“In a perfect world there would be no adoption.”

That phrase has haunted me for a long time. A social worker sat in my living room with a clip board and told us our windows were too low and needed safety glass installed before he would complete our home study. Then sometime after looking over our bank statement, he mused about the imperfections of the world we live in and how that imperfection demanded adoption.

I wasn’t a parent at the time. So, I had to agree with him. He was the authority. And I get it. I do get it. Adoption comes with a lot of pain. Pain for birth mothers and pain for adoptive children. But after five children, I’ve decided that sometimes adoption can make the world a little more perfect. Loving someone so totally different than yourself, seeing the world through eyes that don’t have your talents or abilities, these things can make a more perfect world. So, I can’t outright say adoption makes the world better, because then I would be ignoring all the pain involved in adoption; however, I still have to say loving someone you didn’t create, is a different kind of perfect.