jack’s half-brother and half-sister to live in the conditions they’re in. If I believe anything about our adoption and God, it’s that He’s (She’s) helped us all in many ways, even if we don’t always see it.
* I believe God transcends gender. God is God, thus God can be whatever or whomever God wishes to be.
