We were out as a family when I heard Dave tell someone that we adopted both of our girls and then the person responded by saying, “It takes a special person to love a kid that isn’t yours.”

We don’t usually get a lot of comments from people about adoption, but this one stopped me in my tracks and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I was glad that Little Bug was distracted and did not understand what the person was implying to her Daddy because, goodness gracious, that could be very painful for her to hear that!

It angered me that someone would say that when our daughters are right there. Fortunately, they are little and even if Little Bug had not been distracted, I don’t think she would have understood what was being said. Or maybe she would. She is one smart little girl.

But it made me think about the future when someone might say that again with her standing right there, understanding exactly what they are implying.

While a part of me was angered that that comment had the potential to hurt my children, the other part of me was deeply saddened that this person obviously has not experienced a love that defies genetics and allows us to love our children as if they were flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone.

And you know what? Really – them not being flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone is a mute point. It just simply doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. I don’t know how else to say it.

There was a time when I thought it might matter. I think everyone who adopts goes through a time when they think and wonder if they will be able to love a baby that isn’t genetically related to them.

But really genetics is just science. That is all it is. Genetics is what gave my daughters their hair color, eye color, their temperaments – but it stops there. They are who they are today because they are where they are today.

There is some truth to what that person said. My girls are not mine. I don’t know if adoption taught me this or what, but I know my children are not mine. They are God’s. They are a gift straight from heaven.

It is my greatest joy and honor to be able to raise these girls to love the God who orchestrated the events that eventually put them in my arms. It is a gift I do not take for granted and I will forever know these children are not mine – they are the Lord’s. Children are a gift from the Lord and I am so incredibly grateful that despite my barren womb, I am a mother.

From the moment they were each laid in my arms, there was the promise that these babies were the babies God was going to give me to call my own – as if I had just given birth to them myself.

I will never in a million years forget those first few moments of holding each of my daughters. There is no way I could attempt to put in words what my heart was feeling in those moments although I have attempted to many times on this blog! They were sacred moments when all the pain and tears of infertility dissipated into the past and I was left holding a beautiful miracle of God in my arms. A baby that God and their birth mothers had chosen me to mother.

It did not take me long to realize that DNA has nothing to do with the love a mother feels for her child. It just simply didn’t matter. She was my baby; I was her mother. That was it.

It’s really no different than a man and woman who love each other. Husband and wife have no DNA connection (let’s hope that is the case, anyway!) and yet they love each other deeply! No one ever asks me how I can possibly love Dave because I am not genetically connected to him and the same is true for our children. There is no genetic connection but they are our children and we are their parents.

Little Bug and Sweet Pea are “ours” in every way imaginable, but ultimately, they belong to God.

- Elaine