The Amazing Power of Adoption: How Unconditional Love Can Overcome Adversity

By David Michael Waggoner

A masterfully condensed true story spanning a half century about the incredible power of adoption through the eyes of a man who was adopted, gave up a son for adoption, and later adopted a son of his own. The author is available for speaking engagements and also welcomes comments and questions through the following email address: [e-mail]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635255034

Book preview

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The Amazing Power of Adoption

How unconditional love can overcome adversity

David Michael Waggoner

ISBN 978-1-63525-502-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63525-503-4 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by David Michael Waggoner

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

ABOUT THE FRONT COVER

As many readers have discovered, there is deep symbolism in the front cover design… dark and menacing storm clouds symbolize the adversity that always precedes adoption… but the intentional act of unconditional love known as adoption brings a rainbow representing a second chance and hope for a brighter tomorrow (the sun rise).

Printed in the United States of America

While writing this book, there were many who offered their well-intending advice.

Some thought I should pay a professional/successful writer for advice. I did some of that.

Some thought I should write with extensive use of scene. I did some of that, too.

Others thought I should not offer professional advice without a license… I did none of that.

Finally, my wife told me I should just write from my heart and be honest… I did a lot of that.

Amen.

Introduction

This is a real-life story about the monumental impact of adoption on the life of an ordinary man. I am that man.

In infancy, I was adopted within my extended family in what was known as a closed adoption. My birth mother had two other children, but they were placed for adoption outside the family. I discovered this fact by accident at the age of twelve and spent the following twenty-plus years in mostly quiet rebellion while piecing together the details and searching for understanding. The events surrounding and following my adoption soon played themselves out in the desperation of my early life when I found myself in love with love. While in California in my early twenties, I fathered a child outside of marriage who was given up for adoption by the birth mother, but I did not really know about this child until thirty-eight years later. In my midtwenties, I married with great expectations but soon divorced. Then, finding myself in dire circumstances, I reluctantly surrendered a son from that marriage to adoption. Later, at age thirty-one, I successfully remarried, and from that marriage, I adopted and raised a son, Jonathan, who eventually called me Dad.

Few people have actually lived all three roles in the adoption triad.

Lessons I learned about the vast impact of adoption in my life came not from any academic text but from the purely personal perspective of actually living its three major roles over seventy years. As a result, some chapters are told from my perspective as an adoptee and others as an adopting parent. Still, others are told from the despair yet hope of giving up a child for adoption. Little did I know I would experience adoption from so many perspectives throughout my life. The challenges, rewards, frustrations, and sacrifices of these roles of adoption are all inextricably woven together in the chapters of my life.

My deepest hope is that the raw and sometimes controversial truth of what I have experienced and written about here will prove helpful to those whose lives have been or will be touched by adoption. Yet, regardless of my lifetime of experience, I will never have all the answers. Not everyone will agree with my opinions. Not everyone will react as I did. But this is the way it all unfolded for me. As I look back on a lifetime of bittersweet adoption experiences, my ultimate realization is that an intentional act of unconditional love known as adoption had not only laid the foundation for all I would become and provided direction at life’s most pivotal moments, but also mercifully allowed me a second chance for a lasting family after making peace with my rebellious past. Make no mistake—this seventy-year adventure in search of true understanding demanded much reflection, unwavering focus, and a small but significant dash of luck. In the end, not everyone is so fortunate, but not everyone persevered as I did. It helps to remember the nuance of a famous quote.

The harder I work, the luckier I get. (Samuel Goldwyn)

My story is one that can only be told in the twilight of life through events spanning more than half a century. It is only through collective reflection near the end of the game, after many participants have long departed and early decisions and circumstances have played themselves out, that I could truly understand, appreciate, or write about the significance of what happened before.

Although I realized revealing the reckless and irresponsible side of my youth would likely bring embarrassment, I always knew this book would still someday come out of me. Through the years, I started writing numerous times, only to realize many events had not sufficiently played out and could not be fully appreciated until more time had passed. Since only hindsight is twenty-twenty, and knowing there is little to be determined from a journey not finished, I waited.

The time has now arrived.

I hope what I have realized from looking back will help you find the understanding you need to move forward.

Throughout this effort, I couldn’t help but notice books written from the male perspective on adoption seem underrepresented on today’s bookshelves. I wondered why. I reasoned that even with in vitro fertilization, males were still 50 percent responsible for the creation of human life as well as 50 percent of most marriages; thus, they should take interest in the creation and perpetuation of all things family. Maybe they just don’t like to write about it.

This story is my attempt to help fill that literary void.

Chapter 1

Love Will Find a Way

From birth to death, human life displays a kaleidoscope of emotions. Among the most significant is the need to be loved. If we learn that we are loved, then we learn how to love others in return. Our understanding of love often begins when we first receive parental love then moves through infatuation (immature love), lust (mistaken love), and eventually to mature love. Mature love allows for the reconciliation of differences through the higher principles of forgiveness and tolerance. In its most mature form, love is manifested as unconditional, where it is an eternal, unquestioned, and unchanging commitment of support and admiration. Love that is not unconditional is merely convenient. Adoption is a deliberate act of unconditional love. I was fortunate enough to receive it and, in so doing, learned how to give it in return.

When my adoptive mother passed away in 1995, I decided there should be some way to announce to eternity what a pinnacle of success she had been as a mother. Since words are the most powerful tools in human history, I used them to engrave a message for all who may wander by.

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Today, my birth mother and adoptive mother are both buried near each other in the same cemetery. They knew each other before and after my birth. When I visit, I see them both. One gave me life, and the other gave me unconditional love. I love one but appreciate both. My life could not have worked without both of them. I was to learn that a tumultuous beginning doesn’t always mean an unhappy ending.

In the years since my adoptive mother’s passing in 1995, I have slowly come to realize I should have made a similar pronouncement on my adoptive father’s grave, but ours was a rocky relationship, as it can sometimes be between adoptive fathers and sons. When he died suddenly in 1971, I was only twenty-six, and his acts of unconditional love were still lost in my immaturity. Many years later, the fog lifted, and regardless of our past differences, I finally realized it had taken a giant of a man to return home wounded from fighting a war in Europe and agree with his new wife to adopt his sister’s unwanted son.

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In all the years since I learned I was adopted, and no