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If you could choose the gender of your next child, would you?

What about if you could space the births of your children in exactly the way you choose?  Or if you could pick out your child’s temperment?  Even their looks?

Would you? 

I suppose that with genetic engineering, some of that is already happening.  And how do we respond?  That’s God’s category! we say.  Don’t mess with God!  And we admit God knows what He is doing, right?  Because if we could make our families the way we wanted, we would probably screw it up.  Right?  Of course right.

But what if the choice was there, and if you didn’t choose, a government worker who doesn’t know you did the choosing for you?  Chose your child’s gender, birthday, looks, temperment, etc?  Would you choose then, because you would say to yourself, Well, if someone has to choose, then it had better be me. 

What would you do?

Trust me.  It feels really, really weird. 

In Grace’s case, we didn’t have an specifications. We told our lawyer, “Any child under a year.”  She is the one who matched us up with Grace.  In Josiah’s case, we asked for a boy.  Social welfare gave us the name of an orphanage.  They told us, “Go pick.”  There were five baby boys under a year.  And yes, it was weird.

And now we are here again.  Social welfare this time has told us, “Pick the orphanage; we’ll pick the child.”  But we all know that it’s quite possible we can “suggest” a particular child, and that’s who we’ll get.

How do you pick a child out of 2 million who need a family?  How do you take one and leave the rest?  How do you choose knowing that you will profoundly change the child’s life, and your life, forever?  It feels like playing God.  We’re not supposed to pick our children.  Children are God’s gifts; we get who He gives us and we love those we get.  Yet since we can pick, shouldn’t we?  Since we have a choice, then of course we’re going to think about gender and how we want to space our children’s ages.  So that narrows it down….what then? 

I will go to the district office on Thursday.  I will tell her which orphanage we want; and most likely I will tell her a Name.  Maybe two or three, and let them choose.

Weirdness.  Pray for us.  With both of our kids, we saw God’s hand of Sovereignty in placing them in our family.  Will you pray that He does it again?  Because of course, we believe that no matter who does the “choosing,” ultimately it is God who decides. 

Yesterday I went to visit Mama S again.  It had been almost three weeks since my last visit, and despite trying to call or text her, I hadn’t heard anything from her. 

Got to the office, waited outside.  There was no place to sit, so I plopped myself down on the concrete floor with my Kindle.  I’ve seen other women do this (well, not with a Kindle), so I figured it was culturally appropriate, but I still got some strange looks.  However, I always get strange looks there.  I’m always the only white person.

After a while I realized that no one was going in or out of the office, even though I knew there were people inside.  I realized there was a sign on the door.  I couldn’t translate all of it, but I got the gist that the social workers were now only seeing people on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays.  Wednesdays were for meetings and Thursdays….well, I couldn’t understand that part, except the word “kuandika.”  To write.  That was encouraging.  Maybe they were allowing themselves Thursdays to write reports.

I peeked in the office anyway; there were a bunch of staff in there.  I made eye contact with Mama S, which satisfied me, since really this was only a “nagging” visit anyway…I didn’t really have anything to say to her.  But at least she knew I had been there.  I sent her a text message….again.  And didn’t expect much. 

That evening, I got a message back from her.  The report has been written.  It will be mailed tomorrow. 

And there was much rejoicing in the Medina household.