Adoption is a productive process for both parents, children

Editor’s note: November is National Adoption Awareness Month, and the Foster Friendly Coalition of West Tennessee is presenting a local adoption story each week from different areas of the region to highlight the need and benefits of adoption.

On Friday morning, Nov. 7, I’m taking my family to court, but it’s going to be a happy occasion.

When my wife, Carrie, and I married in 2012, we always said that after we had a couple of children, we’d eventually look to adopt one or two more kids to do our part in helping an orphan or two to find a family he or she may have given up on having.

I thought it would be a nice addition to our home and a cool story to tell after being married a few years.

But after a couple of years and some medical examinations, we found out having children would be extremely difficult if not impossible, but that sliver of possibility would only come with a lot of doctor visits, tests and a lot of time and financial investment.

We were already well into our 30s, so instead of risking that time, we felt the calling to go straight to adoption. 

That calling narrowed to go straight to foster care. We found out then how many children were in foster care throughout the state - that number now stands at a little more than 8,300. Of that number, 500 are eligible for adoption.

So they’re looking for their forever family and hoping someone in Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services (DCS) can find that family.

Our adoption story officially started in 2014 when my wife and I signed up for what were then called “PATH classes” which were training sessions for six consecutive Saturdays on campus at Jackson State Community College to become foster parents.

Once we’d completed that training, we had to pass a home inspection.

This wasn’t necessarily a Marine drill sergeant coming in with a white glove making sure we’d properly dusted every visible square inch of the home, but they were simply making sure our home was one that children could be effectively raised in.

While cleanliness is a part of the equation, it’s more about safety and being in a loving home.

With our first adoption, we went through the private organization, Omnivision, and had further classes that fell in line with their own standards for their foster parents.

To get into the details of adoption would be a story - or series of stories - for another time.

But the Cliff’s Notes version is we adopted three in 2015, two more in 2021 and another in 2024.

On Friday, we’re adding two more to our family - a pair of brothers who came into our home as a toddler and an infant.

Adopting out of foster care is a delicate situation.

DCS’ top priority for every case of a child in foster care is to reunite that child with his or her birth family.

So getting into foster care with the end goal of adopting children isn’t typically a good move because there’s an emotional risk.

If you’re a loving home who wants to care for children, you will get attached to them if they’re in your home for more than a couple minutes.

And if things go the way DCS wants them to go, they will eventually leave your home.

But sometimes things don’t go that way, and parental rights are terminated, making a child or sibling group available for adoption.

But typically, those aren’t the newborn babies brought home from the hospital.

Often they’re older children, teenagers even, with multiple siblings that don’t comprise the ideal situation for a couple wanting to start their family through adoption.

In 2014 when we initially brought the foster children into our home that we would adopt, I remember telling one of our local football coaches after an interview what Carrie and I were doing.

His response: “Wow. So you’re going straight to a Cover 3 situation? Good luck with that, because my wife and I needed to be in man coverage for a few years before we got to three.”

Coach knew what he was talking about because there were plenty of times in those first few years how different things might’ve been had we just started with one and maybe started younger (our first three children were 7, 6 and 4 years old when we brought them home).

But like any permanent or at least long-term situation in life, you eventually figure out how to live in that situation and develop a new normal in it.

When we brought these two young guys into our home in December of 2022, we had no intentions of adopting them.

But over the course of a little more than a year, it was evident that we might - then eventually would - be able to adopt them.

And we’re all the younger one has ever known. For the older one, sadly, the last time he engaged with anyone from his birth family, the meetings had been so sparse and short that there was no recognition from him.

So for all intents and purposes, the Shields family is all they’ve ever known, and for the next decade or two, we’re hopefully all they’ll ever need.

Because they’ve become a part of our family even though they don’t look like the rest of us.

But that’s what a lot of people misunderstand about family.

Family doesn’t come from shared DNA or marriage licenses per se.

Family is the people you love being with the most, the ones you’re willing to see every night after a day of work and the ones you’re willing to take care of at some point in their life - whether it’s you taking care of them as babies or them taking care of you when you’ve become too old and sick to take care of yourself.

And you don’t need to be a part of the same bloodline to have that bond.

It takes love described by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 when he said love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful of themselves, not proud, not dishonoring to others, not self-seeking, not oversensitive or keeping an account of all the times they’ve been wronged.

1 Corinthians 13:7 (English Standard Version) - “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

And for anyone who may be reading this that’s considered adoption but is afraid to pull the trigger because you’re unsure of if you can do it, you eventually grow into that person that Paul described - or at least a closer version of yourself to that person.

So yes, we’re giving them a home and a family to be a part of as they grow up, and we may be giving them that.

But every loving parent will tell you that the children give as much to you through the experience of raising them that you don’t realize until you’ve done it a few years. So we’re starting our next round of raising, and we’re ready because we know what we’re in for, but more importantly, what to expect from it.

For anyone reading this who’s interested in adopting a child, check out the website tnkidsbelong.org. and adoptuskids.org. Another website, parentachild.org, is another resource to find out more about adoption through foster care.

All of these have a list of children who are available and have FAQ pages to help anyone learn more about the requirements and process.

Carrie and I are available to answer questions too. Send an email to the address in the next paragraph.

Brandon Shields is the managing editor of The Jackson Post. Reach him through e-mail at brandon@jacksonpost.news. Follow him on X.com @JSEditorBrandon. Follow him on Instagram @EditorBrandon.