What is Real?

I found a mother's day talk on my yahoo adoption group that had me in tears. The woman who wrote it had experienced infertility and many years of tears and prayers...and then she was blessed with the gift of a child through adoption. People don't always understand adoption, therefore there are often comments made that may be well-meaning, but are offensive. One thing that people say to adoptive parents is "where's his/her REAL mom? What did their REAL dad look like?"

I feel like as an adoptive mom it is not only right for me to help clear up these misconceptions, but it is my calling. Having the oppurtunity to gain a family through adoption is something that some people might not be willing or able to do. But those who do adopt understand that every child, biological or not is Heavenly Father's child and is only on loan to us for this earthly existence.

Here is a little from her talk. She actually used the story of the Velveteen Rabbit in a way that I had never thought of before.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick out handle?" (Or the ability to bear your own children) "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.""Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?""It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become.It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off (or you have pulled it all out!), and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.""I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled."