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Author mug On Faith

Sally Lee


Birth mothers use adoption
to provide a better life

Placing a child for adoption requires great faith. I have worked with birth parents for 24 years now, helping them with their adoption plans. Every birth mother who has placed her child for adoption has loved her child so much that she wanted a better life for the baby than what she could offer.

In Exodus 2:3 we find a story of a baby boy who was born to Hebrew slaves. His mother hid him for three months because the wicked pharaoh had ordered all male babies to be killed. It reads, "When she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bullrushes and daubed it with slime and pitch and put the child therein." She let the basket float down by the riverbank.

Her older daughter watched as the pharaoh's daughter found him and he became her son and she called him Moses. Moses grew up to become the prince of Egypt and a great prophet. Even the Lord called him by the name of Moses, the name given to him by his adoptive mother.

Queen Liliuokalani wrote: "Immediately after my birth, I was wrapped in the finest soft tapa cloth and taken to the house of another chief by whom I was adopted. My own father and mother had other children, 10 in all, the most of them being adopted into other chiefs' families."

The birth mothers of Moses and Liliuokalani must have had such great faith to let their babies go, believing that placing their children for adoption would give them a better chance to fulfill their potential.

Today, we have birth mothers who have that same kind of faith. I clearly remember a birth mother who placed her infant son 14 years ago. In her letter to the adoptive parents, she wrote: "Please tell him of my great love for him. If it were not such a great and wondrous love, such a big sacrifice could not have been made. Please let him know that he was wanted very much. As I held him in my arms in the delivery room and stared down at him, my heart burst. Thoughts of keeping him for myself passed my mind, but when I saw him the next day in my room, I knew he deserved more. He is a child of God and was sent here to an earthly home with parents kind and dear. Please teach him to love and have true charity."

She placed her baby boy with a loving, childless couple. Now, 14 years later, that young man is an obedient, polite high school freshman. He is an outstanding student, a skilled debater, a patient older brother to three other adopted children. He has had a stable home life with two parents in an happy marriage. He is confident. He understands his adoption story and is very happy right where he is.

His birth mother's great faith led him to a path of joy and security.


Sally Lee is the former director of family services for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Hawaii.



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