Gratitude, Sacrifice and Hope, by Kathryn J. Lopez

“Michael was born after an 11-hour labor … The foster mother described Michael as a good baby who enjoyed being talked to and who smiled and cooed.”

Michael Wear read this clinical report about himself when he stumbled upon a folder in his parents’ basement as a teenager.

‘I Made the Right Choice’

Also in that folder was a loving letter to the parents who would adopt him: “Never be threatened by my being his birth mother. The longing I feel for him is so intense that I could never explain it to you, but I cannot go back on my decision. I know I have made the right choice.”

His birth mother continued: “The reason I am going into all of this is because I want you to try to love him without any reservation. You see, he has my love, but he won’t know that firsthand. I have had to trust many people in this past year that I never would have met if not for my pregnancy, and though I am a trusting person, this is different. This tiny life was in my care until just over two months ago. Now he is with people I don’t even know. The separation is difficult, but the worry is worse. I am trusting him to you and I am sure you will make wonderful parents to him, but it’s not enough to give me peace of mind. What I have turned to is God. I am entrusting him first of all to God.”

A Gift

In an essay for the online magazine Catapult, Wear shares this and more. He discovered that day that in their short time together, his birth mother loved to sing to him the song “You Are My Sunshine.” He writes: “I immediately thought back to the kindergarten assembly at which I’d sung that song. I thought of how my love of music eventually led me to Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and a whole catalog of songs that my grandparents fell in love to. I sang so many of those songs with them; these were some of my most treasured family memories. How much of this love of music — one I had found and cultivated myself — was, in part, a gift from my birth mother?”

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Wear’s essay is a reflection on hope. As the father of a newborn, he is still discovering things about the birth mother he has never met. Wear is making connections with her, as he holds his little girl in his arms. He writes, remembering the day during Lent last year when he and his wife discovered that they would soon be parents: “There is a profound connection between hope and parenthood. Hope requires an openness to possibility, to vulnerability and to potential disappointment.”

Wear worked in the White House office of faith-based initiatives when Barack Obama was president and is the author of Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House about the Future of Faith in America. He himself is an instrument of hope, seeking to work on issues that can bring people together, rather than further tear them apart. (Adoption is chief among them.)

Heralds of Hope

It’s no mistake or coincidence that Wear’s reflection would appear during the season of Lent, and at a time when we’re having some brutally graphic public debates about life in its earliest stages. In his sharing of some of the most intimate experiences of his life, Wear is recognizing our need for heralds of hope. Rather than the prideful exuberance that our media and politics breed by their seeming omnipresence in our lives (which we allow by keeping the screens in front of our faces long beyond what could possibly be helpful to anyone), Wear offers something different, leading with gratitude about one woman’s heroic sacrifice that has made every day of his life possible. The still unfolding story of his life and the life of his family is a reminder and a gift to the rest of us that the health of our politics reflects the health of our lives. First things first — and there may be hope for our politics yet.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.

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