What does it look like to love orphans when you don’t feel called to adopt?
Feeling ill-equipped to answer it on my own, I consulted three friends who have felt led to adopt:
Lauren Pinkston
mother to one biological daughter, Eliza, and one newly adopted daughter Hope, born in Uganda.
Lauren blogs at laurenpinkston.com
Katie Beth McCarthy
mother to three sons: Miller, Andre and Keenan, two adopted internationally and one adopted domestically.
Leann Burgess
past foster mom with two biological daughters (Ava and Sam) and two adopted children—Finn, a son with Down’s Syndrome from China, and Norah, a daughter adopted at birth here in the US.
For these folks, loving kids who would be otherwise abandoned, unloved, or ill-treated is a huge part of their life’s purpose. Here are what they identified as some of the best ways to love orphans if you can’t adopt or foster yourself:
1. Give money to fund adoption.
Adoption is astoundingly expensive (we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars), and most families are unable to afford an adoption on their own. This is why families often engage in fundraising efforts. Some families don’t fundraise, but often that’s simply because they feel uncomfortable asking their friends for money.
If you really want to help, start or contribute to a fundraiser for adoptive parents.
Leanne said, “Parents that are in the adoption process need money. Plain and simple. It helps the parents but it is helping the orphan to gain a family. If people could look at it like that (from the child’s need and not the other way around) I think more people would give and give more…
“Don’t ask if they need money. They do.”
Katie Beth said, “Most of the time, families are paying off adoption loans FOR YEARS later…so a post-adoption fundraiser is just as good (and maybe better if the givers can see the precious child they are helping).”
All three of these women identified money as one of, perhaps the biggest obstacle to God’s people adopting God’s children. That’s not okay. Because God’s people as a whole have plenty of money to adopt children.
