MARGERY ARNOLD AND HER husband, Matt Clark, were saving for a house in San Antonio, Texas, when they noticed an event at a church across the street. An adoption agency was holding a workshop.
After years of experiencing infertility, Margery and Matt stopped by to learn about the process.
They discovered that their nest egg for a down payment on their planned new home matched, almost to the dollar, what it would cost to adopt a baby from China.
It was an easy decision: Forget the new home for now, let’s start a family.
“We felt led by God to do this,” Margery recalled.
With National Adoption Month being celebrated in November and the yearlong California Catholic Bishops’ “Radiate Love Initiative” honoring marriage and family life in full swing, Margery and Matt said their 32-year marriage has been immeasurably blessed with two daughters.
Sisters but not biologically related, Mariel, 24, and Julianne, 21, were put up for adoption by their parents in rural China.
Margery and Matt became their grateful parents.
“We’re just like any other family,” said Mariel.
Her father agreed.
“We support each other, often annoy each other, help each other, embarrass each other and most importantly, love each other,” Matt said. “Living together as a family is something we get to work at every day, just like all the other families I know.”
GIFTS FROM GOD
This year’s National Adoption Month theme is “Honoring Youth: Strengthening Pathways for Lasting Bonds.”
Launched this summer, the California Catholic Bishops cited attacks on marriage and the decline of faith in the Eucharist as the reasons behind the “Radiative Love Initiative.” The program takes inspiration from the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana, because Jesus “believes marriage is beautiful and worth celebrating,” according to organizers.
Linda Ji, director of the Office for Family Life for the Diocese of Orange, said National Adoption Month ties in nicely with the goals of the initiative.
“It’s important to note that the Church values and cares about children and wants to support families, whether families are biologically connected or not,” she said. “Overall, part of ‘Radiate Love’ is about supporting and encouraging parents to receive children as gifts from God, and that could be children you bear yourself or who you received from adoption.
“As a Church, we’re always outspoken about being pro-life, and advocating for adoption is part of that pro life witness to the dignity of life. Every child deserves a safe and loving home.”
A DEEPENED FAITH
Margery and her family have been parishioners at St. John Neumann in Irvine for more than two decades.
A child psychologist, Margery runs the parish’s mental health ministry.
Both she and her husband took Asian studies course while undergraduates, and Matt, an Army veteran, studied abroad in China.
Speaking about what it means to be adoptive parents, she said: “In our world, we talk about the adoption triad — the birth family, the child and the adoptive parents — and if you’re not part of that triad, it’s hard to understand adoption, because you just see it through a lens of loss.
“There is a lens of loss in every adoption, but there’s so much more, too.”
Adopting children has deepened her family’s faith, Margery said.
“We understand God’s love better because we live life more fully,” she shared, adding that one of her favorite passages from the Bible is John 15:10-12 that reads, in part: If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
Explained Margery: “By loving my husband and my children, my joy is becoming complete. Being a parent teaches us to love like Jesus loved us. Being an adoptive parent puts an extra layer on that.
“If you want to grow in your capacity to love and God is leading you to adoption, then jump in. Being an adoptive parent requires an intentional type of love that gives the child a sense of being rooted not only in the family but also in the traditions of their faith and culture and in the communities of their birth family’s race, culture and ethnicity.”
A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE
Mariel called adoption a “beautiful and positive experience.”
She added: “It shouldn’t be seen as something to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. Adoption creates opportunities for love, connection and family. Whether you’re an adoptee or adopting, it’s a powerful reminder that family isn’t just about biology.”
Once again, her father agreed.
“Not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for the gift of our girls,” Matt said. “Of course there are challenges to being a parent, but the big ups and downs are, in my view, the same, regardless of how we form our families.
“I also think that many young couples spend far too much time trying to achieve some ever-moving threshold for parental ‘qualification,’” he added. “The best things in life often require us to hold hands and jump in together. I’m so glad we made the adoption plunge many years ago and I would do it all again in a New York minute.”