Diversity is Beautiful!

When I was a little girl and dreamed of my "perfect life", it looked a lot like my parents'. Meet the perfect Baptist boy when I'm 15 and he's 19. Marry soon after my 18th birthday, have our children young and enjoy life together.

All of my immediate and first generation extended family is fairly homogenous. We are mostly middle-to-upper middle class, Caucasian, Baptist (one uncle and his family is Catholic), married once (and still married) and many of them have 2 kids; one uncle broke that rule and has 4, one aunt has 3, one is my inspiration and adopted 2 from foster care plus 2 bios and 2 step, and I lost count of how many another aunt adopted from foster care; I think 3, plus 2 bios. BUT, when I was growing up there were mostly families with 2 kids and 2 adults.

I grew up with lots of people who were the same as me! Even my school population was homogenous. It's no wonder I had this Normal Rockwall-esque view of my future!

I'm so glad that God had a patchwork quilt in mind for me instead of the flannel blanket I planned for myself!

I met my husband and immediately dismissed him as spouse material because he was 1) divorced 2) had a son (my amazing stepson Creative Monkey) and 3) was a practicing Catholic. My Bible College background wouldn't allow me to conceive of a future with this guy! But God doesn't do well in the boxes we create and stuff Him into. I know that because 8 months and 5 days after meeting Jay, I married him. (it's a pretty cool story and I might share it here one day)

Then, we felt led to start a family. We got the devastating news that I'm infertile. Infertility treatments weren't even discussed. We immediately were in adoption mode. (note: adoption isn't our plan b) It was easy because we were talking of adopting anyway.

As we went through the lengthy and probing home study process, we decided were open to children of all races and ethnicities as well as a variety of diagnoses. We just wanted children...we didn't care what they looked like!

Once again, God had a much different plan than I. He gave us adorable children that look as if they could be ours biologically. The fun and funky patchwork begins in the family we adopt with them.

I wouldn't have chosen to have "aunts and uncles" for my children who barely speak English. Not because I'm biased, but because it didn't occur to me. I also wouldn't have chosen a homosexual couple to be "uncles", for the same reason. However, our relationship with these people is precious because of what we have in common: the children.

So, after a weekend of practicing my language and ESL skills, and hanging out with the uncles, I feel extremely blessed to call this amazing group of people "my family". And I'm reminded that diversity is so beautiful!